This week, we learn that Grupo Coppel, operator of one of Mexico’s largest department store chains, has partnered with predictive consumer intelligence platform First Insight to update the company’s merchandising and pricing strategies for its private-label apparel and footwear. In other news, OtterlyAI has three new updates to its platform to improve workflows, while Lantronix Inc. raises money to fuel its growth via a stock offering.
Mexico’s largest department store chain partners with First Insight
Grupo Coppel, which runs one of Mexico’s largest department store chains, said it has teamed up with First Insight, the predictive consumer intelligence platform, to power its private label apparel and footwear merchandising strategy across Coppel stores.
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“Through First Insight’s AI decision tools, Coppel’s merchandising teams will translate predictive consumer signals into faster, more confident decisions about which private label products to develop, how to price them and where to invest in their assortment,” First Insight said in a statement, adding that the partnership supports the retailer’s broader $4.6 billion transformation growth strategy “and reflects Coppel’s continued commitment to keeping its customers at the center of its growth.”
Terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
First Insight said Coppel ran a pilot using its platform that was focused on women’s apparel, the retailer’s largest category. In that test run, 72 percent of styles “landed within the medium-to-high Value Score range, signaling a strong customer appeal across a broad base of products,” First Insight said in a statement, adding that the analysis also revealed pricing’s critical role in impacting purchase intent, “with a subset of products generating strong consumer sentiment that could be unlocked through pricing or positioning adjustments, giving Coppel’s team a more nuanced view of demand than sales data alone could provide.”
It is those data-driven insights that can help the merchandising team make better-informed decisions while also helping to refine the brand’s pricing strategies. And it also results in more satisfied shoppers.
“What stood out with First Insight was how intuitive and merchant-friendly the solution is, and their proven use cases in the market,” said Daniela Orduña, divisional merchandise director at Coppel. “The platform simplifies complex decisions so it’s immediately clear which products and assortments we should move forward with, and which need to go back to the drawing board. As we continue to invest in our digital transformation, having the customer voice inform our product and merchandising strategies is essential to achieving our 2030 goals.”
Through the First Insight platform, Coppel will optimize its operations by strengthening private label assortments, setting demand-informed prices to protect margins and refining channel strategies to match customer shopping habits.
Additionally, the retailer will integrate customer feedback directly into the early design stages, allowing teams to test and refine concepts before production. First Insight said that together, these capabilities will help Coppel reduce markdowns, improve sell-through and allocate investments more effectively across its retail channels.
For its part, the partnership with Coppel signals First Insight’s expansion across Latin America, which the company described as a region where leading retailers are accelerating digital transformation investments “and rethinking how consumer intelligence flows into merchandising, pricing and assortment.”
Viki Zabala, chief strategy and growth officer at First Insight, said Coppel “has built extraordinary trust with its customers over decades, and we’re honored to launch our Latin America expansion alongside them.”
“Their decision to ground private label merchandising in predictive consumer intelligence reflects the future of retail across the region—one where speed, confidence and customer relevance compound together,” Zabala said.
AI updates to make workflows better
OtterlyAI, the AI search optimization platform, has rolled out three product updates that move brand visibility data out of the dashboard “and into the tools marketing teams already use: a Public API, a Claude Skill and the OtterlyAI Marketplace,” the company said.
Prior to the Public API update, a brand’s data on how it appears across various platforms such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot was housed inside the OtterlyAI platform. The updates change that, allowing teams to pull various reports and then send it to reporting stacks and internal tools as well as into automation workflows.
With Claude Skill, the update brings the same data into Anthropic’s Claude. “A user can ask Claude to pull brand and domain performance, surface recommendations and turn the results into an executive-ready summary, without leaving the chat,” the company said.
With OtterlyAI Marketplace, the update launches alongside both, with 100-plus workflows for AI Search visibility. “It includes prompts, agents, tools and resources spanning brand visibility checks, share of voice comparisons, citation gap analysis, GEO audits and prompt research,” the company said, adding that many are able to connect directly to Claude, n8n, and other platforms.
“AI Search is already a major channel for many brands” said Thomas Peham, chief executive oficer and co-founder of OtterlyAI. “The API and the Claude Skill let people build with their visibility data directly. The Marketplace gives them a head start with workflows that already work.”
Lantronix raises $30 million in stock offering
Lantronix Inc. said it priced an underwritten public offering of 4.2 million shares of its common stock at $7.20 per share and generated approximately $30 million in gross proceeds before fees and expenses. The company said all shares in the offering are being sold directly by the company. The company is raising the capital to support its work in Edge AI, Industrial IoT and unmanned systems that meet NDAA compliance requirements. The company said proceeds will be calculated before underwriting discounts, commissions and other offering-related costs.
Lantronix also said it granted underwriters a 30‑day option to purchase up to 625,000 additional shares at the same offering price, excluding underwriting discounts and commissions. The company said in a statement that this offering marks another step in its strategy to strengthen its position in critical infrastructure technologies and resilient enterprise networking as demand for secure, AI‑enabled industrial systems continues to grow.
