#240: How David’s Bridal Is Rebuilding a 76-Year-Old Business Around AI

Introduction to AI Transformations

0:00How do we even get started? What do I even like? When I got married years ago, I would go out and I'd spend hundreds of dollars on wedding magazines, and I would cut things out, and I'd build myself a little inspiration vision board. We were able to solve that problem state with AI in under two minutes. Welcome to AI Transformations, a special series from the Artificial Intelligence Show. I'm Mike Kaput, Chief Content Officer at SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute, and I'll be your host. Every business's AI journey looks different. In each of these episodes, I sit down with leaders who have lived through real AI transformation, including the actual stories, the pain points that push them to act, the moment things started to click, and the results they can point to today.

0:44So join us as we accelerate AI literacy for all as part of our AI Transformations series.

David's Bridal AI Journey

0:51Welcome, everyone, to episode 240 of the Artificial Intelligence Show. I am Mike Kaput, co-host of the Artificial Intelligence Show and Chief Content Officer here at SmarterX. We are again doing something a little different than your regularly scheduled programming. This is a special episode in a series we're running called AI Transformations, presented by Google Cloud. And in this series, if you have been following along with the amazing episodes we've put out so far, we are spotlighting how real companies are driving real change using AI.

1:25So in each episode, we'll explore how leaders at some of the world's most innovative companies are using AI to transform how their teams, departments, or entire organizations work. We'll look at what sparked the transformation, how the journey unfolded, what got messy along the way, and kind of what results AI is starting to unlock for businesses. And we do all that by interviewing leaders firsthand right here on the show. That includes Alina Vilk and Mike Ball from David's Bridal, who are here with me today. Much more on both of them in just one minute. Now, the reason we're doing this series in partnership with our friends at Google Cloud is simple, which is AI transformation can feel really abstract.

2:03Everyone talks it up, but far fewer people are showing what it looks like in practice inside real companies. So we want to actually make AI transformation much more concrete and show you how other leaders are approaching it. So with that, I'm going to dive into today's episode. And in just a second here, talk with Alina and Mike. Before we do, today's episode is brought to you by Gemini Enterprise. So businesses of every shape and size are turning to AI. They are learning how to move faster, do more, and improve their performance.

2:35But you can't just hand your data over to any platform. You need a trusted partner with years of experience. And that's where Gemini Enterprise comes in. Gemini Enterprise helps you build sophisticated AI agents that can connect with your business data while also keeping it protected by world-class security and governance. So there's no more compromising between performance and protection. So go get started today at cloud.google.com forward slash Gemini dash Enterprise. That's cloud.google.com forward slash Gemini dash Enterprise.

3:08All right. I'm very excited for this one. Today, we are talking with Alina Vilk, President and Chief Business Officer at David's Bridal, and Mike Ball, who is the company's head of product. So founded back in 1950, David's Bridal is best known for wedding attire. But today, its business also spans wedding planning, digital commerce, loyalty, and services for wedding vendors. Now, Alina and Mike are here because David's is working to turn a company built around the dress into a platform supporting the broader wedding journey.

3:40That's a transformation it calls aisle to algorithm that we're going to talk about quite a bit. And this work has centered on expanding their system, Pearl, which is a planning platform and vendor marketplace into Pearl Planner, which is an AI-powered experience designed to help couples navigate the more than 300 connected tasks involved in planning a wedding. So Pearl can actually turn a couple's date, style, budget, and preferences into a personalized plan that evolves with them. And it moves far beyond chat by helping couples do everything from manage timelines, budgets, decisions, and vendor needs and more throughout the planning process.

4:17Now, along the way of building out this AI-native system and capabilities, David's has also changed how its own teams work. So the company actually starts looking at each team's biggest problems, trains its leaders, builds targeted solutions, and encourages employees to rethink workflows and what their job could become, thanks to what AI enables. Now, David's today is expanding its AI platform to wedding businesses through a vendor-side experience as well, and that is being built on Google Cloud.

4:47We're going to talk about all that in this conversation and more. Alina, Mike, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Always happy to hang with another Mike. Likewise, likewise.

