The Ornament-Maker Leveraged AI from First Insight to Learn What Customers Value, Which Themes to Invest in, and Whether to Refresh or Retire Fan Favorites
Pittsburgh, PA (December 11, 2025) – Beacon Design by ChemArt, the ornament maker that has been adorning America's Christmas trees with original designs and licensed collections for nearly 50 years, has released its first collection of Christmas ornaments with some items directly informed by consumer insights. After successfully using First Insight’s platform to evaluate designs, Beacon Design expanded its use of First Insight’s AI decision tools to gather large-scale consumer input on its 2026 line.
Although Beacon Design by ChemArt has five decades of sales history that shows what its thousands of retail partners buy, it wanted deeper visibility into the end-customer’s preferences. The company has long relied on its expertise, craftsmanship and ongoing feedback, but this year sought additional clarity on what consumers truly value.
The team focused on three strategic areas: understanding consumer preferences for new designs, testing consumer sentiment on the written words and sayings inscribed on the ornaments, and assessing which past favorites should return, be retired or refreshed. The results validated Beacon Design’s instincts about some ornaments and highlighted opportunities about others.
To gauge which ornament themes Beacon Design’s customers would gravitate toward and what its three most popular designs were most likely to be, First Insight’s Agentic AI analyzed input from thousands of consumers and assigned a Value Score between 1 and 10 to each ornament. This Value Score is based on a proprietary algorithm that predicts a product’s potential performance across a number of weighted factors that ultimately determines a product’s likelihood of market success. For Beacon Design, any ornament that scored an 8 or higher was automatically included in the new collection. Ornaments that scored 6 or lower triggered an intensive review before being adopted or eliminated.
Some of the specific insights that helped Beacon Design align its ornaments with what customers value for its 2026 collection include:
- “The Grandma Ornament” – The Beacon Design team explored whether an ornament they had specifically designed as a gift for grandmas would resonate with the end consumer, when they received the results back with positive comments and that people loved the sentiment, they were happy to see that it truly resonated, something they couldn’t tell until the year ended.
- The “Take It Outside” Ornament - The team had designed an ornament for outdoors lovers with a camping scene that read, “Take it outside.” The team worried that this phrase has many meanings, and people might not like this usage. Would consumers understand and appreciate their use of it on an ornament? The answer based on the test was yes.
- The “Scene” Ornament. One of the designs has a picture with a scene in it, most of their designs have something the design is focused around, but this was just the scene. It was wondered if there was enough to look at, to focus on. Based on the test, the respondents loved it.
- The “Needs-to-be-Updated” Ornament. Prioritizing “newness,” the Beacon Design team had planned to make fresh updates to an existing ornament. The data made it very clear that rather than change it, Beacon Design should put out the exact same ornament again.
“Before partnering with First Insight, we relied heavily on what we saw in the market and what our sales team was hearing, but that still left a blind spot - we didn’t have the end consumer’s voice,” said Sheryl Erb, Director of Marketing at Beacon Design. “We needed to understand what customers actually felt. We wanted to understand how deeply our designs and sentiments connected with people. Last year, we had two design directions for a single ornament and some of us thought that one wasn’t worth pursuing. First Insight proved the opposite. Consumers overwhelmingly connected with the version that some of the internal team dismissed. That was a turning point for us – revealing how much opportunity there was and what the end consumer liked and disliked was so essential to add to our normal process.”
Though most ornaments purchased in the U.S. are no longer made in America, Beacon Design has been producing 100% of its ornaments in America since 1976. It handles all production, etching and assembly in its two-building campus in Lincoln, Rhode Island. They work with many nonprofits, museums, historical associations, and other organizations, along with retailers, to create custom keepsakes for various initiatives such as fundraising, donor gifts, and increase revenue.
“Beacon Design has an exceptional instinct for its category, but even the best teams can’t always see what customers will feel when they bring a product into their home,” said Greg Petro, CEO of First Insight. “For a company that doesn’t sell directly to the end consumer, that emotional clarity is incredibly hard to access - and nearly impossible to scale without AI. Today, intuition alone isn’t enough. Every brand needs a direct consumer layer in their decision-making, and AI is what turns those signals into something clear, actionable, and aligned with what people truly value.”
Major brands and retailers like Under Armour, Woolworths, Boden and Family Dollar rely on consumer intelligence from First Insight when they do everything from design products and expand into new product categories to predict optimal product pricing, forecast demand, and make go-to-market merchandising and marketing decisions.
Beacon Designs’ new 2026 customer and AI-informed collection is available to retail buyers in January of 2026 and will be available to consumers in retail stores across the country next season.
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About First Insight
First Insight is a global retail platform that uses its native AI to turn real-time customer feedback into profitable strategies for more than 600+ brands and retailers. Companies like Under Armour, Woolworths and Family Dollar rely on First Insight to understand what consumers will buy, what they won’t, how much they’re willing to pay, and how these and other factors directly influence planning, inventory and margins. First Insight further transforms customer feedback into a Value Score™, assigned to every single product it gains insight on. These scores accurately predict the viability of and demand for products so that retailers can confidently make design, pricing and inventory decisions that will deliver measurable financial impact. The company’s Voice of the Customer Platform is central to its offering and boasts a network of 360+ million consumers spanning 180 countries and 67 languages and currencies. First Insight was founded in 2007.
About Beacon Design
Beacon Design by ChemArt is a leading U.S. manufacturer of custom-designed keepsake ornaments proudly crafted in Lincoln, Rhode Island. For more than 50 years, Beacon has partnered with nonprofits, historical associations, museums, foundations, and organizations of every size to bring their stories to life as a beautifully designed keepsake. Recognized as one of the nation’s premier customized gift suppliers, Beacon Design is trusted for transforming ideas into beautiful works of art that elevate help organizations accomplish their initiatives such as donor gifts, fundraising, increasing revenue, and more.
In addition to its custom work, Beacon Design offers a curated retail line featuring annual collections, themed ornaments, and America 250 commemoratives available to businesses and organizations. As a leading creator of American-made gifts, every piece is designed, etched, finished, and assembled in-house. Beacon Design helps customers create meaningful keepsake programs that inspire supporters, commemorate milestones, and build lasting traditions.
