At any given time, Fanatics offers more than 1.5 million unique SKUs for sports fans to purchase – from jerseys and hats to streetwear and team-branded socks. Searching for these items is made easier with a new feature called “Shop the Look,” created with the help of Codex OpenAI.
Fanatics’ range of products shows its rise to become the most extensive platform in the sports industry, with deals on almost every major sports league and team around the world. Every year, Fanatics Commerce produces more than 45 million items and sells them to customers in more than 180 countries.
But Justin Tsai, head of product for Fanatics Commerce, said growth has also created challenges for the company.
“One of the issues we continue to see is customers coming to our sites, and we operate hundreds of these sites…
Tsai says customers’ average shopping sessions last more than 30 minutes, and that time continues to grow as Fanatics releases more than a thousand new products each week.
“Shop the Look” suggests coordinated outfits on each product page, matching the item with other items based on team and intended style.
Traditional shopping curation strategies, such as photo shoots and styled outfits, have lead times that don’t always work with Fanatics’ fast-moving product pool, or for fast-release items like championship jerseys and hats, Tsai said.
Random suggestions don’t work for sports fans either. “No one who is a Los Angeles Dodgers fan wants to be matched with a San Francisco Giants item … alignment of teams and players is very important in this world,” he said.
Although Fanatics has grown into a multibillion-dollar business, team merchandise remains its biggest source of revenue. Fanatics founder and CEO Michael Rubin told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” earlier this month that the company’s trading business will exceed $7 billion this year, compared to an estimated $5.5 billion for the collectibles business, which includes Topps trading cards.
OpenAI has been testing shopping tools for ChatGPT since the chatbot’s launch, including a feature last fall that allowed users to buy merchant products directly on ChatGPT. However, it ended its Instant Checkout efforts and is now working directly with retailers to create a custom app on ChatGPT, according to a CNBC report.
The new Fanatics feature is another way OpenAI is using technology in shopping. Rosemary DeAragon, head of GTM industry at OpenAI, says this personalization problem in retail “is an age-old problem.” While the rise of e-commerce has given retailers new ways to “find the fingerprint of a customer” — whether it’s their past purchase history, where they’ve viewed a website, or an account they’ve logged into — those efforts sometimes miss the mark.
“In the past, we tried to make something cool to show our customers,” DeAragon said. “With AI, you can do more deterministic matching to do personalization in this next-level way.”
Shop The Look feature on Fanatics.com
Fanatic
“Shop the Look” uses Codex OpenAI to create a tool that parses product and catalog data to find compatible items and re-evaluate recommendations, which ultimately creates a look that can suggest hats, socks and other accessories to go with the jersey you’re thinking of buying.
Tsai said that after launching the new feature, there was a 10% increase in the number of recommended items displayed. He also said the recommended items help shoppers have “more confidence” in what they’re buying, seeing how it fits in with the rest of the team’s gear.
DeAragon said that while the shopping experience certainly has room for a more curated view and trying items on in person, the integration of AI into efforts like this — where it can help narrow down the overwhelming selection of products and show what works with expensive purchases like authentic team jerseys — shows that there’s a “tremendous opportunity to improve the existing experience.”