How Boll & Branch stores helped build the brand’s first AI tool

Boll & Branch will soon have 19 stores across the US, and the luxury bedding maker says the expansion trajectory is based on people’s preference for making home and bed decisions with a hands-on, in-store experience.

“We tested it out first in department stores; we did partnerships with Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s,” Katia Unlu, chief commercial officer at Boll & Branch, said during a panel on service-oriented retail experiences at industry conference eTail Boston. “We had some idea what this was going to look like before we ventured out to opening our own stores.”

Boll & Branch opened its first store in Short Hills, New Jersey, in 2017 and thinks of stores as a “repeat and lifetime value accelerator,” Unlu said. The home goods brand has shops in Boston, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Dallas, among other cities. “Service and building a relationship with the customer was at the core of why we opened these stores.”

DTC brands like Brooklinen, Mejuri, and Warby Parker have all focused on building out their in-store retail playbooks. Their success has resulted in a new way for DTC brands to thrive and survive despite challenges.

Boll & Branch runs a retail program that installs bedding in customers’ homes, but Unlu said it’s been “hard to scale” because not everybody wants people in their bedrooms. So, the brand has turned to AI to make the service more accessible by letting customers visualise Boll & Branch items in their bedroom.

Enter: the virtual bed designer, an AI-powered tool, to scale the in-home consultations to everyone.

Boll & Branch is using it in stores and testing it on its website. It’s a way for customers to style their bed themselves on Boll & Branch’s website, or have one of the brand’s in-store ambassadors do it for them in-store.

Browsing too well: Customers who are shopping using the new bed designer AI tool, which Boll & Branch started testing in April, have on average doubled their order value, Unlu said.

“It’s quite substantial in terms of just the revenue,” Unlu said. “Another really interesting aside that it’s had is surfacing these product categories that we don’t necessarily sell a ton of.”

While many people know Boll & Branch for its sheets, the bedding company has seen an uptick in demand for decorative pieces like throw blankets and pillows from people who are engaging with its AI tool, Unlu added.