Daydream, AI, and the future of shopping
Also: AG1 at Costco, Parachute pulls back from retail, and why Netflix can’t really compete with YouTube.
Hello hello! It’s Dan Frommer, back with The New Consumer. What’s on your mind? If you’re in the US, I hope you have a fun and relaxing July Fourth weekend.
It was great to see a bunch of you at the WSJ Global Food Forum, where I presented some of our latest Consumer Trends research on food, health, and MAHA. My slides are here and if you’re a WSJ subscriber, you can watch the video of my talk here.
I’m now booking speaking projects for this fall and beyond. If you’d like me to speak with your team, at your event or conference, or on a private call, please get in touch. I generally customize a presentation of my latest research — topics include food trends, AI x consumer, the macro picture, Gen. Z beauty, TikTok Shop, longevity, wellness, YouTube, etc. — and take questions. (I can also create something entirely new!) It’s high-energy, high-signal, and people tell me they get a lot out of these sessions. Rates range with size, scope, and travel — shoot me an email at dan@newconsumer.com.
One of the many trillion-dollar questions about AI is how it will affect the way people shop.
The internet and e-commerce have given consumers nearly infinite choice — the ability to buy almost anything from anywhere. But finding those items still requires multiple steps and intermediaries, and is hardly perfect.
So expect to see a growing number of startups and products that try to use AI to create better, smarter shopping interfaces that are more personalized, fluid, natural, proactive, and maybe even more fun.
Daydream — a new site that focuses on fashion, clothing, and accessories — is one that you will likely be hearing more about. That’s both because of its founder Julie Bornstein, a longtime retail and e-commerce exec, and its substantial seed round ($50 million, co-led by Forerunner and Index Ventures), which raise the bar and expectations.
Daydream is now available to use in what it’s calling a beta, and I’ve spent time testing the site over the past week.
To get started, you answer some basic questions — your name, which brands you’re wearing right now, how much money you tend to spend per item, your sizes — and it gets to work. Daydream claims to have built “the largest fashion catalog of its kind, with more than 200 retail and brand partners, representing over 8,000 global fashion brands and nearly 2 million products.”
The “home” view is what it calls your “Daily Fashion Edit” — a Pinterest-y collection of clothes, bags, and shoes; supposedly personalized, based on cues it’s picked up about you.
But the real focus is the search feature: “Hi Dan. Tell me, what’s the event, mood, or product that you’re shopping for today?”
This is where, the theory goes, modern AI technology will deliver a better recommendation product than the last generation of search engines. Because it can interpret the meaning of things in a more sophisticated way, it can take on more of the work.
Instead of typing in Google search keywords, Daydream encourages you to type more nuanced things you need or want. Three examples it provides: “Going to a Tulum wedding — help me dress like a Jacquemus ad” and “A crisp button-down for backyard BBQs” and even “A hoodie for startup founders who believe in vibes.”
Anyway, this launch is great timing for me, because I’ve been going through several fashion crises recently.
One is that I need some lightweight, nice-ish pants that aren’t white jeans, to wear to summer meetings here in LA. Another is that the navy oxford shirts I’ve worn for the past decade are not currently in production. I also need something to wear to our Consumer Trends launch event in NYC. And I need some mid-ankle-length gray socks to replace my Uniqlos that are falling apart.
Finally, I am amused with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s all-black look from his recent press tour, and have been hoping to get some details.
I fed each of these into Daydream, and, well — I was not blown away by the results.