David’s Bridal CEO Courts AI to Change How Brides Say Yes to the Dress

It would be easy to write a pun-filled puff piece about David’s Bridal. After all, it has achieved the leading market share for a $65 billion industry focused on connection, romance and, hopefully, happiness.

It would even be easy to write a feel-good story about its business progress, fighting through a pandemic and its lockdowns and then innovating its way out of bankruptcy in 2023.

But the real story of David’s Bridal is one of outcome-focused digital transformation and a complete refusal to accept the limitations of current macroeconomic and retailing market conditions. While other retailers have done the bare minimum to react to the present and forecast the future, David’s is an example of resisting the inertia that has kept other companies stuck in neutral when the situation calls for overdrive.

“This business gets in your blood,” CEO Kelly Cook told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster recently. “The desire to serve someone when it’s such a happy occasion is unprecedented. Our employee tenure is high, our training for stylists keeps improving and we feel like we do a pretty good job because our Net Promoter score is over 80. We keep evolving because the customer keeps evolving.”

Cook’s interview with Webster comes on the heels of a flurry of major announcements, brand repositioning and product expansion. It started in early March, when Cook was promoted to CEO and David’s launched its “aisle to algorithm” initiative, enabled by Shopify’s technology. That initiative integrates retail, media, and wedding planning to reshape how brides and wedding vendors interact across digital and physical touchpoints. At its core, the initiative leverages generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to personalize the wedding experience, using David’s first-party data from over 300 million digital visits annually.

Aisles to Action

Central to this strategy is the recently launched Pearl Retail Media Network, an AI-powered platform enabling highly targeted advertising for wedding vendors and related brands. This initiative was bolstered by the acquisition of Love Stories TV, now branded Love Stories by David’s, expanding the company’s digital media and content reach.

Under this new approach, David’s Bridal will expand into additional retail categories, such as menswear, swimwear, luxury gowns and couture. But Cook said it will not detract from maintaining its established strengths in wedding dresses, a category in which it sells nearly one-third of all dresses in the U.S. The company has 190 retail locations in North America.

The company is also enhancing its personalized planning services, introducing a AI-powered platform designed to simplify wedding task management and vendor discovery. By combining tailored customer journeys with data-driven matchmaking tools, Cook said David’s aims to cement its position as a dominant technology, media and retail presence in the wedding industry, supported by recently secured growth capital intended to accelerate its digital transformation.

“One-hundred percent of our emails are all AI generated now,” Cook told Webster. “We have so much information between that and machine learning that I think we need to expand the talent base that is actually looking at it and learning from it, because you still need humans.”

But just as the company has reacted to AI by putting a unique stamp on it, David’s has reacted to other disruptions with similar innovations and no-nonsense business sense.

Tariffs from China causing uncertainty? Cook says the company has already moved its manufacturing to less-vulnerable countries. It has also made bold moves to address competition, distribution and even its product mix.

Anywhere Commerce

Case in point: In December, the company made headlines with its announcement to deliver on-demand dresses via DoorDash, a move that Cook says is emblematic of its “anywhere commerce” strategy.

“Our number one city is Las Vegas,” Cook noted, adding that the company’s goal is to meet brides wherever they choose to transact.

But DoorDash is only the beginning. David’s Bridal is set to make a series of announcements in Q3 that will exponentially expand its digital distribution and will debut a “shop-in-shop” at one of the largest retailers outside the United States. The company is also preparing to join a major international marketplace in August and will move into wholesaling, supplying boutiques in the third quarter.

“We own our supply chain from end to end … so we can give a wholesale price to a boutique that is way less than what they’re paying in the open market, because we sell 2 million units a year,” Cook said. This scale allows David’s Bridal to extend its reach while passing on cost savings to smaller retailers.

David’s Bridal faces a fragmented competitive landscape. “We are by far the largest share of bridal in the United States. The second highest share is a collection of 7,000 boutiques that are all independently owned,” Cook said, describing the market as having a “very long tail.” Rather than viewing these boutiques as adversaries, Cook sees partnership opportunities.

“We aren’t looking at boutiques with fire and brimstone, pitchforks going, ‘We’re gonna kill the boutiques.’ That’s not really our strategy,” she told Webster. “Our strategy is, How do we partner with these boutiques to serve brides?”

Cook also emphasized the enduring importance of physical retail in the bridal segment. “Ninety percent of all brides want to go into a physical store … because fit is everything. And that’s what David’s is known for,” she said, suggesting that the tactile, emotional nature of wedding dress shopping makes the sector “Amazon-resistant” — at least for now.

Serving Every Occasion

David’s Bridal has evolved its product mix to reflect the changing demographics and preferences of brides and their families. The average age of a first-time bride is now 28, with second-time brides averaging 40.

“We’ve got this massive range of options for brides, because it’s not just their age. Age can be just a number,” Cook said. The company’s offerings have expanded to serve everyone from mothers of the bride, who range in age from 38 to 70, to grandmothers and guests.

A surprising data point led to a strategic shift. “Over 20% of our prom dresses were being bought as mother-of-the-bride dresses,” Cook said. This insight prompted David’s Bridal to diversify its designs for mothers, offering everything from youthful, sparkly dresses to more traditional pantsuits.

“If a grandmother wants to wear a sequined dress, we have that as well,” Cook said, highlighting the brand’s commitment to inclusivity and personalization.

The company also recognizes that weddings are now multievent affairs, with brides and guests seeking distinct outfits for rehearsal dinners, after parties, receptions and brunches. “It’s about her dream. If she wants to rip off her gown after she’s kissed and go down in a mini skirt, great. Let’s go. More power to you, baby,” Cook said, underscoring the brand’s flexibility.

Historically, bridal retail has been a one-and-done business, but David’s is leveraging data and loyalty to drive repeat engagement. Cook described the company’s Diamond Loyalty program, which was inspired by two pandemic-era insights: 62% of women attending a wedding as a guest buy something new to wear, and financial anxiety is a major concern for brides.

“If a bride is inviting 200 people to her wedding, a hundred of them are women, and 62 of those women are buying a new dress, and we sell those dresses, why don’t we give the bride the credit for a dress that’s being purchased by a guest from David’s going to her wedding?” she asked.

This crowdsourced loyalty program allows brides to earn points when their guests buy dresses for the wedding, with rewards such as a free honeymoon. “We launched that at the end of 2021. We’ve got 3 million plus members. We’ve given away a thousand honeymoons,” Cook said.

Notably, about 20% of brides remain in David’s Bridal purchase funnel for multiple years — a significant increase in customer retention for the category.

Navigating a Softening Economy

As economic headwinds gather, Cook remains pragmatic. She acknowledges the financial anxiety facing brides and their families, noting that the average wedding now costs around $37,500. David’s Bridal’s scale and supply chain control allow it to offer competitive pricing, both to end consumers and wholesale partners, which Cook sees as a buffer against economic softness.

“We learned that financial anxiety was their number one problem for 18 months. How the heck am I going to have my dream at this price?” Cook said. The company’s strategy is to “put ourselves into that moment to serve her,” whether through affordability, accessibility or emotional support.

Because in a sector defined by tradition and emotion, David’s Bridal is betting that data-driven innovation and an expansive, omnipresent distribution model will keep it at the center of the wedding economy, even as the landscape, the economy, and the bride continue to shift.