Forbes: Retailers Are Spending Millions On AI. Can They Prove The ROI?

Press release · September 9, 2026

Zelig today announced the launch of Shoppable Closet. The new experience turns a shopper’s own wardrobe into a place she can style from. Zelig also expanded Build A Look, its real-time mix-and-match feature, into REVOLVE’s native mobile app. Lulus goes live with Zelig at the same time.

Reported by Forbes on 9 September 2026 in Retailers Are Spending Millions On AI. Can They Prove The ROI? by Angela Chan-Danisi.

Shoppable Closet

Shoppable Closet brings together a customer’s purchase history from the prior two years with the items she has saved, hearted, or already stored in Build A Look. Instead of starting from an empty page on every visit, she can pair a jacket bought today with a dress bought six months ago.

For retailers, it also produces a signal that older systems miss. Point of sale data records what sold. Return logs record what came back. Neither explains why. Shoppable Closet shows what shoppers are trying to build. It shows which items they pair most often, and where a pairing fails. That is intent, not just outcome.

Build A Look expands into the REVOLVE app

REVOLVE first deployed Build A Look on web. It scaled the feature from 9,000 SKUs to more than 59,000. Testing ran against the same standards REVOLVE applies to every feature on its platform. Test periods were reset as changes went in, so the results stayed clean.

Forbes reported that among customers who interacted with the feature, the rollout significantly increased conversion rate, lifted average order value by a strong double-digit percentage, and produced a meaningful reduction in returns.

“I was pleasantly surprised because both return rate and conversion rate were pointing in the right direction together.”

Grace Hong, Chief Product Officer, REVOLVESpeaking to Forbes. Photograph: Revolve

Hong described the closet integration as “what personalization is really about: one-to-one.”

Lulus launches Zelig

Lulus is launching Zelig to reduce discovery friction across its catalog. Rather than viewing static products one at a time, Lulus shoppers can combine pieces and see the full outfit rendered live on a model.

“We firmly believe that our customers are actually the chief merchants.”

Mark Vos, President and Chief Information Officer, LulusSpeaking to Forbes. Photograph: Lulus

Lulus has worked with AI systems for more than five years. It built its own machine learning models to place inventory across its warehouse network.

Built in house, deployed fast

Zelig spent five years building its own recommendation and vision models. It did not assemble third party APIs. That foundation supports real-time, stylist-level fit and on-body simulation. New features ship in under six weeks, and they ask very little of a retailer’s own engineering team.

About Zelig

Zelig is an AI commerce platform for fashion retailers. It styles a retailer’s live catalog in real time. Shoppers mix and match thousands of items to build complete looks on a model before they buy. Zelig is in production with REVOLVE and Lulus. It was founded by fashion industry veteran Sandy Sholl. The platform is built to raise conversion and order value while cutting returns. Learn more at zelig.com.