The Partner
OTTO is one of Europe's largest online retailers, with over 19 million products ranging from fashion to home & living, home appliances, multimedia and more. With more than 15 years of AI experience, OTTO is committed to providing customers with the best possible shopping experience. That commitment shows up across the organisation. OTTO established OTTO DOCK 6, its Venture Clienting Unit, to identify innovative solutions on the market to address individual business challenges and guide their implementation within the organisation — from the first potential analysis through to scaling for maximum business impact.
Julia Kunstmann, Co-Lead of OTTO DOCK 6, was the first to engage with Zenline AI, streamlining business demand across different units such as fashion, home & living and beauty:
"Zenline is exactly the type of solution we look for at OTTO DOCK 6: addressing a real business challenge while offering the potential to scale across multiple business units. What stood out to us was the flexibility of the approach. The same technology can support very different assortment-related use cases, from trend and competitor analysis to identifying assortment opportunities. For a large retailer like OTTO, that makes it particularly interesting to evaluate."
The Technology
Zenline AI offers agents that analyse assortments for pricing opportunities, assortment gaps, and other optimisation opportunities, delivering actionable product-level recommendations for category managers. What makes this possible is Zenline's ability to process and contextualise both structured and unstructured data, combining internal business information with external signals such as competitor assortments, social media and market trends to support better assortment decisions.
OTTO specifically wanted to understand how agentic AI could accelerate trend detection and assortment decisions. Dirk Sjuts, VP Fashion & Sports OTTO, explains:
"Strengthening our assortment intelligence is a strategic priority for us, and Zenline is an important building block in that effort. By combining AI-powered insights with deep category know-how, we can identify emerging trends, uncover white spots in our assortment, and detect growth opportunities much earlier. What previously required weeks of analysis can now happen within a single day, helping us ensure that our assortment reflects what customers are looking for right now and what they will expect tomorrow.”
The Approach
Assortment analysis has traditionally been a highly manual and expertise-driven process. That's why you cannot simply ask an AI agent to identify assortment gaps and expect reliable recommendations. To make meaningful decisions, the system first needs to understand the retailer's products, category logic, commercial objectives and the right customer segment. Traditionally, this knowledge has existed in the experience of category teams rather than in software. Zenline turns this expertise into a structured product intelligence layer and AI workflows that enable AI agents to generate retailer-specific recommendations at scale.
Zenline combines internal product and business data with external market signals in a continuously updated product intelligence layer. Rather than asking AI agents to interpret raw retail data from scratch, the agents work on structured product relationships, category logic and market context that have been prepared specifically for retail decision-making. The platform adapts its workflows to selected OTTO use cases and category-specific requirements, allowing recommendations to reflect OTTO's assortment strategy rather than relying on generic AI outputs.
The result is actionable assortment recommendations that help reduce the manual effort involved in market and assortment analysis. Human category expertise remains central, while AI takes over much of the research, comparison and monitoring work, allowing teams to focus on faster, better-informed decisions.
What the Agents Deliver
Across selected OTTO use cases, Zenline’s agents are providing category teams with insights across several areas:
- Where assortment opportunities may exist based on market & competitor signals
- Which products may warrant further review
- Where potential assortment gaps or overlaps can be identified
- Which brands or products relevant to the category are currently not represented in the assortment
What This Enables
OTTO’s teams are exploring how continuously updated market and assortment insights can support decision-making across selected use cases:
- The platform can help teams identify and assess emerging trends earlier through automated market and competitor analysis
- Category teams can incorporate market, trend and competitor signals into assortment discussions more efficiently
- The goal is to support more informed assortment decisions through improved visibility into market and competitor developments
To learn how Zenline’s agents can support your assortment and pricing decisions, schedule an introductory call with CEO Arber.
