AI usage is accelerating. In 2024, 78% of organizations reported they use AI in one or more business functions, up from 55% the year prior, according to McKinsey surveys. Yet for most retailers, AI investments aren't paying off. That's not because the technology is flawed, but because their data foundation is broken.
The AI capabilities retailers want most (like personalization, agentic selling, intelligent reporting) all depend on one thing: unified, accurate commerce data. Without it, even the best AI tools produce unreliable insights.
Curtis Ulrich, Director of Ecommerce at Aviator Nation, learned this firsthand. The California lifestyle brand runs 20 retail stores and a thriving ecommerce business. For six years, they ran Shopify for ecommerce and Lightspeed for retail, and the two systems didn't talk to each other. Marketing couldn't personalize. Returns created friction. Employees reconciled data through spreadsheets instead of focusing on growth.
Curtis saw where the industry was heading: "The promise of AI is that teams like ours will be able to do really sophisticated personalization and segmentation. But to do that, you need unified data to make that happen." Yet with fragmented systems, that future was out of reach.
Then Aviator Nation unified their ecommerce and POS systems on Shopify. With all their commerce data flowing through one platform, the payoff came fast: Curtis went from hours in spreadsheets to getting business intelligence in seconds using Sidekick, Shopify's AI assistant. Here's how fixing their data foundation turned AI into a force multiplier, and what retailers can learn from their example.
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How unified data unlocks AI's potential
Like many growing brands, Aviator Nation runs a lean team, without dedicated data scientists or analysts on staff. With unified data in place, that's no longer a limitation. Curtis and his team can now ask the strategic questions that used to require specialists to answer.
Curtis started exploring Sidekick, Shopify's AI tool trained on decades of commerce data from millions of stores. Unlike generic AI assistants, Sidekick understands retail because it's built on real shopping behavior and merchant success patterns. It analyzes your unified commerce data and answers business questions in plain language, without spreadsheets or a data science degree.
"Historically, calculating things like lifetime value would be a learning experience for us," Curtis says. "And probably pretty cumbersome to try to really nail down."
So he asked Sidekick a straightforward question: What's the lifetime value of customers who have a retail interaction versus digital-only customers? Seconds later, he had his answer. Customers with a retail touchpoint have 23% higher lifetime value than online-only customers.
Curtis describes the transformation: "I'm not really a data person. I started in this job folding hoodies as a retail sales associate. I wouldn't really know how to approach that question if you were just like, 'Go figure it out.' Probably would've taken me, I hate to say it, maybe a few hours across different spreadsheets, different reports, if we could even answer it at all."
But it's a different story when AI has connected data to work with. The insights Curtis needed were always there, but they were buried in the data. Unified commerce brings them to the surface. AI turns them into decisions you can act on today.
AI tools like Sidekick provide real leverage for lean teams, so they can punch above their weight with useful, accessible intelligence.
That single insight on retail customer LTV validates their entire retail expansion strategy. It justifies opening new stores in new markets. It informs how they allocate marketing spend. It shapes decisions about where to invest next.
And Curtis got that answer in the time it takes to pour a cup of coffee.
The promise of AI is that teams like ours, where we're operating with two or three people, will be able to do really sophisticated personalization and segmentation. But to do that, you need unified data to make that happen.
Shift from manual work to strategic decisions
Getting answers fast is great. But the bigger shift is what your team can do with that intelligence.
For Curtis, Sidekick became a way to validate strategic assumptions with real data. Now the brand can use Sidekick to answer mission-critical questions like:
- Should we open more retail stores in new markets?
- Which products perform best at specific locations?
- What's causing cart abandonment this month?
- What inventory should they stock for festival season?
- How are new customer acquisition costs trending compared to last quarter?
These questions are bets that shape the business. Sidekick's answers give retailers the insights they need, when they need them. It's the type of intelligence that allows growing brands to increase agility and make bold business decisions fast. Before, those decisions were based on instinct. Now they're backed by evidence.