Origins of the AI Transformation

4:59So let's start at the beginning here. How did this AI transformation at David's Bridal get started? What set it in motion? How has it evolved since then? I think coming into David's, my background's in tech, so is Mike's. We can talk more about that. But the journey really starts with the fact that the company, when I started, was a 75-year-old brand that had the trust of the brides in the United States and beyond, North America.

5:3090% of all brides will go through the David's Bridal ecosystem at some point. And so when you start with that foundation, you have permission to begin innovating across the journey from those brides. Because like you said, all we ever did was sell them a dress. But we have permission with the trust that we built over the years to really think about solving a real customer problem. And the problem we're solving is very simple. It's stress. Because when you get married, there's only one emotion you feel.

6:02You're excited in the dating cycle. You're excited for like 24 hours after you get engaged. And then you wake up in the morning and this panic hits you. Because you might be a 25-year-old girl that has never had to plan a $40,000 event before in your life. And you are becoming an influencer overnight with hundreds of people attending, lots of drama, and a financial bill you may not be able to handle. And so we're here to take that foundation of trust and remove the barriers of stress. And that's really what it's about. It's not just about the technology.

6:33But it's about what that technology enables you to do today. So let's maybe talk a little bit about what that earliest phase of this looked like in practice. So, you know, David's Bridal has that trust. You want to start building out AI to help with this process. I'm curious if you could maybe elaborate a little bit more on what have been those major phases and turning points in your own AI journey since you both have backgrounds in tech. I'm curious how this has all gotten started and where it's gone since then.

7:04So it started with thinking about the biggest search term in bridal in terms of planning. And the biggest search term in planning is really around the checklist. They don't know where to start. And having backgrounds in tech helps because when you're in tech, you tend to think about what is the biggest problem we have to solve? What is the customer journey? And what is the customer problem statement that we're solving for? And I'm hoping that that's the thing we solve across the journey, of which there's hundreds of problems we are solving at both the macro and micro level in this journey.

7:41And so if we start to think about the tech behind the checklist, we realize very quickly the checklist is very finite. Most checklists for planning have like 30 steps. Brides have something I like to call this balloon over their heads. Actually, all people do, especially women, if you're married, there's like a checklist. And Mike and I talk about his wife a lot, like the checklist in the back of your head. I don't know, Mike, if you're other Mike, Mike K, if you're married. But there's like this endless checklist that's in your brain. And even now, even right now, as we're sitting here, you're probably thinking about something you have to do later today.

8:17And when you have a wedding and you're planning a wedding, that gets amplified a thousand X. And I give this example. I give the example of someone planning their one item on the checklist, which is the engagement photo shoot. The engagement photo shoot is one item on most checklists if you do any kind of search today. In reality, I can give you about 100 items that I'm probably exaggerating, but more like 20 items in that one checklist item. Because in the engagement photo shoot, you have to decide you're doing an engagement photo shoot.

8:51You have to find a photographer. You have to get the inspiration for your engagement photo shoot. You have to figure out your shot list. You have to figure out what you're wearing, what he's wearing, what lipstick, what makeup, what hair, what nails, all these things. And none of these things are appearing on any kind of list for you today. So the balloon exists and it gets amplified so many times over across every step in the journey. And then you add people into that equation. You've got your mother, your future mother-in-law who has an opinion.

9:22You have to have four or five bridesmaids agree on wearing one dress. Have you ever tried to get four women to agree on wearing one dress? Try that. So it's fun for you. See how that works out. And, you know, there's a lot going on. And so when we started to think about the problem statement, we wanted to map out a journey where it would remove friction from the entire planning process. And it starts with building out a companion that helps you simplify it all and takes it out of your head onto someplace else that can really direct you in what you need to do.

9:59And so within that, we built these tasks and we built that whole journey around the tasks starting from the beginning where it's like your vision quiz, right? As an example, how do we even get started? What do I even like? When I got married years ago, I would go out and I'd spend hundreds of dollars on wedding magazines and I would cut things out and I'd build myself a little inspiration vision board. We were able to solve that problem state with AI in under two minutes, you know, through images and through our vision AI.

And so some of these things building together and building together this entire journey, we take an entire planning journey, really make it very simple step-by-step journey for you with an entire AI companion based on 75 plus years of our stylists being in the store with the humans, the brides themselves and being that psychologist and that guide and that companion for them.

