Reinventing wholesale retail with VirtuousAI

The Challenge:

A global wholesale fashion marketplace had hit a wall. Despite being a widely recognized industry leader that connects over 650,000 buyers to thousands of retail brands and boutiques, they needed to rev up their growth engine to impress potential investors. 

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The marketplace needed a fast way to uncover new high-value retailers and boutiques to target. AI seemed like the ideal solution, as they knew it could help identify their highest-value customers and generate a list of lookalikes. However, the marketplace had an all-too-common problem: they didn’t have the time or the in-house expertise to build an AI solution from scratch.

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The Solution:

The marketplace teamed up with VirtuousAI to turn their business challenge into a strategic advantage. While most AI consists of tactical point solutions, VirtuousAI focuses on AI that thinks strategically.

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Our team began by implementing the marketplace’s end-to-end AI infrastructure — at the heart of which is our patented knowledge graph, VirtueGraph, which works like a human brain to connect the dots between vast amounts of data. 

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VirtueGraph analyzed the purchase history, website, products, and prices for each of the marketplace’s retailer customers, then enriched it with external web and demographic data. Within seconds, VirtueGraph created a clear, prioritized list of retailers who looked and behaved just like the marketplace’s best existing customers. These retailer brands were deemed highly likely to convert, not just because they were similar in profile, but also similar in “vibe,” meaning the retailer’s brand fit the fashion identity of the wholesale products.

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This is more than a list of lookalikes, though. As part of its instant output, VirtueGraph created several visuals to explain its reasoning and show which specific attributes led to each recommendation. 

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What VirtueGraph created in seconds would be impossible for a team of data analysts to uncover manually. Even if they tried, it would take so long that the marketplace would most likely miss its opportunity to target these potential new customers.

The Results:

• Unmatched speed: It took less than 90 days to implement and launch this use case, with zero internal AI headcount
• Rapid growth: A 20% increase in new customers
• Extreme cost-efficiency: A 50% decrease in customer acquisition costs
• Ultimate scalability: Because VirtueGraph automatically learns more with every new query, the marketplace can take advantage of unlimited use cases without having to pay for AI infrastructure upgrades or additional model training.
• A competitive edge: The marketplace is now helping its retailer customers grow by using VirtueGraph to recommend new brands and products to sell, identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities, and optimize pricing. This is a one-of-a-kind offering that puts the marketplace far ahead of its competitors.

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