David's Bridal spent decades as the place you bought the dress. Now it's trying to own the other 300-plus tasks that come with planning a wedding, and it's doing it with AI.
Elina Vilk and Mike Bal join Mike Kaput to explain the "aisle to algorithm" strategy turning a 75-year-old retailer into an AI-native platform.
The conversation covers how Pearl Planner takes the checklist out of a bride's head, why the team rebuilt wedding budgeting around what couples actually care about, and how a heritage brand earns the "permission" to reinvent an entire industry.
Listen or watch below—and see below for show notes and the transcript.
00:00:00 — Intro
00:05:01 — How the AI transformation at David's Bridal began
00:06:36 — The early phases and turning points
00:10:53 — Inside Pearl Planner, the customer-facing assistant
00:13:59 — Using AI for timelines, budget, and vendors
00:19:24 — The models, tools, and platforms behind it
00:21:00 — Pearl Connect and the Google Cloud stack
00:25:46 — Early results from Pearl Planner and Pearl Connect
00:27:32 — How internal teams at David's Bridal use AI
00:33:29 — What's next for David's Bridal
This episode is presented by Google Cloud:
Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.
Learn more about Google Cloud here: https://cloud.google.com/
Disclaimer: This transcription was written by AI, thanks to Descript, and has not been edited for content.
[00:00:00] Elina Vilk: 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 build myself a little inspiration vision board. We're able to solve that problem state with AI in under two minutes.
[00:00:15] Mike Kaput: 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.
[00:00:40] The moment things started to click and the results they can point to today. So join us as we accelerate AI Literacy for All as part of our AI transformations series. Welcome everyone to episode 240 of the Artificial Intelligence Show. I am Mike Kaput, [00:01:00] co-host of the Artificial Intelligence Show and Chief Content Officer here at SmarterX.
[00:01:04] 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.
[00:01:25] So 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.
[00:01:43] For businesses, and we do all that by interviewing leaders firsthand right here on the show. That includes Elina Vilk and Mike Bal 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, [00:02:00] which is AI transformation can feel really abstract.
[00:02:03] Everyone 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 gonna dive into today's episode, and in just a second here, talk with Elina and Mike.
[00:02:23] 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. But 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.
[00:02:44] 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 [00:03:00] at cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise.
[00:03:03] That's cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise. Alright, I'm very excited for this one today we are talking with Elina 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.
[00:03:30] Now, Elina 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. That's a transformation. It calls aisle to algorithm that we're gonna talk about quite a bit. And this work has centered on expanding their system.
[00:03:48] 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 [00:04:00] 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.
[00:04:09] By helping couples do everything from managed timelines, budgets, decisions, and vendor needs, and more. Throughout the planning process. Now, 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.
[00:04:39] 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. We're gonna talk about all that in this conversation and more. Elina Mike, welcome to the show.
[00:04:53] Elina Vilk: Thanks for having us.
[00:04:55] Mike Bal: Always happy to hang with another Mike.
[00:04:57] Mike Kaput: Likewise, likewise. So let's [00:05:00] start at the beginning here.
[00:05:01] Mike Kaput: How did this AI transformation at David's Bridal get started? What set it in motion? How has it evolved since then?
[00:05:10] Elina Vilk: I. 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.
[00:05:30] 90% 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.
[00:05:53] And the problem we're solving is very simple. It's stress. Because when you [00:06:00] get married, there's only one emotion you feel and you get, you'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.
[00:06:24] And so. We are here to take that foundation of trust and remove the barriers of stress. and that's, that's really what it's about. It's not just about the technology, but it's about what that technology enables you to do today.
[00:06:36] Mike Kaput: So let's maybe talk a little bit about what that earliest phase of this looked like in practice.
[00:06:43] So, you know, David's Bridal has that trust. You wanna 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 what you both have backgrounds in [00:07:00] tech. I'm curious how this has all gotten started and where it's gone since then.
[00:07:05] Elina Vilk: So 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?
[00:07:27] What is the customer journey and what is the customer problem statement that we're solving for? And, um. Hoping that that's the thing we solve across the journey. There's, of which there's hundreds of problems we are solving at the, both the macro and micro level in this journey. And so as we start to think about the tech behind the checklist, we realize very quickly the checklist is very finite.
[00:07:48] 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 [00:08:00] 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.
[00:08:07] 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. And, when you have a wedding and you're planning a wedding that gets amplified, a thousand x and I give this example.
[00:08:25] 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 a hundred items that, I'm probably exaggerating more like 20 items, in that one checklist item.
[00:08:47] Because in the engagement photo shoot, you have to decide if you're doing an engagement photo shoot, you 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, [00:09:00] what lipstick, what makeup, what hair, what nails, all these things.