10:48We built that into this knowledge graph that you see in our AI. I love that. So that is you're taking this established authoritative brand, all these decades of trust and experience, and then layering AI essentially on top of that to solve real business problems.

Pearl Planner and Customer Experience

11:06So the name of this, correct me if I'm wrong, is Pearl Planner, correct? This is kind of your customer-facing AI assistant. I'm curious if you could maybe walk us through even more in depth what it is, how it works, how it changes the experience of planning wedding. It sounds like there's a vision component, sounds like this is really deeply simplifying the crazy checklist that brides have to go through as they're planning. Maybe talk me through that a little more. Yeah, I can dive in on that. So if you take what Alina just said about removing stress and then you just pretended you had someone very stubborn going at every single step along the way, that's kind of how we approach it.

11:44So like the vision quiz, for example, as we were talking to brides early on, several of them mentioned how hard it is to explain their tastes and their preference and their vision for what they're trying to do. And they said, like, I don't even know what to call it yet. So how am I supposed to tell somebody else? But they want me to make all these decisions, especially if they're working with a planner or a mother-in-law or whatever the case is. Like, I can show you what I like, but they don't think of it the same way and they might not use the same words. So like, oh, well, what if they just didn't have to type something out? You know, traditionally in like a software, you're going to ask them some question.

12:15They're going to fill out a form, whatever. They're going to have to choose an option. Like, what if they just picked pictures and we just looked at the pictures and determined that? And that's where what Alina said about, like, we have 75 years of knowledge where I sat down with our stylists and our merchandise team is like, so what about this dress? Like, why do we call it? Why do we call it like traditional? What makes this more romantic than this one, for example? And then I had to do that for every kind of category across like floral arrangements or cake or whatever the case is. And so we were able to take all that knowledge, put it on a back end and kind of treat it like an evaluation from the AI standpoint and say, like, based on these images, these are the, this is what we see across them.

12:53Here's the dominant themes. And then here's kind of like what you would call that based on how the industry talks about it right now. Like really simple, basic, like a dumbed down version of it. But that's that stress point of that bride just wanting to say, like, I don't know what to call it. Why do I have to call it anything? Why can't you just understand what I want? Right? Like it's a, it seems like a really simple thing, but we keep finding a lot of problems in the space that nobody has bothered to try and solve. So as we're talking to them, like even the bridesmaid one Alina mentioned, good luck getting them to agree on that.

13:24And the brides we talked to her, like, I don't want a big group chat with five of my bridesmaids being passive aggressive with each other and a lot of unclear feedback. So we intentionally designed it. So she has her own space to see what their preference is, like what they're voting on. And she doesn't have to listen to it if she doesn't want to. She's not on the hook for knowing what everybody said or who anybody said or whatever. It's just the votes come in and the options are there. And if she wants to go with that, great. But if she's like, they all voted for the thing I hate, but they're never going to know if I pick this dress I love. Right? So it's things like that that are just embedded from engagement all the way through wedding day.

13:58That's incredible. I'm curious as well, like how does Superl helps up front with actually helping you conceptualize what you're even going for in the first place, which is a capability that was just previously not even that possible without AI. I'm curious how it goes beyond that piece to actually helping also manage things like timelines, budget, vendor needs. How is AI fitting into that piece of the process? It's fitting into every step of the process because it's taking, you know, like previous tech lists were 20, 30 steps.

14:31We actually have hundreds and hundreds of steps. Could be thousands depending on your wedding. You could add steps if you need to. But the idea is that it's a guided experience and you don't get all those steps on day one. If you're getting married in 18 months, you're going to be guided and you're going to see only what you need to see right this moment in time because we're trying to remove the overwhelm and the friction. And then we're only 1% done. I mean, we have so much more we could do. So there's a lot of components. One of the components is matching the brides to the vendors.

15:02And so at the right time, that at the right time is key because no one else is doing that. And so if you're a florist and you're a bride, you don't want to see florist ads when you're looking for your venue. You want to see florist ads when you want to be matched with a florist when it's time for you to look for flowers. When you haven't booked your venue yet, you don't know what floral you want. That's not a sequential step. So those are the kinds of examples that we've added in, which is the sequencing of when things tend to happen and when things should happen based on hundreds and hundreds of brides and their decision-making in the wedding journey.

