Three Ships co-founders Connie Lo (right) and Laura Berget.SUPPLIED
This past January, Three Ships, a Toronto-based clean beauty brand, identified a spike in domestic sales through its artificial intelligence-enabled performance dashboard. It clearly tracked the growth back to the brand’s Canadian identity.
The team at Three Ships acted swiftly to update all channels across their marketing universe with made-in-Canada positioning. In the months that followed, they could see the elevated sales trend continuing with a 477 per cent increase in conversions related to the messaging.
“We’re all about agility,” says Connie Lo, co-founder of Three Ships. “We track our KPIs [key performance indicators] and reporting on a daily basis, so whenever we see any type of fluctuation in the market or within our own performance, we’re able to diagnose it.”
Since launching in 2017, Three Ships has built a robust e-commerce presence as well as relationships with North American retailers such as Whole Foods, Credo and the Detox Market. Ms. Lo says the company is on track to hit revenues of $16-million to $20-million in 2025.
AI has become critical at Three Ships, to synthesize data, support the advertising creative development process, and build custom dashboards without extensive coding investments. In seconds, Three Ships can see how many touchpoints a cohort needs to make a purchase.
Bestsellers in the Three Ships clean beauty lineup.SUPPLIED
In a volatile business environment, companies are leaning more on agile analytics and AI to drive quicker and smarter decisions. That’s evident in marketing. For years, companies relied on mixed media modelling and consumer research studies for the confidence to spend their campaign budgets. But there’s a downside.
“It takes six months to get you a six-month prediction, so it doesn’t really help you anymore,” says Winston Li, founder of Toronto-based Arima, a cloud-based consumer insights platform.
With Arima, companies can update their models weekly or monthly, which adds real-time relevance to sales forecasting and marketing investments. It’s easier to pivot, Mr. Li says.
Business leaders need to be technology leaders too, says Bernadette Osmow, president and chief marketing officer of Osmow’s Shawarma, headquartered in Mississauga, Ont. The chain started as a mom-and-pop sub shop, and has grown to 203 restaurants.
Osmow’s has always been an early adopter of new technology, from digital screen menus to point-of-sale systems. They now use an AI-powered fraud-fighting platform that reduces false claims about delivery orders gone awry.
Bernadette Osmow with her father Sam Osmow, the company’s founder, and her brother Ben Osmow, CEO and head of franchise operations.SUPPLIED
AI is also being used to boost digital threat detection, says Palash Thakur, head of data analytics and fraud operations at Interac, the Canadian payments provider. “The industry requires real-time insights to detect fraud patterns instantly and anticipate fraud attempts before they strike.”
He sees generative AI and analytics as a strategic powerhouse, driving both immediate impacts and future readiness. “We aim to shift from reactive reporting to proactive, anticipatory analytics that foresee client needs in a rapidly evolving financial landscape,” says Mr. Thakur.
While Ms. Osmow embraces what AI can offer, she adds that it’s not a replacement for team members. “It’s an efficiency piece that allows them to do their jobs faster and more seamlessly. We ask, ‘What pain points do you have? What takes you the longest?’ And then those are the things we look at in terms of AI.”