[00:09:03] 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. You have to have four or five bridesmaids agree on wearing one dress.
[00:09:26] 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, there's a lot, 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.
[00:09:46] And it starts with. Building out a companion that helps you simplify it all and takes it outta your head, onto someplace else that can really direct you in what you need to do. And so within [00:10:00] that, we built these tasks and we built that whole journey around the task starting from the beginning where it's like your vision quiz, right, is an example.
[00:10:07] How do I even get started? What do I even like? What do I, 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, vision ai.
[00:10:26] And so, 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, that guide and that companion for them.
[00:10:48] We built that into, this knowledge graph that you see in our ai.
[00:10:52] Mike Kaput: Okay. I love that.
[00:10:53] Mike Kaput: So that is you're taking this established, authoritative brand, all this, these decades of trust and experience, and then layering AI essentially on top of that to solve real business problems. So the name of this, correct me if I'm wrong, is Pearl Planner.
[00:11:09] 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.
[00:11:29] Maybe talk me through that a little more.
[00:11:32] Mike Bal: Yeah, I can, I can dive in on that. So if you take what Elina 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. So like the vision quiz, for example, as we were talking to brides early on.
[00:11:48] Several of them mentioned how hard it is to explain their taste 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 [00:12:00] decisions, especially if they're working with a planner or a mother-in-law or whatever the case is.
[00:12:04] 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 gonna ask them some question, they're gonna fill out a form, whatever.
[00:12:16] They're gonna 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 Elina 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?
[00:12:30] 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're able to take all that knowledge, put it on the backend and kind of treat it like an evaluation from, from the AI standpoint and say like, based on these images, these are the, this is what we see across them.
[00:12:53] Here'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 [00:13:00] really simple, basic, like dumb 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?
[00:13:09] 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 'em, I'm like, even the bridesmaid one, Elina mentioned, good luck getting 'em to agree on that.
[00:13:25] The brides we talked to are 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.
[00:13:39] 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 gonna know if I pick this dress I love. Right. So it is things like that that are just embedded from engagement all the way through wedding day.
[00:13:58] Mike Kaput: That's incredible.
[00:13:59] Mike Kaput: I'm curious as well, like how does URL helps upfront with actually helping you conceptualize what you're even going for in the first place, which is a, 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.
[00:14:21] How is AI fitting into that piece of the process?
[00:14:23] Elina Vilk: It's fitting into every step of the process because it's taking, you know, like previous checklists were 20, 30 steps. We, we actually have hundreds and hundreds of steps. Could be thousands depending on your wedding. You could add steps if you need to. but.
[00:14:38] 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 gonna be guided and you're gonna see only what you need to see right this moment in time. 'cause we're trying to remove the overwhelm and the friction. And then, we're only 1% done.
[00:14:53] I mean, we have so much more we could do. So there's a lot of components. One of the components is matching [00:15:00] the brides to the vendors. And 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 wanna see florist ads when you're looking for your venue.
[00:15:16] You wanna see florist ads when you wanna 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, 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.
[00:15:38] And so, and 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 where, and 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?
[00:15:56] And one, you gave the example of budget. Budget is the number [00:16:00] one stress point for all couples getting married. The pressure is greater than ever today to have a dream wedding. And you see it on Instagram, you see these, 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.
[00:16:20] Well, the reality of what happens is you get halfway through your planning process and you've blown your budget, and you might've blown your budget because you're doing things sequentially. They're not necessarily in the order of importance to you.
[00:16:34] Mike Bal: Hmm.
[00:16:35] Elina Vilk: Like if the band is your number one thing, the band might not be the first thing you, you order as you, the venue's probably gonna be the first thing that you book, right?
[00:16:43] So sequentially the band might happen way later, but 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 gonna happen by the time you get to the band decision. So we built, [00:17:00] an embedded task we call it, with AI that allows you to dynamically determine your budget based on your preferences.
[00:17:07] Mm-hmm. And so we tell you like, Hey, you're in the, you know, you might be in the red zone here. Like, hey, you know, you, you're tough. Three things are this. Right? So those are the kinds of things that, that become really important. But they're based on where, where we think the biggest stress points are.
[00:17:23] Anything you wanna build on that Mike?
[00:17:24] Mike Bal: 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.
[00:17:44] We just ask them which thing is most important to 'em. It's like, this thing is really important. I wanna splurge on it. This thing is not as important. I'm willing to save here. Yeah, and what makes the platform like something I'm really, really proud of is on the backend. When Elina says it knows your preferences, it is the AI you [00:18:00] talk to.
[00:18:00] So if you're later stressing out and you're like, I need to find another thousand dollars 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 gonna tell you to cut the budget from something that is already really important.
[00:18:14] It's gonna 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, but 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.
