The North Face wants its customers to get the perfect jacket for whatever they’re doing – skiing in Vermont, ice skating in New York City or just trying to stay warm on the way home from work.

So how do they give online customers that extra assistance and know-how? Artificial Intelligence, or A.I.

“The issue is that online shopping over the past two decades has been about a grid of products on a white background,” said Cal Bouchard, senior director of e-commerce at The North Face. “That’s how customers find their products. We’ve developed onsite search and navigation, but we still made the consumer do the work. We wanted to take the conversation you might have with an associate in a store and see if we could put that as a service online: ‘Here’s what I need. Here’s what I want.’

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