The 12-year-old bedding brand Branch & Boll hasn’t been shy about its use of AI. It uses existing tools like Google’s Notebook LM to help manage data and operations.
But recently, it has also started using more wide-ranging AI agents through the popular open-source AI agent creation software, OpenClaw. At Shoptalk in Las Vegas last month, Boll & Branch chief commercial officer Katia Unlu spoke to Glossy about Tess, the AI agent that has become an increasingly big part of the company’s operations.
According to Unlu, Boll & Branch CEO Scott Tannen used OpenClaw, an open source software for the creation of autonomous AI agents, to create an agent that could handle administrative tasks for the company. Unlu described the process of using OpenClaw as “easier than you think.”
“Originally, he made her a scheduling assistant — she would just do email back and forth to set up appointments,” Unlu said. “But then he connected her to our Slack, which was a really smart decision. That’s our main communication software.”
From there, Unlu said the team began integrating Tess with more of their back-end systems, including Shopify and a marketing platform called Iterable.
“So now that she has access to all this data, we can ask her to tell us everything about our Chestnut Hill customer,” for example, Unlu said. Boll & Branch will open a store in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts this spring. “What do our customers there buy? Are they into new product trends? And then she can pull that data and give us a report.”
Unlu said the next frontier for Tess is social trend analysis. The team has already begun integrating Tess with Sprout Social to analyze social trends and flag notable patterns that are relevant to the brand.
That trend analysis will be useful as Boll & Branch continues expanding. The company doubled its retail footprint last year and now has 15 of its own stores. It’s also in over 100 Nordstrom stores. And Boll & Branch’s next focus is on building up its furniture business, most of which sells primarily in the physical stores, Unlu said. Boll & Branch does over $200 million in annual revenue.
