AN Alpesh Nakrani
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eCommerce · Growth

Merchandising that grows margin-safe conversion.

Build and explain collection, ranking, and campaign recommendations using inventory, margin, demand, brand, and customer signals.

◆ human-gateda person approves every consequential action
$18,000
fixed-scope pilot
Validate next
launch posture
Strong durable demand
market signal
ai-merchandising-copilot
// generate candidate assortment
input: Catalog attributes
step: rank under constraints
citations: [ source ✓ ]   confidence: 0.93
HUMAN GATEawaiting review →

Nothing is finalized until a human approves it.

Built for
The buyer
Chief Merchandising Officer, CMO, VP eCommerce
The champion
Digital Merchandising Director, Category leader, Site Experience manager
Day-to-day users
Merchandisers, content, search, inventory and marketing teams

Designed, built, and evaluated by Alpesh Nakrani, VP of Growth at ViitorCloud, 14 years shipping software, writing on AI-Native engineering and evaluation.

Evals-first
built in from day one
Human-gated
judgment stays with you
The problem

Where the time and money actually go.

Merchandisers manually curate many pages and campaigns; fast-moving inventory and trend signals make static rules stale while black-box ranking undermines control.

Who feels it

Merchandisers, content, search, inventory and marketing teams

Trigger to act: Site refresh workload is high, campaign performance is inconsistent, assortment is expanding, or merchandising teams need more test capacity.

Outcome & ROI

The result you can model before you sign.

Illustrative, replace with your data
$1,260
per month, illustrative

Illustrative only: $2 million monthly collection-page GMV × 0.15% incremental conversion × 42% contribution margin = $1,260 monthly contribution. Build a testing cadence, not a lift promise.

The outcome, plainly: Build and explain collection, ranking, and campaign recommendations using inventory, margin, demand, brand, and customer signals.

Revenue per session
Attach rate
Collection conversion
How it works

Inputs in. A cited, review-ready result out. Your expert decides.

A Optimization engine + approval copilot. Every material fact is grounded in an allowed source and returned with its identifier, no invented data.

01
Generate candidate assortment
02
Rank under constraints
03
Explain selection
04
Flag inventory/margin conflict
05
Create test variant
06
Monitor results
07
Learn from merchandiser override
Reference architecturegrounded · human-in-the-loop · fully auditable
Source systems · scoped access
Commerce platform
Search / recommendations
PIM
Inventory
Margin / cost
Grounded reasoning core
Retrieve & extract
grounded on your sources, returns citations
Reason & draft
Deterministic optimization solver or constrained ranking model; the LLM explains options but does not own the objective
Human gateMerchandisers approve every collection, rank rule, exclusion, and campaign; sponsored placement and personalization rules remain transparent.
Action · only after approval
Learn from merchandiser override
Audit trace
sources, rules, confidence, reviewer
Tenant isolation
minimum data, never cross-tenant
Evaluation suite
baselined pre-launch, watched after
Observability
cost, latency & drift telemetry
Model strategy

Deterministic optimization solver or constrained ranking model; the LLM explains options but does not own the objective; GPT-5.6 Terra or Claude Sonnet 4.6 for exception handling and natural-language interaction. OR-Tools or commercial solver when needed; constraint test suite.

Inputs
  • Catalog attributes
  • Inventory
  • Margin
  • Sales
  • Search and browse behavior
  • Campaign theme
The human gate

AI-Native, not autonomous. Judgment stays with your people.

The machine does the work; the human’s role narrows to the one thing that matters, judgment. That constraint is what makes it safe to deploy.

Non-negotiable human gate

Merchandisers approve every collection, rank rule, exclusion, and campaign; sponsored placement and personalization rules remain transparent.

What it will never do
No undisclosed sponsored rank
No autonomous assortment or brand decision
No personalization without consent/legal basis
No guaranteed conversion gain
The scorecard

A scorecard, not a demo. We baseline what breaks in production.

Every deployment ships with an evaluation suite. These are the numbers we baseline before launch and monitor after.

Primary
Revenue per session
Attach rate
Collection conversion
Inventory exposure
Margin
Merchandiser time
Override reason
Experiment win rate
Rule violations
Why this, not that

The category is crowded. Most of it isn’t built for your workflow.