15:38And then the AI works for you. Once we have your preferences in your vision board, it flips to who you are. And then we have these embedded tasks. And like I said, that's where I think we're 1% done. I'm always pushing us, and so is Mike, to think through, like, what else can we do? Like, how are we really solving this problem? And one, you gave the example of budget. Budget is the number one stress point for all couples getting married. The pressure is greater than ever today to have a dream wedding.

16:08And you see it on Instagram. You see these, you know, doves, and you see these, like, insane weddings on, you know, on Instagram today. And you're like, oh, maybe I'll do a Pinterest board on this, or maybe I want that. But, well, the reality of what happens is you get halfway through your planning process, and you've blown your budget.

16:27And you might have blown your budget because you're doing things sequentially. They're not necessarily in the order of importance to you. Like, if the band is your number one thing, the band might not be the first thing you order. The venue is probably going to be the first thing that you book, right? So, sequentially, the band might happen way later. But if you are a music fan and music is, like, number one on your list, if you've blown your entire budget on venue and dresses and all these other things that happened before, guess what's going to happen by the time you get to the band decision? So, we built an embedded task, we call it, with AI, that allows you to dynamically determine your budget based on your preferences.

17:07And so, we tell you, like, hey, you're in the, you know, you might be in the red zone here. Like, hey, you know, your top three things are this, right? So, those are the kinds of things that become really important. But they're based on where we think the biggest stress points are. Anything you want to build on that, Mike? Like, yeah, I think the really subtle thing that's exciting for me in that, on the budget side especially, is a really, like, really subtle simplification is when they're doing their categories, instead of expecting them to say, like, okay, here's your total budget and here's your breakout, or expecting them to put the money in the breakout, we just ask them which thing is most important to them.

17:47It's like, this thing is really important. I want to splurge on it. This thing is not as important I'm willing to save here. And what makes the platform, like, something I'm really, really proud of is on the back end, when Alina says it knows your preferences, it is the AI you talk to. So, if you're later stressing out and you're like, I need to find another $1,000 because I really want this arrangement or I really want this band or I really want these rentals or whatever, it knows which other things are important.

So, it's not going to tell you to cut the budget from something that is already really important, it's going to say, you know, you can probably cut those 10 guests that are on your maybe list and make some room there, or maybe you can cut back on dessert over here, because dessert's already included over here for half the price or whatever the case is.

18:26But it learns as you go, so it remembers all those different things and how important they are to you, and not just like budget, for example, but if you're working on a playlist and you're like, I actually hate that band, it's not going to recommend that band anymore. So, memory was really important. So, wherever you're interacting, whether the AI is visible and you're talking to it, or it's just a function that's happening behind the scenes, like pulling in recommendations, it's always learning and updating based on what it knows and what you've told it so far.

That's exactly why I wanted to have you all on, because, you know, some of the transformation stories, right, Lisa, are about how, you know, kind of people are improving productivity and performance at their company, and we'll talk about how David's Bridal is using AI internally, but this is like a complete reinvention of an existing, very important, very painful process from almost the ground up using AI.

19:17It's a real innovation story, in addition to just making the process easier, which I love.

19:24So, I'm curious, at what level, at the level you're kind of able to share publicly in whatever direction you want to go, like what specific models, tools, platforms are powering this kind of AI functionality at David's Bridal?

Pearl Connect for Vendors

19:38Yeah, so we have our own orchestration platform, or harness is what people started calling it last year or so, right? So, we have the roles defined for the different agents, what they can use, what they can't do, how they talk to each other, or what the kind of different triggers are, and all the guardrails and everything. That's something, like, we built out and managed on our own versus, like, a cloud out-of-the-box support kind of framework you would do, knowing long-term we might use that same engine across the business, internally, or whatever else. It just made sense for us to own it end-to-end.

20:11Model-wise, we actually rotate models and experiment with models fairly often and go through kind of our evals and our logs to see which ones are actually, I guess, objectively responding better with the right kind of personal touch, the right personality, making the right tool calls of their own, handling kind of complex requests better, and as you know, new models are coming out, seems like, every other week at this point. So, we tend to let them sit for a little bit before we rotate them in, and then we tend to test them ourselves first to see, like, if there's a specific role or capability.

