Retailers are moving quickly to lean into AI-powered shopping — even as the path from discovery to purchase inside chat remains inconsistent.
David’s Bridal is the latest to act. On April 13, the retailer launched on Shopify’s “agentic storefronts,” enabling customers to discover products, receive recommendations and initiate purchases directly within platforms like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. The integration includes real-time inventory, structured product listings with images, pricing and customer reviews, and embedded “buy” functionality, bringing transactions closer to the point of discovery.
“This is a structural shift in how consumers discover and buy,” said Kelly Cook, CEO of David’s Bridal. “Consumers are moving from traditional search to AI-driven discovery at an extraordinary pace, and increasingly expect to complete their purchase in that same moment.”
Traffic from generative AI to retail sites grew more than 600% year over year during the 2025 holiday season, while shoppers arriving via AI show higher engagement and conversion rates than those coming from traditional search, according to a 2025 report from e-commerce consultancy Elogic, citing Adobe Analytics data. What’s more, roughly 73% of consumers now use AI at some point in their shopping journey, though fewer rely on it to complete purchases end-to-end, according to the same report.
As consumers increasingly use conversational interfaces to research products, brands are testing ways to shorten the journey from inspiration to purchase — while maintaining control over the transaction and customer data.
“This is the next logical evolution of our ‘Aisle to Algorithm’ strategy,” said Scott Saeger, CTO of David’s Bridal, referring to the company’s initiative, launched in 2025 by Cook, to reposition itself as a tech-driven marketplace and media platform. “We’ve spent the last year becoming AI-first internally. This latest move into agentic AI shopping is simply the newest consumer-facing layer of that foundation.”
With purchases stemming from ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, David’s Bridal remains the merchant of record, retaining ownership of customer data, fulfillment and checkout through its Shopify infrastructure.
A similar push into AI-driven discovery is underway across the bridal category. For example, the wedding platform The Knot Worldwide has integrated its vendor marketplace into ChatGPT, allowing users to search for venues, photographers and services within the chat interface.
“[AI] is changing the search and discovery landscape overall, in a way that we haven’t seen since the early 2000s,” said Jenny Lewis, CMO of The Knot Worldwide, in a previous interview with Glossy.
Unlike David’s Bridal, which is experimenting with transactions inside AI environments, The Knot’s strategy centers on capturing discovery earlier in the planning journey and directing users toward its network of vendors.
Retailers are making these moves despite uneven consumer adoption. While shoppers are increasingly using AI tools for product research, a smaller share are completing purchases within chat interfaces. In one recent survey, just 22% of U.S. consumers said they had completed a purchase directly inside an AI tool, even as roughly half reported using AI during the research phase, according to data cited by CNBC. Many still prefer to finalize transactions on traditional e-commerce sites.
But, according to David’s Bridal, more than 70% of consumers say they are willing to complete purchases within AI chat environments, and AI-assisted shopping journeys at the retailer are delivering conversion rates up to 23% higher than traditional e-commerce.
To support that behavior, David’s Bridal has spent the past year embedding AI across its operations — including merchandising and planning — while overhauling its product data for AI-driven discovery. The company audited and enriched attributes like fabric, silhouette and sizing to ensure compatibility with large language models, which rely on structured data to surface recommendations.
“We’ve conducted massive audits to enrich our structured product data, ensuring every attribute is optimized for large language models to ingest,” Saeger said. “We aren’t just bridging retail and tech; we are closing the gap between them entirely.”
“Differentiation is won at the data layer,” Saeger said, noting that detailed product attributes, customer ratings, and categorization by style, silhouette and fit help determine which products surface first in AI-generated recommendations.
Early signals suggest that David’s Bridal’s customer behavior is evolving, as well. Instead of browsing category pages, shoppers are making highly specific, intent-driven requests — such as searching for “modern minimal gowns under $1,000” — and expecting immediate, tailored results.
“In AI environments, shoppers are more goal-oriented and conversational,” Saeger said. “They ask for specific solutions rather than scrolling through thousands of options.”
For David’s Bridal, success will be measured through conversion rates, revenue per AI session and the accuracy of search intent.
