The Challenge
A European cosmetics retailer struggled to steer shoppers toward higher-margin private label (PL) in its face-cream category. Substitute relationships were missing for 50%+ of items and 35% of existing links were wrong. The site could not reliably show “Other people also viewed” or “Potential substitutes,” and category teams lacked a clear view of which national-brand (NB) SKUs had a true PL competitor. Clean product data was not in place at the start (see our Data Cleaning case study). This blocked two critical use cases:
A) Push PL alternatives at the point of decision.
B) Map NB↔PL pairs to target the top 10 NB SKUs for PL launch and promotion.
Recommendations materially influence views and sales; getting substitutes right is a proven revenue lever.
The Solution
Zenline’s Substitutes Agent analyzed every SKU’s images, product names, descriptions, and attributes to learn product equivalence at an attribute level (texture, skin type, actives like retinol/niacinamide, SPF, pack size). The Agent:
- Built a NB↔PL graph of substitutes with confidence scores and reasons.
- Detected and corrected bad links caused by noisy catalog data; unresolved quality issues were handed off to our Data Cleaning Agent for automated fixes and PIM write-back.
- Exposed “Recommended Substitute” slots on PDPs and PLP modules and delivered a target list of NB SKUs lacking PL equivalents.
- Enabled one-click review for low-confidence pairs; high-confidence pairs published automatically.
“For the first time, we could see exactly which national bestsellers our private label competes with—and place that option in front of shoppers at the right moment. Substitutes stopped being a guess and became a system.”
Director, Category Management, Beauty Retailer
The Impact
- PL mix and margin: Private-label share within face creams increased; PL prices rose ~5% with margin up ~+2pp on the back of precise NB↔PL matching and better on-page placement. Benchmarks show private label is a primary growth driver and typically carries higher retail margins, so shifting demand is margin-accretive.
- Conversion at decision points: Correct substitute modules increased engagement and add-to-cart on PDPs where a credible PL alternative was shown, consistent with research that recommendations lift views and sales.
- Assortment strategy: The NB↔PL map revealed the top 10 NB targets lacking a true PL rival, guiding formulation and launch priorities.
- Operational accuracy: Missing relationships fell from 50%+ to <5%; wrong links dropped from 35% to <1% after launch, with continuous monitoring.
- OOS resilience: When NB items were out of stock, the Agent promoted like-for-like PL substitutes by dominant attribute, improving acceptance of substitutions—an approach validated in grocery e-commerce studies.
Why it works
Pairing vision-language signals with structured attributes creates credible, auditable equivalence between products. That enables retailers to redirect demand toward PL where margins are superior and to prioritize PL development where gaps exist—turning substitutes from a static field into a compounding profit engine. Additionally, the broader market tailwind for private label reinforces the impact of accurate substitution.