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Occasion briefs

[ 02 ] · Occasion briefs

One sentence becomes a brief.

Shoppers think in moments, not categories. Elara takes the moment in plain words, fills in what was not said, and shops your live catalog against it.

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Garden wedding in June, under $900

Brief

OccasionGarden wedding

BudgetUnder $900

WeatherJune, evening

Dress codeElegant

SizeM

[ 01 ]

in one sentence

What is an occasion brief?

An occasion brief is the structured version of what a shopper actually wants: the event, the budget, the weather, the dress code and their size, captured from one plain sentence instead of a form or a filter. Elara extracts the five fields, infers the ones that were not stated from context, and uses the brief to build complete looks from live inventory — in stock, in size and within budget.

Also called · occasion-based commerce · natural-language search · intent recognition

In the glossary →

[ 02 ]

the gap

Why does it matter?

Shoppers think in moments; stores are organised in categories.

A filter can’t hold “elegant, nothing too loud”.

The brief is where a good stylist starts. Nobody online asks for it.

[ 03 ]

how it works

How do occasion briefs work?

01
Listens in plain words
No quiz, no form, any language.
02
Fills the brief
Occasion, budget, weather, formality, size. Missing fields are inferred from the page, the season and past visits.
03
Shops against it
Every look is in stock, in size and within budget, across categories.
04
Keeps the brief
It follows the shopper to the next visit through the Style Graph.

OCCASION BRIEF

Occasion    · Garden wedding
Date        · June
Budget      · < $900
Weather     · Warm, outdoor
Dress code  · Semi-formal
Size        · 8

Filled from one sentence. Matched against your catalog.

[ 04 ]

the numbers

What does it do to the numbers?

0

Forms

0

Brief fields

0.0×

Items per session

Industry standards for AI-assisted shopping sessions. Your holdout report shows your own.

Our research on why shoppers leave without buying found that a majority want help choosing but will not ask for it. A search bar or a quiz waits to be used. A brief starts from the sentence a shopper would say to a stylist, so the help arrives in the form they already think in — and nobody has to fill in a field, pick a filter or guess the right keyword first.

Source · our research on why shoppers leave without buying →

[ 05 ]

versus

How is it different from site search and style quizzes?

ElaraSite searchStyle quiz

Understands a sentence, not a keyword

No form to fill

Infers unstated constraints

Returns complete looks, not a results page

Remembers the brief next visit

Compare ·

Elara vs Nosto →

Elara vs Rebuy →

[ 06 ]

use cases

Which use cases does it power?

[ Use case ]

Occasion shopping

The shopper describes the moment. Elara answers with a complete look, in stock, in their size.

[ Use case ]

Launch new arrivals

New products enter the Style Graph on sync and are proposed in context, not buried in a collection.

[ Use case ]

Complete the look

From any product page, Elara builds the outfit around the piece they are already looking at.

[ 07 ]

who it is for

Who is it for?

Brands whose customers buy for events — weddings, holidays, office, travel — and whose search bar cannot tell a garden wedding from a black-tie one.

25K–600K SESSIONS / MO

SHOPIFY & HEADLESS

APPAREL, FOOTWEAR, ACCESSORIES

[ 08 ]

pairs with

save · silk

[ 05 ]

Style Graph

A map of how every piece relates to every other, tuned by each shopper’s skips and saves.

Full look

[ 03 ]

Full-outfit try-on

The whole look on the shopper, not a single item on a model.

Hesitation detected

Still deciding? I can build a full outfit around this piece.

[ 01 ]

Proactive engagement

Elara notices a shopper hesitating and speaks first, with a reason to stay.

[ ? ]

questions

Questions a Head of Ecommerce asks first.

Anything else, book twenty minutes and ask the founder directly.

Ask a question

Elara asks one question at a time — never a questionnaire — and infers what it can. The season sets the weather, your catalog sets the price range, and the shopper’s size is remembered from a previous visit if there was one.

Yes. The brief is matched against the attributes in your own Style Graph — your colour names, silhouettes and occasion tags — so “cocktail” means what it means in your catalog.

The stylist replies in the language the shopper writes in. The brief is language-independent, so a sentence in French produces the same five fields as one in English.

It starts there and goes further. Search returns a list of products that match words; a brief returns complete looks that satisfy an occasion, a budget and a size at the same time.

Yes. The five fields are shown as chips; tapping one changes it and the looks rebuild instantly.

No. Briefs are processed for your store only, are not shared with other brands and are never used to train models for anyone else.

[ 09 ]

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