A.L.C. was founded by celebrity stylist, Andrea Lieberman, with a focus on beautifully crafted women's staples. With 7 stores and counting, A.L.C. is known for in-store service that matches the quality of its clothing.

That service is a point of pride. Associates learn who a client is, what she's shopping for, and how she feels in a garment. The relationship continues long after she leaves the store.

Endear has powered A.L.C.'s clienteling since 2024. This year, we expanded that relationship by rolling out our new AI Opportunity Engine across A.L.C.'s stores.

We visited A.L.C.'s Upper East Side store to see it in action with Client Advisor Rocío Guevara, and heard from Jennifer Varner, Director of Retail Operations at A.L.C., about the rollout.

The Challenge: Consistent Clienteling With Limited Hours in a Day

When it comes to building relationships, A.L.C.'s client advisors are the best of the best. During our visit, we watched the team swoop in to welcome customers, read their cues at a glance, and make each one feel like she had a personal stylist ready to recommend her new favorite outfit.

"The teams do a great job of building relationships and getting to know their customers," Jennifer Varner says. The real challenge was knowing who to reach out to, and when.

That meant getting to customer data "in one easy to find place, something that you're not having to do a ton of digging for," Jennifer says. Store teams knew they should follow up with clients, but building lists and drafting messages one-by-one took time time they didn't always have.

On a busy day, outreach competed with the customers in front of them. "Sometimes it's very busy that you don't have the time to even send a message," Rocío told us.

A.L.C. needed a way to save time on outreach while helping every associate be as consistent as its best ones.

The Solution: An AI Assistant That Shows Teams Exactly Who to Reach Out To

A.L.C. joined as an early partner for Endear's AI Opportunity Engine, which captures customer signals and turns them into a daily queue of outreach opportunities for store teams.

AI Opportunity Engine can now run on almost any customer signal. A.L.C. started with a journey that was simple yet essential: sending a personal thank-you message to every client who shopped in store.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

1. A client makes a purchase.
2. The opportunity appears in the right associate's queue, with a due date.
3. An AI-drafted message is ready, using the client's name and the items she bought.
4. The associate reviews it, adds her own voice, and sends it by text or email.

Once thank-yous were running smoothly, A.L.C. added Cart Recovery. This time, the signal comes from online. When a shopper leaves items in her cart, a client advisor at her nearest store gets the opportunity, along with a draft referencing what she left behind. From there, it's classic A.L.C. service, whether that means answering a fit question or holding her size at the boutique.

Today, every A.L.C. boutique runs on AI Opportunity Engine.

What Outreach Looks Like at A.L.C. With AI Opportunity Engine

Outreach happens before the store fills up. "We really try to get our clienteling done early in the morning," Jennifer says. "We've really leaned into the AI opportunities because it makes it so simple, and it takes the guesswork out of who we need to follow up with."

For Rocío, the queue replaced checking her client lists. "It says due tomorrow, due today," she says. "It's less of me thinking of who I have to reach out to."

When she first started using it, she was blown away. "I was like, this is exactly what I need," she says. "It's click, click, click, click, click, and I'm done."

The drafts impressed her too. "I'm like, how do they know?" she says. The AI pulls details from the client's profile, and Rocío still makes each message her own: "You just have to tweak here and there a little bit, so it doesn't sound robotic."

The Results: How AI Opportunity Engine Impacted A.L.C.'s Business

1. More clients hearing from their advisor

With AI Opportunity Engine running, A.L.C.'s monthly thank-you outreach grew by 2.5x, with monthly thank-you sales growing at the same rate along with it.

Those messages started real conversations. AI Opportunity Engine thank-you messages earned a whopping 19.6% reply rate, 5x the rate of A.L.C.'s other one-to-one messages in the same period. They also converted at 1.6x the rate.

2. 30-40 minutes back on the sales floor

For Rocío, the biggest change shows up every morning. "AI Opportunities save me about 30 to 40 minutes a day," she told us. She describes it simply: "It's your assistant."

That time goes back to the clients in the store, without follow-ups slipping.

Jennifer sees the same effect across her stores — more thank you messages being sent without taking extra time. "Some people who may not have been your strongest clientelers in the past will become extremely strong, because it's easy and it's just there for them," she says.

Not only does AI Opportunity Engine save precious time, but it also trains new client advisors in the art of clienteling. Before, client advisors would have to find who to reach out to, what to say, and when to send it. For a new client advisor, this string of decisions would feel overwhelming.

With AI Opportunity Engine, client advisors can see exactly who they should be reaching out to and why it matters, right away. It’s literally training them to think like a top clienteling pro.

3. Turning online carts into store relationships

Before AI Opportunity Engine, A.L.C.'s store teams didn’t have a way to reach out to local clients who abandoned their cart on A.L.C.’s website. In the first two months since Cart Recovery launched, client advisors have personally followed up with more than 200 of these online shoppers.

11.5% of those messages led to a purchase. That's more than 3x the conversion rate of A.L.C.'s other one-to-one outreach, and well above industry benchmarks for abandoned-cart emails, which typically sit below 3%. Why are they working so well? Most customers are used to automated “you left something behind” emails, but what really cuts through the noise is a personal check in from a client advisor who can actually help.

"These are customers that we didn’t have an opportunity to even sell to," Jennifer says. Now, A.L.C. can win them over with personal service from the store.

What's Next: From Two Journeys to Any Signal

A purchase and an abandoned cart were A.L.C.'s starting points, not the limit.

With custom journeys, brands can now build a journey around any signal they define as an opportunity. This might include flagging a loyal client whose usual shopping rhythm has stretched out, reaching out to clients who shopped a specific style when a new collection drops, or engaging a lapsed client who recently visited the website.

For A.L.C., the pattern stays the same. The engine finds the moment, and the client advisor makes it personal.