[00:18:34] If you're working on a playlist and you're like, I actually hate that band, it's not gonna 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, what it knows and what you've told it so far.
[00:18:54] Mike Kaput: That's exactly why I wanted to have you all on, because you know, some of the transformation [00:19:00] stories, rightly so, are about how, you know, kind of people are improving productivity and performance at their company. And we'll talk about 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.
[00:19:17] It's a real innovation story in addition to just making the process easier, which I love.
[00:19:24] Mike Kaput: So I'm curious at what level, at the level you're kind of able to share publicly in whatever direction you wanna go. Like what specific models, tools, platforms are powering this kind of AI functionality at David's Bridal?
[00:19:39] Mike Bal: Yeah, 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, they, 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.
[00:19:57] That's something like we built out and manage on our own versus like a [00:20:00] 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, to own it end to end. Model wise, we actually rotate models and experiment with models fairly often.
[00:20:16] 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.
[00:20:34] So yeah, we tend to let 'em sit for a little bit before we rotate 'em in, and then we tend to test 'em ourselves first to see like if there's a specific roller capability. But as the platform grows, the skills that we need grow too. So like Pearl can log your expenses, Pearl can take a screenshot or receipt or an email or whatever and put it in there for you so you don't have to manually input it.
[00:20:52] 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 a one go-to for everything. [00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Mike Kaput: You 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.
[00:21:12] Elina Vilk: Well, let me, I just wanna 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 Pearl Planner for consumers, and now we're launching Pearl Connect for the B2B side of the house. And that's entirely powered by Google Cloud.
[00:21:30] And, 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, and I've, I've been around quite a bit of small businesses in my career, in my lifetime, I used to work quite heavily with them in different organizations.
[00:21:52] And, the problem statement for small businesses is a little different. It's not, do I advertise, [00:22:00] here or do I advertise there? Do 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, 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.
[00:22:18] We're equally serious and take equal responsibility in making sure that we don't take a penny from anyone unless it is a value to them. And so we built something really, really cool, I think, that is for the vendor side of the house. And, 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.
[00:22:44] I can walk you through a little bit of the features that's of interest.
[00:22:49] Mike Kaput: Yea, I would love to hear more about that.
[00:22:52] Mike Bal: Just like Elina was saying, I think the Venn diagram overlap between vendors and brides was where like the light bulb moment kind of hit of, [00:23:00] 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.
[00:23:05] And 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.
[00:23:21] 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 kinda 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 is like been around for a long time and I think is like burning out.
[00:23:39] 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 that are out talking to 'em, were 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.
[00:23:57] This is the example I use a lot, and then have somebody [00:24:00] 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 slot into it. And like if they're really good and really specialized and put a lot of care into their crap, that's the last thing they wanna spend time on.
[00:24:14] But they have this fear about their business and like losing any business and like getting bad reviews, that's gonna 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.
[00:24:31] 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 flowers are really important to me. I'm this far along in the planning process, 150 guests, whatever.
[00:24:49] 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 you're, we're the best fit or we're not [00:25:00] available, or whatever. Or can say, I think we'd be a great fit. Here's a link. Let's schedule some time to chat.
[00:25:04] You can come in. So it's, it's end to end like it is again, that's 1% done of solving this. Like how do they connect and meet the right at the right time? But 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?
[00:25:23] identifying the. The incoming message is intent and sentiment. So if they're really upset and they're asking for some action to be taken right now, that's gonna 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.
[00:25:45] Mike Kaput: That's incredible.
[00:25:46] Mike Kaput: you know, I'm curious, I wanna 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 wanna talk through really quick, kind of either on the Pearl Planner or Pearl Connect or both, either side. Like what results are you seeing from this so far?
[00:26:04] It just sounds like this is an obviously better way to be doing this.
[00:26:09] Elina Vilk: 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. we have hundreds of thousands of users, on both now and and that's with just because we.
[00:26:28] Yeah, everyone's telling us like, this is amazing. This is amazing. This is the best thing I've ever seen. And both Mike and I are like, it's not ready. It's not ready. And, I don't think we're ever, I think we have to just let it go, Mike. And and we're ready to let it go. And so we're, we're ready to let it go.
[00:26:44] we, we always are gonna feel like we're 1% done. And so, but the feedback has been absolutely incredible. We 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 [00:27:00] the way. I mean, we're, we're, we're probably not gonna solve some of your family issues, but We're gonna try, we're definitely gonna try.
[00:27:06] We're working on it. so, so we're, we're, we're there, we're on it, so, yeah.
[00:27:12] Mike Bal: 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.
[00:27:25] But like there's no friction. It's just to help people. It's to help remove stress from the world.
[00:27:32] Mike Kaput: 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 wanna talk about.
[00:27:50] I'm just curious how it's being applied in some business functions.