20:42But as the platform grows, the skills that we need grow, too. So, like, Perl can log your expenses, Perl can take a screenshot or a receipt or an email or whatever and put it in there for you so you don't have to manually input it. So, that's, like, different agents right there. So, we're using a variety of models across the board. We don't just have, like, one go-to for everything.

21:00You know, I'm also curious just because, you know, Google Cloud is a partner on these. We obviously don't pick these stories for people using Google Cloud, but you guys are, it sounds like, using some Google Cloud technology. Well, let me, I just want to answer one part of that. One thing that's really cool that's about to come out, so we're kind of headlining it over here, is we started with Perl Planner for consumers, and now we're launching Perl Connect for the B2B side of the house. And that's entirely powered by Google Cloud.

21:30And we're really, really excited about this because when you talk about the right thing at the right time, it's equally important that we think about the vendor side of the relationship, in particular on the small business side of the house. Because for small businesses, I've been around quite a bit of small businesses in my career and my lifetime. I used to work quite heavily with them in different organizations. And the problem statement for small businesses is a little different. It's not, do I advertise here or do I advertise there?

22:02Do I advertise at all? Or do I spend more on inventory? Or do I hire a part-time employee? Or do I change my payment system? That's the thing. So we, just like we are very, very serious about the bridal party and the bride and groom and solving their problem statement, we're equally serious and take equal responsibility in making sure that we don't take a penny from anyone unless it is of value to them. And so we built something really, really cool, I think, that is for the vendor side of the house.

22:32And that is all about solving their problem statement, which is using AI, managing the consumer side of the house, and connecting them with consumers at the absolute right time. I can walk you through a little bit of the features. That's of interest. Yeah, I'd love to hear more about that. But just like Alina was saying, I think the Venn diagram overlap between vendors and brides was where like the light bulb moment kind of hit of, I had a lot of brides say, good luck getting a vendor to email you back in a reasonable amount of time or call you back or text you back.

23:05And then we started doing the vendor research and it was like, I'm overwhelmed by the amount of text, Facebook messages, emails that I'm getting in one day from the same bride. And sometimes one email is about 10 different things. I'm not sure what she actually wants from me or how to prioritize it. I have new leads coming in that are fake. They don't care about what I do really well, but I have to spend time betting them and then I'm potentially losing other business. So we just kind of like saw this like literal connection between them where it's like, wow, no, everybody else has spent all their time trying to build a directory and pay pay to play directory, which has been around for a long time.

23:37And I think it's like burning out vendors are sick of having to pay another ad bill and getting even, I would say they're more frustrated getting bad leads than they are getting no leads at this point. Which was a light bulb for me because all of our teams are out talking to them. We're like, you know, you don't want to be a really great vendor. Who's really well known for something, say like a florist for tropicals. This is the example I use a lot. And then have somebody email you asking if you can do like a rose and baby's breath bouquet, essentially. And asking you to do it cheap and asking you to not put much thought into it.

24:09And like, if they're really good and really specialized and put a lot of care into their crap, that's the last thing they want to spend time on. But they have this fear about their business and like losing any business and like getting bad reviews that's going to hurt their business. So it's like this bad cycle that causes a lot of anxiety. So we saw the opportunity to solve on both sides. And what happens in planner, right, is like that bride is shaping her vision. That vendor can actually see what that vision looks like before they even respond. So if a bride reaches out and is like, hey, I have this wedding coming up on this date, you know, roughly even behind the scenes.

24:41Flowers are really important to me. I'm this far along in the planning process, 150 guests, whatever. She doesn't have to type all this out. She can just say like, reach out to this vendor or send them a message. And that vendor can see that and say, hey, doesn't look like we're the best fit or we're not available or whatever. Or it can say, I think we'd be a great fit. Here's a link. Let's schedule some time to chat. You can come in. So it's end to end. Like it is, again, that's 1% done of solving this. Like how do they connect and meet at the right time?

25:14But all those different pieces behind the scenes are talking about vision. It's talking about data sharing across the board. It's talking about like helping them write with the right tact, right? Identifying the incoming messages, intent and sentiment. So if they're really upset and they're asking for some action to be taken right now, that's going to go to the top of their list for action items coming from their messages. And if they're like chill and just general inquiry, like it'll be there, but it'll be green and a little bit more calm and they won't have to react to it as much.

