Lightopia, a leading online destination for luxury lighting and home décor, announced a new way for shoppers to find the right solutions for their needs with Ask Cleo, an AI-powered conversational shopping experience. Rather than relying on shoppers to plug the right keywords into their search, Ask Cleo uncovers recommended products through natural-language chats. Ask Cleo has shoppers describe what they're looking for, and to refine results, the platform powered by Constructor can provide clarifying questions.
"Ask Cleo represents the next evolution of online shopping for home furnishings," said Sharon Gautschi, Chief Merchandising Officer of Elevated Brands Group. "By combining merchandising expertise with AI-powered agentic search, we're making it easier for customers to explore, compare, and confidently find lighting solutions tailored to their style and needs."
What's Driving This Trend
- Conversational Product Discovery
- Natural-language chats enable shoppers to express complex style and functional needs, shifting value from keyword mastery to intent understanding.
- Agentic Search Interfaces
- Search agents that ask clarifying questions progressively assemble context-rich profiles, enabling more precise, curated product matches than traditional filters.
- Personalized Merchandising at Scale
- AI-powered recommendations that blend merchandising expertise with user dialogue create scalable, boutique-like shopping experiences across large catalogs.
Who This Affects Most
- Online Home Furnishing Retail
- Retailers could significantly reduce choice paralysis by integrating dialogue-driven discovery that surfaces tailored lighting and décor options for each shopper.
- Interior Design Consulting
- Design services might be reimagined as hybrid offerings where AI captures client preferences conversationally to inform affordable, on-demand design recommendations.
- E-commerce Search and Personalization Platforms
- Platform providers stand to differentiate through multimodal, agentic search modules that translate customer narratives into intent-aware ranking and merchandising.
