Shop Eat Surf Outdoor Mentions First Insight | Companies Launch Myriad AI Products for Retailers and Brands at NRF 2026
First Insight: Meet Ellis, the AI “Octopus”
With major clients including Under Armour and Wolverine, First Insight’s technology helps retailers and brands predict product success, optimize inventory allocation, and reduce market misses through consumer sentiment analysis and predictive algorithms, said Viki Zabala, First Insight chief strategy and growth officer.
Now, the company has launched “Ellis,” a new agentic AI platform that allows retailers and brands to query 18 years of proprietary consumer data using natural language.
The key differentiator for Ellis is the depth of historical data, she said. First Insight mines nearly two decades of its consumer sentiment and testing data to help merchants understand regional trends and category performance. Unlike generative tools that might “hallucinate” trends, First Insight closes the loop by matching their predictions with actual sales data from customers. (In AI, “hallucinate” refers to generating false or nonsensical information that appears plausible but is not based on actual data or facts.)
The Key Insight:
“Instead of looking at reporting and multiple dashboards, we now have [Ellis], and basically you can ask Ellis anything,” Zabala said.
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