This fast-growing specialty retailer had big digital ambitions—but search was holding them back. During an RFP with leading vendors like Algolia, Constructor, Bloomreach, and Coveo, their CIO invited Cimulate to participate based on early excitement about the technology. Their Chief Digital Officer, however, was skeptical of Cimulate’s startup status—until he saw the custom demo. Within minutes, he brought in his full team, impressed by how Cimulate correctly handled 95% of the toughest queries, with the closest competitor coming in at 40% at best.

At the time, search performance was brittle and inconsistent. The legacy engine relied on layers of redirects and rules but still failed on basics—like misspellings (“doc martin”), compound words (“adidassocks”), and even exact-match product titles. It couldn’t process modifiers like size or gender, and it struggled with intent-based searches such as “spring dresses” or “what to wear to a bridal shower.” With high null-result rates, low engagement, and no ability to learn from behavior, product discovery became a major conversion bottleneck.