First Insight

First Insight, Inc. develops a predictive decision-intelligence platform for retailers and consumer brands. The software collects customer signals and converts them into forward-looking recommendations on what products to make, how to assort them, how to price them and how to shape marketing, campaigns and store layouts. Core outputs include a proprietary Value Score ranking that scores products before launch, price elasticity curves, sentiment and open-ended commentary that explain the reasoning behind results, and financial pro formas intended for internal investment approval.

The company positions its approach against traditional retail inputs such as focus groups, general-population surveys, historical sales data, trend reports and social listening, arguing these are either too small, unweighted toward actual target customers, backward-looking, or lacking prescriptive direction. Product areas span strategy and planning, design, merchandising and sourcing, pricing, supply chain planning, and marketing and selling.

Its most recently promoted product is Ellis, an AI copilot built on a retail-specific large language model and described as drawing on 18 years of consumer and product data. Ellis is structured in three layers: predictive algorithms producing demand curves, price elasticity measures and SKU-level Value Scores; a generative AI context layer that adds category and attribute context and narrative explanation; and a conversational chat interface for exploring data, running what-if scenarios and obtaining analytics-backed answers.

Business model

First Insight offers its predictive analytics and AI decision platform as software used by retail organizations across strategy, design and merchandising, pricing, supply chain planning, and marketing workflows, with engagement initiated through demos and sales calls.

Traction

The site cites customer results including a 12% increase in sell-through at Marks & Spencer for tested versus untested products, francesca's bringing the franki by francesca's brand to market in 103 days, and claims of up to 80% improvement in product success, 40% shorter development cycles, 5-10% markdown reduction and 10-15x ROI. Named customers include Marks & Spencer, Boden, francesca's, Family Dollar, Intradeco and Grupo Coppel.

Latest developments

Current positioning centers on Ellis, an agentic AI copilot layered on the company's retail large language model, alongside a announced partnership with Boden covering product, pricing and merchandising decisions and published research on private label growth and tariff-driven pricing risk.