[00:27:54] Elina Vilk: Our approach to AI has been around, uh. If we taught [00:28:00] everyone how to use AI and just took a step back, no one would really use it. And so our, and this is certain my, you know, credits, tokens, et cetera, that, you know, we have in the organization.
[00:28:09] 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 gonna hear this pattern over and over and over again. What'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?
[00:28:33] Mm. 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, like got against their problem statements is how we started. And then, deploying across, it's not like a mandate you must use X percent of time on ai.
[00:28:55] I think that's, I don't think that works. I think you have to prove it. And if you're [00:29:00] leaders using it and you see that they're now, and by the way, if the leader's using it, they're gonna then expect the team to use it because they're seeing themselves superpowered and what it does for them, and then everybody wants to try it out.
[00:29:11] Right.
[00:29:12] Mike Bal: Yeah, that's, that's kind of the golden ticket is like most the, and most of the leaders, once we found out we had it available and people are using it, are 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, 30 minutes of my time, we'll save you 10 to 15 hours a month at least, if not more.
[00:29:31] 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 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 half or whatever.
[00:29:50] So, it starts with the problems and a lot like the really powerful super users across the org or are starting to come up with their own skills, their own [00:30:00] solutions, like our head of the PMO has uniform or has uniform structure for at least about 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.
[00:30:16] This has been set at that 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 we can't pinpoint exactly what's happening.
[00:30:32] And I was just like. Me a data dump and let's look at it and ended up being like, did you consider box size a certain thing? I can't remember what it was off the top of my head, but we bring in those teams and let 'em see what it can be good for. And then I, I rolled out a framework I'm starting now that we have enough people in there of like kind of maturity and levels.
[00:30:51] It's like, before I just let you go full speed with Fable, I wanna know that you actually understand the different dimensions and what's happening there. But like our CTO was one of the rookie to [00:31:00] jump on and he like. He'll just go and solve stuff on his own if he knows everybody's busy and stressed and he's like, I've done this before.
[00:31:05] 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've been. How do we try to hire a team, ramp them up and do this thing in a le less amount of time with the exact expertise we move in?
[00:31:23] So it manifests in a lot of different ways, but across every department, every division, every team, it's, it's getting used.
[00:31:31] Elina Vilk: Yeah, like the CTO example you just gave. I mean, Scott, shout out to Scott. He's amazing. he, he, he found a gigantic problem on our website Hmm. By himself without a QA lead, right.
[00:31:43] 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 [00:32:00] on our channel. And so, yeah, I had a, like a Slack message sent out on my behalf with my voice, like just making fun of everything we did that week in ai.
[00:32:10] So like, that was great. And so I think we should do that more, just using, using it for culture and things like that. But, 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, it's like having a superhuman power sometimes that allows you to scale.
[00:32:26] I felt. I feel like I'm not even close to using it to where it needs to be. but it's definitely evolved me personally, in terms of what I can do in a day. I mean, I get probably 400 emails a day, I would say, on average. So, no, I do not want to attend your dinner. Thank you. So, so, yeah.
[00:32:51] Mike Bal: Yeah. I think the last bit on that would be when I am talking to somebody who really has no idea.
[00:32:56] And they're like skeptical even I'll say, well, the goal should be not to [00:33:00] offload 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. 'cause that will be your best work.
[00:33:12] 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 specific things and optimizing for them, doing the thing they're great at. Everybody wins.
[00:33:28] Mike Kaput: I love that.
[00:33:29] Mike Kaput: I'm curious as we kinda wrap up here, what comes next for David's Bridal?
[00:33:33] You 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?
[00:33:47] Elina Vilk: We wanna be the Airbnb of weddings and beyond in all your life moments.
[00:33:51] And so we think we can take this beyond weddings, but we are not even close to spanning the Wedding TAM. and where we are with weddings and [00:34:00] solve, we wanna solve the problem and we wanna solve it. And deeply we wanna solve stress for wedding. That's it, that's what we wanna do. We, that's our mission.
[00:34:09] And then we wanna 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 wanna solve your stress. And so, we wanna really be able to take that and move it down. We think there's an instance for wedding planners as well.
[00:34:26] This is not competing with wedding planners. we 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, but there's a lot of use cases we haven't solved yet. And so, like we went through budget. We went through, the parts of the bridal party.
[00:34:45] There's many other parts of the bridal party, and we we're 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 are here to tackle that. And, we think with advancements that are happening [00:35:00] here, we can do that.
[00:35:01] 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 wanna do. Great. You know, 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.
[00:35:19] 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.
[00:35:29] Mike Kaput: I love that. Alina, Mike, thanks so much for sharing with us how David Bridal is reinventing. Weddings with AI and how you're pursuing your own version of AI transformation.
[00:35:39] We 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 [00:36:00] journey.