Pacsun, West Marine AI-enable search with intent awareness
A youth-oriented apparel retailer and a marine equipment retailer are leveraging new artificial intelligence search technology from Salesforce and Cimulate.
Pacsun and West Marine are deployjng a new “intent-aware” search feature of Salesforce Agentforce Commerce and loyalty management solutions, integrated with Cimulate AI-native search technology. According to Saleforce, the integration creates an AI-native discovery engine that interprets natural language and real-time behavior to predict exactly what a shopper wants.
Salesforce is supporting Cimulate CommerceGPT technology across digital storefronts on Agentforce Commerce. Following are highlights of how Pacsun and West Marine are utilizing this offering:
Pacsun
By leveraging the integrated Salesforce and Cimulate solutions, Pacsun says it is delivering a more personalized and intuitive shopping journey for its core Gen Z and Gen Alpha customers.
“At Pacsun, we are committed to empowering our digital-first Gen Z and Gen Alpha customers through technology and innovation,” said Shirley Gao, chief digital & information officer, Pacsun. “We’re excited to launch our ChatGPT catalog integration through Salesforce, enabling near real-time access to brand and product information within AI conversations and transforming AI discovery into meaningful brand engagement. Combined with Cimulate’s advanced AI search, which deeply understands customer intent, we deliver highly relevant, seamless discovery experiences that set a new standard for modern retail.”
West Marine
Previously, West Marine depended on a search system requiring numerous hard-coded rules to deliver relevant results. By switching to Cimulate’s intent-aware technology, the retailer eliminated that manual overhead and replaced it with an AI-driven experience.
“At West Marine, our customers are passionate about being on the water, and we’re here to help them find the right gear to get back out there,” said John Devine, CIO at West Marine. “By leveraging Cimulate’s CommerceGPT for site search and conversational commerce, we’ve seen shoppers engage longer, convert faster, and leave with greater confidence in their purchase. It’s not just better site search; It’s a new way of connecting expertise with our customer’s needs.”
Salesforce supports Google agentic shopping initiative
Looking ahead, Salesforce is partnering with Google to bring native support for the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open standard Google developed for agentic AI-based commerce intended to cover the entire shopping journey from discovery and buying to post-purchase support, to Agentforce Commerce retailers.
[READ MORE: Google launches new agentic commerce standard]
Salesforce intends to enable AI-driven shopping across AI Mode in Google search and the Gemini app. This will roll out to retailers in summer 2026.