"We can use Sidekick to validate assumptions we have about the business and add data to them," Curtis says. "Should we be opening more retail stores in new markets? Is this a positive step for fostering lifetime value and brand growth? We can go into Shopify now and pull out actual data that helps support those arguments."
And analysis is just the start. Sidekick can guide teams through complex processes they've never run before, generate on-brand content and product descriptions at scale, and build new store features through conversation. What used to require agencies, consultants, or months of development now happens in minutes. It's no surprise that many retailers are leveraging AI for work including content creation (45%), product recommendations (41%), and inventory forecasting (34%), according to Shopify research.
There's more opportunity ahead for brands embracing AI like Aviator Nation. Curtis says the company isn't necessarily doing "the most dynamic things with data today." But they're building the foundation to do more advanced work tomorrow—backed by years of centralized commerce data, all flowing through one system, all accessible in one place.
Curtis advises brands to "start to get those things in order, so that way, when these new tools do become available for a brand like us, we're ready and we've got the foundation to kind of deploy that. That's gonna allow us to personalize and segment and market and communicate digitally with customers in a way that Amazon is, in a way that these huge retailers are who have very sophisticated and huge teams."
We can use Sidekick to validate assumptions we have about the business and add data to them. Should we be opening more retail stores in new markets? Is this a positive step for fostering lifetime value and brand growth? We can go into Shopify now and pull out actual data that helps support those arguments.
Use AI-powered personalization to drive growth
Beyond fast, accurate answers, think about everything your team could do with newfound capacity. This is the opportunity cost of fragmented data: every hour spent reconciling spreadsheets is an hour not spent on growth.
Curtis talks about AI giving his team "time to dream" again. When AI handles the analysis, your team can act on the insights and build personalized experiences that customers actually feel. That's the shift from knowledge to productivity to growth.
"Continually look at your business, your brand, your operations through your customer's eyes," Curtis advises. "They don't care about your backend systems. They simply want, and you have to deliver, a great experience for them."
Aviator Nation can now segment customers based on how they first discovered the brand—whether at a retail store, a music festival, or online—and tailor communications accordingly. The impact is real: 38% of US shoppers say they've purchased more from brands that provide personalized recommendations through AI, according to Shopify research. That level of personalization was impossible with fragmented systems. With unified data powering AI tools like Sidekick, it's now table stakes.
That's your team operating at genius level with AI support: non-technical staff making data-driven decisions, building personalized campaigns, and focusing on customer experience instead of data cleanup. AI handles the busy work. Your team focuses on strategy and growth.
Build the data foundation your AI actually needs
Every retailer using AI with fragmented commerce systems should ask themselves Curtis's question: How much customer data and value are we losing right now?
The answer is probably more than you think. And the gap is widening. Because while you're managing integrations and reconciling data, other retailers are building on unified foundations that let them move faster, personalize better, and use tools like Sidekick to make smarter decisions.
Every successful retailer will use AI eventually. Only 6% of retailers aren't prioritizing AI-driven features. What matters now is determining whether you will build the foundation that makes AI actually useful, or if you'll keep pouring resources into tools that can't reach their potential because your data is scattered across systems that can't communicate with each other.
Aviator Nation's evolution shows what's possible with the right foundation. The brand now processes thousands of transactions at music festivals using just iPhones and card readers, ships orders from 20 retail locations acting as mini distribution centers, and pulls sophisticated business intelligence in seconds through Sidekick.
That progression came from building the right foundation first. Better AI tools came later.
A unified data foundation makes AI work. Fragmented data makes AI unreliable.
Which one are you building on?
Read more
- Aviator Nation Unifies on Shopify to Boost Loyalty and Fuel Rapid Retail Expansion
- Retail Tech's Trap: Why Integration Is Not Unification
- The Cost of Delaying Unified Commerce in Retail
- If Your Business Is Striving for Omnichannel, You're Already Behind
- How Mejuri Unifies Commerce With Shopify
- KEEN Achieves 80% Cost Reduction While Accelerating Omnichannel Growth