25:45That's incredible. You know, I'm curious, I want to hear in a second kind of how David's Bridal is using AI kind of internally in your own business with your own staff. But first I want to talk through really quick, kind of either on the Perl Planner or Perl Connect or both either side, like what results are you seeing from this so far? It just sounds like this is an obviously better way to be doing this. Believe it or not, we haven't even marketed it yet. So we've gotten everything organically and I can tell you we have hundreds of thousands of users without giving you the exact number.

26:18We have hundreds of thousands of users on both now. And that's with just because we have, everyone's telling us like, this is amazing. This is amazing. This is the best thing you've ever seen. And both Mike and I are like, it's not ready. It's not ready. And I think we have to just let it go, Mike, and we're ready to let it go. And so we're ready to let it go. We always are going to feel like we're 1% done. And so, but the feedback has been absolutely incredible.

26:51We do believe this is the best thing on the market right now in terms of being able to actually solve the stress problem and at least get you part of the way. I mean, we're, we're, we're probably not going to solve some of your family issues, but we're going to try. We're definitely going to try. We're working on it. So we're, we're, we're there. We're on it. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I guess we haven't even said it yet, but the wild thing is it's free for all those couples. Like we're not charging for it. So we've been onboarding our customers, getting feedback, making sure we're in a good spot to actually release it into the broader world.

27:25But like, there's no friction. It's just to help people. It's to help remove stress from the world. That's awesome. You know, I'm curious with all this AI work you're doing to reinvent essentially the wedding industry. How can you maybe give some examples of how internally at David's Bridal are different teams using AI, whether it's on products, marketing, sales, whatever you want to talk about. I'm just curious how it's being applied in some business functions.

Internal Team Adoption and Culture

27:54Our approach to AI has been around, if we taught everyone how to use AI and just took a step back, no one would really use it. And so our, and, and this is certain my, you know, credits, tokens, et cetera, that, you know, we have in the organization. So the way we've done it is we sort of deployed Mike across key leaders in the organization and the leaders of the teams start with their specific, again, it's this, you're going to hear this pattern over and over and over again.

28:24What's your problem statement? So for example, in the merchandising team, it's a totally different problem statement than it is in like a finance team. Right. And so our merchandising team, it's like all about the inventory, inventory management, looking at what's selling, what's not selling trends, things like that, getting insights readily available. So working with the right teams that got against their problem statements is how we started. And then deploying it across, it's not like a mandate. You must use X percent of time on AI.

28:55I think that's, I don't think that works. I think you have to prove it. And if your leader is using it and you see that they're now, and, and by the way, if the leader is using it, they're going to then expect the team to use it because they're seeing themselves super powered and what it does for them. And then everybody wants to try it out. Right. Yeah. That's, that's kind of the golden ticket is like most of the, and most of the leaders, once we found out we had it available and people are using it or like, Hey, do you think it could help me with this problem? And my general rule is like, I don't care how busy I am.

29:2530 minutes of my time will save you 10 to 15 hours a month, at least if not more. And then we're doing a survey every month to see like what the perceived value is. And most people are saying at least 20 hours a month per person of additional work. And like, that's usually on top of what they're doing. Right. So you specify, it's not like I'm working less it's I'm working full time, but I'm getting as much done as if I had like an assistant that was happy or whatever. So it starts with the problems and a lot like the really powerful super users across the org are starting to come up with their own skills, their own solutions.

30:00Like our head of the PMO has uniform or has uniform structure for how we set up Slack, Confluence Docs, all this stuff. And then at the org level, we set up the rules so that whoever's working on a project, it knows exactly where to find the information for that project. And the current status isn't considered at top. So we do things like that, that multiply everyone. And then there's really specific ones. Like I mentioned, it's like, Hey, we have to plan merch for these stores. We have this data set, or there was at one point, Hey, we have this shipping problem costs are really high, but can't pinpoint exactly what's happening.

30:32And I was just like, give me a data dump and let's look at it. And ended up being like, did you consider box size at a certain point? I can't remember what it was off the top of my head, but we bring in those teams and let them see what it can be good for. And then I rolled out a framework. I'm starting now that we have enough people in there of like kind of maturity and levels. It's like, before I just let you go full speed with fable, I want to know that you actually understand the different dimensions and what's happening there. But like our CTO was one of the quickest to jump on. And he like, he'll just go and solve stuff on his own.

