David’s Bridal continues shift to bridal media company
David’s Bridal is building on efforts to become a "rising tech and media company" with a new business strategy called "Aisle to Algorithm."
The new strategy is described as an asset-light, AI-powered business model that integrates retail, media and wedding planning, and prioritizes AI-driven personalization, first-party data and an expanded retail media network. Leading the effort will be a new CEO, Kelly Clark, who will take the reins of the company April 1.
Dacid's Bridal first announced it was transforming to a tech and media organization providing wedding inspiration in December 2024, when it acquired video-focused digital wedding planning platform Love Stories TV (rebranded to David’s Love Stories) and introduced a new retail media network called Pearl Media Network.
[READ MORE: David’s Bridal acquires video platform, launches media network]
As part of the new strategy, the company’s Pearl Retail Media Network, soon-to-be-announced personalized planning platform, customer email communications and first-party data collection and analyses are all now AI-powered and based on David’s proprietary algorithms.
Revolving around a three-pronged strategy, David’s Aisles to Algorithms will focus on addressing volving needs around:
Inspiration – Retail media network
According to David’s Bridal, Pearl Media Network provides the only first-party data in the bridal market and is designed to enable hyper-targeted marketing campaigns across digital, social, video-on-demand, linear, and in-store touchpoints.
Shopping – New product categories
David’s Bridal says it sells nearly one-third of wedding dresses in the U.S. and plans to expand into new categories throughout 2025, including menswear, accessories, swimwear, luxury and couture. The company also intends to enhance in-store and digital customers experiences.
Planning: AI-powered tools
David’s Bridal has been utilizing AI, which drives 90% of its customer communications, since 2022 to customize shopping and product discovery. The company plans to further invest in a personalized AI-based planning tool and marketplace for vendor discovery, task management, and seamless wedding planning, with an announcement scheduled for the second quarter of 2025.
As a result, during the next five years David’s Bridal aims to expand past the more than $4.1 billion wedding dress market and become an overall dominant player in the more than $65 billion wedding industry with a 6.8% compound annual growth rate.
Other recent tech-related moves David’s Bridal has made include introducing a new resale program called “Adored by David’s,” extending its Diamond Loyalty program to all members of the wedding party, combining its offerings with the more than 40,000 customizable items and exclusive designs from 1-800-Flowers.com subsidiary PersonalizationMall.com, and partnering with DoorDash for on-demand delivery.
The company is also promoting Kelly Cook, currently its president of brand, technology and finance, to CEO effective April 1, 2025 and making several other C-suite changes.
David’s Bridal operates more than 190 stores located across the U.S., Canada and franchise locations in Mexico.
