Is it time for retailers to lastly ditch Excel and reams of spreadsheets?
Retail executives are sometimes overwhelmed by huge quantities of information, experiences and spreadsheets, leaving little time for efficient decision-making. Recognizing this problem, Mark Chrystal, chief govt officer and cofounder of Profitmind, got down to develop an AI-powered answer that empowers retail groups to prioritize and act on enterprise enchancment alternatives with higher pace and accuracy.
Right here, Chrystal discusses the inspiration behind Profitmind, shares success tales from main retailers and highlights the platform’s imaginative and prescient for shaping the way forward for retail analytics. From leveraging synthetic intelligence to streamlining workflows to delivering measurable revenue development, Profitmind is working to reimagine how the retail trade operates in a dynamic and aggressive market.
WWD: What impressed the creation of Profitmind, and what particular downside within the retail trade have been you aiming to unravel?
Mark Chrystal: As a 25-year retail govt, I grew more and more annoyed on the lack of decision-support instruments out there. Retail groups are drowning in experiences, information, BI instruments and spreadsheets, requiring time-consuming needle-in-the-haystack investigative work to try to determine what’s going on within the enterprise and what they will do about it. The common retailer has between 10,000 and 25,000 lively spreadsheets and hundreds of weekly experiences. The retail market is much too dynamic for the enterprise groups to be hamstrung by a scarcity of visibility into what is going on within the enterprise, and likewise with clients and opponents. As a retail operator with a background in utilized analytics, I felt that I used to be uniquely positioned to handle this concern.
To resolve the issue, I partnered with Andrew Ng, creator of Google Mind and Coursera and the AI guru who coined the time period “Agentic AI.” He acknowledged the huge alternative to use AI in retail and was searching for a associate with deep retail expertise. We joined forces and created Profitmind with a deal with serving to retail groups establish, quantify and prioritize enterprise enchancment alternatives 10 occasions higher than they will do with out Profitmind. We’re attaining that benchmark and see alternatives to do even higher.
WWD: Profitmind’s web site mentions a mean of 14 p.c revenue development for its customers. Are you able to share some particular examples or case research that illustrate how Profitmind has achieved these outcomes for retailers?
M.C.: Completely. A key differentiator of Profitmind’s AI answer is that it’s not simply hype. We’re driving actual outcomes, quick.
A number one e-commerce intimate attire retailer recognized alternatives to develop annual gross sales by $12 million and income by $6.5 million per 12 months. They acknowledged that they have been considerably over-assorted in some classes and used Profitmind’s aggressive product matching and pricing evaluation to streamline their assortments and optimize pricing. They used Profitmind’s stock optimization functionality to make sure that they’re in inventory on key fundamentals, growing buyer loyalty and driving repeat enterprise.
Shopper services retail chain Batteries Plus+ carried out Profitmind in March 2024 after discovering our answer within the Innovation Lab at NRF 2024. They have been trying to change their pricing and web-scraping instruments, which gave insufficient market pricing evaluation and required labor-intensive, guide aggressive product and value matching. Batteries Plus+ rapidly carried out Profitmind, together with aggressive product matching the way in which a shopper does it: with each actual and comparable matches. They changed their guide Good-Higher-Greatest-Final value tier administration in Excel with Profitmind’s automated device.
Mark Chrystal
Based mostly on Profitmind suggestions, Batteries Plus+ optimized their pricing throughout their key auto battery class, unlocking $1 million in incremental gross sales and income within the first month. These outcomes shifted inside perceptions of their market place. By way of efficient value tier administration, they expanded throughout the class, driving $4 million larger revenues and income in auto batteries alone within the first 9 months of use.
A top-five worldwide retailer used Profitmind to enhance their search engine, driving the very best vacation season within the historical past of their e-commerce enterprise and attaining $200 million in gross sales development.
Profitmind is transformative to retailers’ workflows and productiveness. An EU dwelling enchancment retailer achieved 200 p.c price-match enchancment whereas saving 100-plus hours/month in information entry.
Retailers worldwide throughout a variety of sectors have achieved important income and revenue enhancements, together with Batteries Plus+, Intergamma, Kirkland’s, Leonisa and Busy Beaver.
WWD: How does Profitmind’s AI platform combine with a retailer’s present enterprise processes, and what’s the typical onboarding course of like for brand new shoppers?
M.C.: Prospects are sometimes up and working with Profitmind inside 4 to eight weeks. To get began, clients present their strategic aims in plain enterprise language, and their historic information as-is. Profitmind takes that in and scours the web for proposed aggressive product matches for overview and approval by the enterprise crew. From then on, Profitmind repeatedly gives quantified, prioritized enterprise enchancment suggestions.
Profitmind is an AI intelligence layer that sits above the retailer’s present techniques for managing pricing, stock, merchandise planning, product improvement, and so forth. It’s designed to combine into the prevailing processes and make them extra environment friendly, notably the Monday decision-making course of.
As soon as choices are made on Profitmind’s suggestions, they’re exported within the format of option to the suitable execution system. Outcomes are tracked, measured and reported inside the Profitmind platform. Profitmind additionally learns from person suggestions and efficiency of the enterprise, retraining itself each week to try to produce higher motion suggestions to the enterprise groups.
WWD: With the retail panorama always evolving, what are Profitmind’s plans for future improvement and innovation to remain forward of the curve?
M.C.: Profitmind’s objective is to be the first AI intelligence for company retail decision-making. Because of this we should have best-in-class steady studying, innovation and market adaptation processes at our core.
We began improvement with a deal with aggressive pricing, assortment and stock intelligence. Profitmind now has studied hundreds of retail choices and 10 million-plus merchandise throughout most trade segments and already possesses the equal of 1,000 years of retail data. We’re asking our clients to inform us the place to go deeper into these areas and the place else they need assistance. Within the close to future, we see alternatives to raised help advertising and marketing, allocation and FP&A [financial planning and analysis] groups.
WWD: What’s your imaginative and prescient for the way forward for retail analytics, and the way does Profitmind plan to play a job in shaping that future?
M.C.: We consider that Profitmind goes to steer a good portion of the evolution of the retail trade, specifically, targeted on decision-making and analytics. The way forward for retail is retailers armed with AI intelligence that gives them with the precise data they should perceive what is going on, the place it’s occurring, and the way they will capitalize on it. Profitmind intends to be that AI intelligence that’s the gas for present and future retail retailers and decision-makers.