31:03If he knows everybody's busy and stressed and he's like, I've done this before. I know how to do it. I can, I can direct it. And it's easier than trying to onboard another team or something. And he'll do the same. So you can really look at the investments and be like, that is much cheaper than it would have been. How do we try to hire a team, ramp them up and do this thing in a lot less amount of time with the exact expertise we move in? So it manifests in a lot of different ways, but across every department, every division, every team, it's getting used. Yeah. Like the CTO example you just gave.

31:33I mean, Scott, shout out to Scott. He's amazing. He, he, he found a gigantic problem on our website by himself without a QA lead, right? Just using AI and it's just, it was just incredible to see that when does a CTO get into the code like that? I've never seen it. And so that's been huge. My favorite use case, I mean, personally was when I have my own agent set up the comedy routine on our channel.

32:02And so, um, yeah, I had a, like a Slack message sent out on my behalf with my voice. Um, like just making fun of everything we did that week in AI, so like, that was great. And so I think we should do that more of just using it, using it for culture and things like that. But, um, I just think there's, it's just, it's been really incredible for our team overall. It's more than efficiency. It's like, um, it's like having a superhuman power sometimes that allows you to scale. I felt, I feel like I'm not even close to using it to where it needs to be. Um, but it's definitely evolved me personally in terms of what I can do in a day.

32:37Um, I mean, I get probably 400 emails a day, I would say on average. So, um, no, I do not want to attend your dinner. Thank you.

32:50Yeah. Yeah. I think the last bit on that would be when I'm talking to somebody who really has no idea and they're like skeptical, even I'll say, well, the goal should be not to upload your work. It should be like, let AI do the parts that are strenuous or that you don't like doing or that you're dreading so that you can focus on the stuff you're best at and that you're excited about, because that will be your best work. And the AI is really good at the boring, tedious stuff. So if you're not that you don't have to review it, right. But like, if we're taking the concept of like a group of people who are really good at

33:22specific things and optimizing for them doing the thing they're great at. Everybody wins. I love that. I'm curious, as we kind of wrap up here, what comes next for David's Bridal?

Future Plans and Expansion

33:33You talked about we're 1% of the way there. You are reinventing an industry. You're building essentially a whole new growth engine for the company using AI. I'm curious, like, can you maybe give us a sense of what's exciting coming up? We want to be the Airbnb of weddings and beyond in all your life moments. And so we think we can take this beyond weddings, but we are not even close. To spanning the wedding term and where we are with weddings and solve. We want to solve the problem and we want to solve it deeply.

34:04We want to solve stress for weddings. That's it. That's what we want to do. That's our mission. And we want to solve it across the board, whether you're a large enterprise or whether you're a vendor or whether you're, you know, you're the bride or the groom or you're the groom's mother. We want to solve your stress. And so we want to really be able to take that and move it down. We think there's an instance for wedding planners as well. This is not competing with wedding planners. It doesn't do the same thing, but we think there is a tool for wedding planners that could be used here. And so that's probably next on my list.

34:36But there's a lot of use cases we haven't solved yet. And so, uh, like we went through budget, we went through, uh, the parts of the bridal party. There's many other parts of the bridal party. Uh, and we were going sequentially based on where we see the biggest problem statements are happening, whether it's for the vendor or for the bride and groom. We, we, we're here to tackle that. And, um, we think with advancements that are happening here, we can do that for you wanted us to, you could plan your whole wedding in like five minutes, just say, Hey, do it for me. And so this is what I want to do.

35:06Great. You know, um, but that's extreme. Probably wouldn't be exactly what you want, but it could do it, but it could definitely change your date. You know, like if you had an emergency pop up and say, I have to cut my date in half, we could do that for you. What more can we do for you? And how do we really cut the stress until we really solved it? And we got user engagement up. I don't think we've done our job. I love that. Alina, Mike, thanks so much for sharing with us how David's bridal is reinventing weddings with AI and how you're pursuing your own version of AI transformation.

35:39We really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to our AI transformation series from the artificial intelligence show to keep learning, visit smarterx.ai where you'll find on-demand courses, upcoming classes, and practical resources to guide your AI journey. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you.

36:09I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of you.