Improving a retail catalog sends a shiver of dread down the spine of most e-commerce, tech, and merchandising leaders. Historically, “fixing the catalog” meant bottomless investments of time, money, and manual effort.
This time, it’s different.
We are entering a new age where catalog enrichment is not just logistical, it’s existential. It determines whether retailers can even compete in an AI-driven world. And unlike in the past, it’s now extraordinarily doable, if a few persistent issues are solved.
“Where did they get $1,000 per Product Listing?”
My prediction: Over the next 1–3 years, 10,000+ retailers will be forced to upgrade their catalogs and imagery. If you didn’t know AI existed, it would seem like other retailers suddenly found an extra $1,000 per product to spend on photography, models, data entry, descriptions, and attributes.
I use the words “forced to upgrade” intentionally. It may sound hyperbolic, but there will be pressure to update and elevate when comparable brands and retailers are suddenly producing enticing text and stunning imagery and videos.
Especially when they are updated seasonally, tailored geographically, with editorial-level shots even for the 9th colorway of that basic tee…suddenly anyone with the soon-to-be “old-fashioned and basic” (i.e. August 2025 levels) will understandably feel three steps behind.
The Cambrian Explosion of “Solutions”
So far, none of this sounds either particularly eye-opening or particularly fun for your savvy retail executive (i.e. you).
“Yes,” you might say, “We’ve been pitched by 23 AI image companies and 10 Data Enrichment companies. And Greg on our team says he can do it for peanuts just with the new model from Grok.”
I’d guess you’ve been shown capabilities and made promises. Your tough questions about quality control, scalability, and legal issues have likely been hand-waved around. I know this because we’ve been shown all the same things and because – as I’ll probably say a few times – I get to talk to 50 retail executives a month about this stuff.
Here’s the report from the frontlines:
- The big platforms are saying “we’ll enrich your catalog for free!” when they mean “we’ll do the baseline capability and all the upstream and downstream headaches are yours”.
- The “Everything Vendors” are saying “we can do that for you – it’s our latest feature” when they mean “we tacked on this capability because we too can send product data into an AI model”.
- The two or three “dedicated” Data Enrichment companies will charge you those “dedicated platform” prices, with commensurate platform integration overhead and time, but at least they are built to fit.
- And of course, the myriad “3 Stanford PhDs and that savvy ex-retail exec” startups will try to dazzle you with their “model this and training data that” but need to use you as their guinea pig to learn how to actually deploy tech into the enterprise.
- (Oh, and of course, the agencies and consulting firms will gladly build you something custom for those healthy hourly rates!)
That cynicism isn’t from me…From what our customers tell us, exploring this domain is exhausting, confusing, a little off-putting, and so most companies are regrettably punting on a decision for a few more months.
What the Heck Do You Know, Rohan?
Glad you asked. As it happens, for the past 10 years, Stylitics has ingested, cleaned, attributed, and re-organized millions of products a month from about 800 different first-party feeds per day, from across 10,000 brands and 25+ major categories.
We have a dedicated feed team that has learned the dark arts of what to do when the source data is – let’s politely say “incomplete or incorrect” – and we routinely push out tens of millions of attribute updates every single day.
Why? Because you can’t deliver high-quality, on-brand AI outfitting for thousands of global brands and on behalf of some of the most discerning fashion teams in the world if you don’t understand style, themes, occasions, necklines, what the heck a “decorated stud” is, and a whole lot more. If we only trusted the data we got from retailers, we’d be publishing a lot of orange and purple outfits with 3 pairs of socks that were mislabeled as jackets and jeans. Building the industry’s best AI outfitting platform meant also building a major catalog enrichment operation.
Of course, given my clearly brilliant business acumen, we just quietly did it behind the scenes at huge scale and substantial expense to us, but didn’t charge any of our customers for it, ever.
OK…The Pitch:
I feel so strongly about this being a massively important and urgent project for retailers and brands that I almost wish I didn’t have to talk about our own purpose-built offering at Stylitics.
I know it might make all the earlier messaging feel like a setup. My genuine ask is that if you’ll feel that way – stop reading here and just take away the core message of urgency.
For everyone else, here’s what we’re offering:
Stylitics Catalog Enrichment
What it is: An AI enrichment solution that requires only a product image and basic title (and if you have it, a short description) and returns a complete, on-brand product record: elevated titles and descriptions, occasions, style themes, style tips, detailed attributes from image detection, SEO-optimized keywords, HTML tags, schema.org markup, and more.
How it’s different: This isn’t a bolt-on “AI feature” or a flashy demo. We’ve built it as production-grade infrastructure, powered by best-in-class models we constantly test against each other – then tuned for retail with our own vision systems, taxonomy expertise, decade of training data, and live SEO and trend signals. It’s AI, but smarter for retail, and designed to work out of the box.
Why it matters: Because enrichment is only valuable if it solves your problems – PDPs, SEO, personalization, marketing feeds, all of it (some now, some coming in the next few quarters). Generic enrichment creates generic catalogs. Ours is tuned retailer by retailer, brand by brand, with built-in quality controls, thresholds, and brand voice safeguards to ensure the output is consistent, revenue-driving, and safe.
How it is priced: Simply and transparently, and much less expensive than other platforms. No “pilot pricing” that balloons later, no hidden per-attribute fees. Flexible to scale up or down as your needs change, with minimal commitments.
How it is supported: Turnkey, but enterprise-grade. Dedicated teams, proven workflows, and responsive support – built to adapt to your taxonomy, terminology, tech stack, and workflows. We’ve removed the friction so it works the way you want to work.
The Debate Inside Stylitics
Inside Stylitics, the debate continues….
Our product team: “We need to make it turnkey. Solve it use case by use case.”
Me: “Yes, but we also need to guide retailers to think bigger. Catalog enrichment is the tree that yields a thousand fruit. Don’t let it be a side project.”
Both are right, of course. Quick wins matter – like the retailers who have seen +20% ROAS in Google Merchant Center in the first 30 days. But the bigger story is existential.
If this resonates, reach out. We can share data, stats, and examples to help you be the internal evangelist for why enrichment needs to be a top priority in 2026.
I might make this a series. Wish me luck.
Rohan
