Founders and executives from Viv for your V, Murphy Door, Vaila Shoes and Hivessence described their AI use at an eTail Boston panel, alongside a renegotiation of what wholesale is for.
Ahriana Edwards, founder and CEO of Vaila Shoes, which caters to larger-sized feet, said the hardest part of scaling a DTC-first brand is the constant need to adapt. “When you’re bootstrapping and you have limited resources, it forces you to think creatively to get the job done,” she said. Vaila sells on its own site, through the marketplace Dia & Co, and at Macy’s and DSW, and Edwards merchandises each differently: display and storytelling at Macy’s, where the brand launched in 2023, and mostly e-commerce at DSW, where she negotiated in-store returns.
Jeremy Barker, CEO of Murphy Door, which launched in 2012 and sells custom doors in 300 million design configurations, is going the other way — away from big-box retail and back to DTC. In stores like partner Home Depot, brands selling custom products have little control over the experience, he said. AI now helps his team price orders. “We currently turn a product roughly every six minutes. And the prices are actually going down, not up,” he said. “I have nothing against Home Depot, but my goal overall is to have zero big box [presence] and 100% DTC.”
Katie Diasti, founder and CEO of period care brand Viv for your V, has built a content strategy around GEO to capture Gemini and ChatGPT traffic. In the summer of 2024, a study showing arsenic and lead in many major period brands went viral; people kept searching “What is the safest tampon?” and Viv topped many of the resulting lists. “That led to a ton of website traffic,” Diasti said, and the brand has leaned on product safety and transparency content for SEO and GEO since. Ahead of a launch she said was coming in August, the team’s first question was its AI search strategy.
David Burrows, CEO of personal care brand Hivessence, said the cost of acquiring customers and social followers has risen, and that AI chatbots give brands a reason to go back to storytelling. “They’re asking for advice because they see AI as a consultant, an attorney or a therapist,” he said. “So they talk to them as a person.” Content has to be accurate and carry a human touch, he said.
Read more at Digiday.