Attention puts thousands of human product experts in the form of artificial intelligence

Shopping is fun, but deciding on one set of skis out of thousands of options is not. This is where Attention comes in.

The two-year-old startup helps shoppers shop with greater confidence, said Theo Satloff, co-founder and CEO of Remark.

It does this by connecting shoppers with high-quality product experts via asynchronous live chat with one of 50,000 experts – artists, musicians, stylists, golfers, ski instructors – who can discuss various products just as a store associate would.

And here’s a surprise: Remark is also training these experts with artificial intelligence models to create people who can answer questions in the same style as their human counterparts. This way, the “expert” is always available, even if he or she cannot physically be there. Attention also gives experts a share of the profits from every sale made through the platform.

Having a human personality and artificial intelligence allows the 45 brands already using Remark to benefit from experts, but also blog posts and landing pages optimized for individual customers. The company charges a small commission on revenues attributed to Remark. There are no platform fees and the company shares profits.

“Our goal is to be the best possible guide for them right through every e-commerce experience,” Satloff said.

Satloff and co-founders Ian Patterson and Carl-Philip Majgaard initially thought that expensive purchases like these skis would make up the majority of use cases. However, they realized that shopping, regardless of price, evokes emotions, which is why customers used Remark for almost every purchase, such as socks.

In the case of Darn Tough Socks, Remark experts talked to tens of thousands of customers and engaged in hundreds of thousands of interactions with them, all to buy the socks.

“It was an eye-opening moment for us because it showed us that even something inexpensive is a very thoughtful and emotional purchase,” Satloff said.

Remark currently works with clients in the outdoor, baby products, beauty and skin care industries. Customers are seeing a 9% increase in revenue and a 30% increase in conversion rate, which Satloff described as “astonishing.”

He compares it to a brick-and-mortar contact – when you enter a store, the probability that the seller will turn that person into a buyer is about 30%.

“Brands see their websites as the new flagship solution, so they need to have the same kind of handy, unique guide on their sites that they have in their physical stores,” he said.

Remark’s expert-assisted shopping goes a step further than the AI-powered algorithmic guides based on past purchases pioneered by companies such as Amazon, Intercom with AI-powered customer service, and start-ups such as Shoptrue for fashion and Halla for groceries.

Satloff said some of them focus more on post-sale customer service, while Remark focuses on pre-sale decision support and guidance. The company also has the advantage of being a community owner, which means Remark can generate new data continuously and on an ongoing basis, as needed.

“We are leading the way in building a personality-based model, which means we are literally breaking into new techniques and new approaches to role-playing and using multiple models at once,” Satloff said.

To continue product and technology development, Remark recently raised $10.3 million in seed capital from a group of investors that includes Spero Ventures, Stripe, Shine Capital, Neo, Sugar Capital, Visible Ventures and angel investors like Dave Habiger, CEO of J.D. Power and chairman of Reddit; Jeff Barnett, former CEO of Demandware/CommerceCloud); and Varsha Rao, former CEO of Nurx.