Ashley Furniture Goes All-In on Agentic Commerce | Fast Five Shorts

Ashley, the furniture brand is partnering with Perplexity and PayPal to allow customers to ask for product recommendations, add items to cart and complete payment in a single step.

According to retail dive, shoppers can request product recommendations, view curated options and add items to their cart and complete a payment transaction in one continuous conversation.

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As more customers begin their furniture search on AI platforms such as Perplexity, this new capability positions Ashley at the forefront of agentic commerce.

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The company's said in a press release.

Chris, you have been saying for the past few weeks that we all need to slow our role with agentic commerce.

So where do you come down on the decision from Ashley to plug directly into Perplexity?

Yeah, this might surprise people, but I actually love this.

I think, I think this is a really smart move because I think it plays to Ashley's strengths.

It's really thoughtful when you think about it because if you know the furniture business as I do or I've spent a lot of time in, then you know that Ashley is one of the very few brands that actually has search value.

There aren't very many in the home furnishing space.

So present day, if you look at present day, exclusive of AI, they're landing that search value either on their own site or the big marketplaces.

Wayfair, Walmart, Amazon, heck, even Target.

As I was the DMM that brought Ashley into the Target assortment back in the day.

And so now with agentic AI, Ashley is saying why do I need all those marketplaces?

Like why don't I as a manufacturer?

Because that's really what they are.

They're more the manufacturer, the wholesaler here.

Yeah, I had no idea until you mentioned that.

Yeah, yeah.

And so why, why, why should I, why do I need all those marketplaces when I can just plug in directly and find all those efficiencies myself?

On home furnishings products, which generally are more consideration based, they're higher consideration purchases and say like grocery like we talked about in headlines two, two and three.

So it's in the crazy thing about it too.

It's an approach that few in the furniture industry can actually take, but Ashley can because of its brand recognition and that is the brilliance of it.

So I really, really, really, really like this move.

I, I agree, I think it's, you know, I'm, I'm always going to be for trying every possible option to figure to test your brand in and around these AI search engines because I think we still don't know which one is going to land where consumer behavior is going to land.

And so I think in this case where when you, you have somebody using Perplexity for things like groceries, like you said, Chris, you have somebody using perplexity to, you know, help figure out, you know, what the, what their meal plan is for the week.

And now they can go to the same spot to find furniture or upload photos like they're doing on Google Image Search right now, where they're like, I, like, I saw this couch at West Elm.

Find me a couch like this that, you know, that is similar at other retailers.

How do I get something like this that maybe meets my budget?

I absolutely love that.

I do have a bone to pick though, with all of these companies talking about their search functions that they're deploying.

Every retailer that we have talked about, including Ashley, if you go on Perplexity right now, I tried to use this and I tried to search for an Ashley product, it doesn't work.

I even asked Perplexity, I said, can you find me Ashley Furniture or can you find a mid century modern couch on Ashley Furniture?

And it said no.

Same thing happened with Targets GPT during the holidays.

Like, stop putting these messages out there unless you're very explicit about how people are supposed to engage with them.

Because it is a. I, I do think, like, we're in such a volatile time right now where if I try something and it doesn't work, I'm not going back and I'm not going to do that again.

So I think that's the thing for me.

Like, I get that all these retailers want to be out there and talking about their experimentation, but please be clear about whether this is in beta, whether this is a select number of users that can have this experience.

Because right now it's like, it's very confusing.

And I think that you have a, you're at risk of losing customers who may really benefit from some of these services that you're providing.

So that's, that's my rant about the AI search engine testing that's going on right now.

I like that it's happening.

Ashley gets a lot of kudos for doing this.

I think, like you said, it makes total sense given that they are, you know, a wholesaler in addition to having their own stores.

But man, I just really want to, I wish that they would be more clear about how this is supposed to work and as a consumer, what this is going to look like.

For me, 100%, I think your rant is a hundred % justified and 100% it is, you know, like, yeah, you gotta, you gotta do it right.

You know, which again, goes back to the conversation we're having around.

Peak.

Like.

Like, even Ashley.

I'd hit Ashley on this.

Why are you announcing this in November?

Like, and you're trying to go and find it.

It doesn't make sense, right?

You should, you should.

You should be doing this in, like, January, February, March, like, off peak furniture times.

I mean, you're kind of off peak furniture time, really, honestly.

So maybe it's not the worst thing for Ashley to try because they cycle a bit differently.

But, yeah, you got to get it right if you're going to do.