L Catterton is betting on Glance in the race to transform shopping with AI.
The consumer-focused private equity giant made what was described as a “strategic investment” in the shopping agent, which is run out of a subsidiary owned by tech company InMobi.
“Agentic commerce is fundamentally changing how consumers discover and shop for products, creating significant opportunities for brands that can make the journey more personal, intuitive and engaging,” said Scott Dahnke, global chief executive officer of L Catterton. “Glance is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this evolution, combining a differentiated consumer proposition with broad distribution across the screens where people spend their time.
“For nearly four decades, L Catterton has invested behind fundamental shifts in consumer behavior,” Dahnke said. “We believe agentic commerce will be among the most consequential — changing not only how consumers purchase products, but how they are inspired and discover what comes next. Glance is at the forefront of this shift, giving every consumer a personal shopper across the devices and surfaces they use every day.”
Glance functions like a personal shopper, remembering the users’ preferences, scouring the web for good deals on the right looks and circling back to offer up virtual try-ons and get the green light before making the purchase.
The service is meant to be available whenever users shop, via an app and also through partnerships with Samsung, Android TV and DirecTV. Glance is accessible on more than 60 million devices in the U.S.
Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO of Glance, as well as InMobi, described it as “an intelligence machine” that not only “understands the products that are right for you” but finds the best price.
Naveen Tewari
Courtesy
Glance has already gotten some real traction.
“We have 10 million monthly active users in the U.S.,” Tewari said. “They’re doing about 120 shopping prompts a month, so they’re pretty active. Almost 15 percent end up buying something a month.”
The service is “continuously learning, just like if you had a personal shopper hanging around with you all the time while you’re shopping and thinking about roaming around and thinking about stuff.”
It doesn’t eavesdrop on users, but Tewari said it is there to take shopping feedback through chat and can also interact with a smartphone camera when authorized. With a little prompting, Glance can help shoppers watching a smart TV identify looks being worn by actors and go find options to buy.
“It has a lot of intelligence at the back end to really figure out what’s the right product for you and say, ‘Oh, it seems you’re interested in this product. Let me just make sure you don’t overpay for this,’” Tewari said.
Similar to affiliate marketing, Glance gets a piece of the sale price and, for a fee, will do deeper training on brands to ensure they are fully understood and appreciated by the agent.
“Let brands own their authenticity and let the model learn the brand and its authenticity,” Tewari said. “The model does not have a limitation like you and I to remember only a hundred brands. The model can actually remember a million brands. As different brands start to get trained on Glance, they get discovered for the right user at the right time. And especially brands that are smaller, that do really authentic work, but not at scale.
“We are not the owner of the [consumer] relationship, neither are we the owner of the brand’s messages,” he said. “We are effectively ensuring that whatever the brand stands for reaches the user in the absolute accurate manner. They think of us like a distribution partner who enriches the consumer with the right information about my brand.”
Glance plans to use the money raised from L Catterton to train its model faster and continue to scale, solidifying its place in the fast-growing world of AI shopping agents.
“I don’t think any one of us has ever seen a technology as profound as AI in our lifetime,” Tewari said. “The power of this technology is being unleashed to essentially figure out what it can impact.
“We think about this impact to say, ‘Hey, and what can it do to improve shopping for people? Can I actually help them choose a product better through AI? Can I help them visualize the product better? Can I reduce the amount of money they pay?’” he said.
#Catterton #Backs #Glance #Race #Revolutionize #Personal #Shopping