The alternatives
NostoBloomreachConstructorDynamic YieldAlgolia RecommendAdobe CommerceShopify merchandising apps
This implementation

Fixed-scope, tuned to your systems and rules, grounded in your data, with the human gate and audit trail built in from day one. A price you own, not a subscription you rent.

✓ Fixed price, not a seat subscription ✓ Grounded in your data & rules ✓ Human approval on consequential actions ✓ Auditable decision trace
Systems & integrations

It plugs into the stack you already run.

No rip-and-replace. Access is scoped to the minimum data necessary, isolated per tenant, and fully logged.

Commerce platformSearch / recommendationsPIMInventoryMargin / costCDPCampaign calendarExperimentation / analytics
Pricing

Transparent by design. The build price buys the workflow and the proof.

A fixed implementation fee plus a monthly bill that scales with volume and governance. No hidden seats.

Pilot
$18,000
one-time · bounded proof of value
  • One process / scope
  • Live workflow on your data
  • Baseline evaluation suite
  • Measured vs. current process
Most chosen
Production
$41,000
one-time · full deployment
  • Full scope & integration
  • Human-review UI & audit trail
  • Write-back to your systems
  • Production evals & monitoring
Enterprise
$66,000
one-time · multi-entity / regulated
  • Multi-facility rollout
  • Advanced security & compliance
  • Custom control & escalation
  • Dedicated evaluation program
Monthly operating cost

Optimization jobs, market/external data, warehouse compute and approval workflow.

$1,100–8,400
usage (models, OCR, vector, storage)
$2,400/mo
managed evaluation & monitoring

Planning assumptions, not vendor quotations. Your commerce platform and other platform licenses are separate and owned by you. Figures confirmed during scoping.

On working with Alpesh
“His vast knowledge of technologies and a natural problem-solving mindset consistently lead us through complex challenges with clarity and confidence.”
AM
Adil Multani
Senior Backend Developer
Why this is safe to try
01Baseline first. We measure your current numbers before we build anything.
02Fixed scope, fixed price. One process in the pilot. No open-ended engagement.
03Expand only if the scorecard earns it. You see the measured result before committing to production.
04Your people stay in control. The human gate means nothing consequential happens without a person’s approval.
FAQ

Questions serious buyers ask.

Does the AI act on its own?

No. Merchandisers approve every collection, rank rule, exclusion, and campaign; sponsored placement and personalization rules remain transparent. The system drafts and recommends; a human approves every consequential action. Explicitly excluded: No undisclosed sponsored rank; no autonomous assortment or brand decision; no personalization without consent/legal basis; no guaranteed conversion gain..

How do you stop it inventing facts?

Every material claim is grounded in an allowed source record and returned with its source identifier. The system separates observed facts, model inference, and missing information, and routes to a human whenever confidence is low, evidence conflicts, or an adverse outcome is possible.

What does it cost to run each month?

A usage bill of roughly $1,100 to $8,400 per month (optimization jobs, market/external data, warehouse compute and approval workflow), plus a $2,400 per month managed retainer for evaluation, monitoring and maintenance. Your existing platform licenses are separate and already yours. Exact figures are confirmed during scoping.

Do we need a ChatGPT or Claude subscription?

No consumer ChatGPT or Claude subscription is required for the production workflow. The client needs an approved API/cloud billing account. Workspace seats are optional for internal prototyping and administrator access.

How is this different from Nosto?

Tools like Nosto, Bloomreach, Constructor are broad platforms you adapt to. This is a fixed-scope implementation tuned to your systems and rules, grounded in your data, with the human gate and audit trail built in, and a transparent price instead of a seat subscription.

How long until it is live, and how do we prove it works?

We baseline the “Revenue per session” figure first, then measure against that baseline. You see the scorecard before expanding scope: the evaluation suite ships with the system, not as an afterthought.

Book a scoping call

Bring your real numbers. Leave with a fixed-scope plan.

A 30-minute engineering-led working session, no slideware. You leave with a sized opportunity estimate, a fixed-scope pilot plan, and the integration & human-review path mapped.

VP of Growth at ViitorCloud · senior delivery owner confirmed before paid work

Ask AI about AI Merchandising Copilot