Meet 5.11: Global (and growing) performance brand
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Industry: Apparel, Gear, and Accessories
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Location: Irvine, California
Every digital merchandiser faces the same high-stakes equation: the more SKUs you add, the harder it becomes to make each one matter. Algorithms can sort by revenue or clicks, but they usually can’t tell which product combination reinforces a brand’s story.
5.11 evolved into a global performance brand with thousands of SKUs, seasonal drops, and a growing eCommerce audience. However, the tools powering their site were built primarily for maintenance rather than for exponential growth.
Updating assortments meant juggling spreadsheets, waiting on developers, and hoping the data-driven sort didn’t bury a hero product seven scrolls down.
The team needed a way to see, shape, and scale their brand story in real time. They needed a platform that could give creative merchandisers control without breaking data discipline. That gap led them to Smart Merchandiser–a solution designed precisely for brands that want to combine instinct and intelligence.
Not long after, 5.11 lifted online conversions by over 17% and improved merchandising productivity by about 70%.
Here’s the TL;DR:
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Challenge: Preserve brand storytelling and merchandising control while scaling a large eCommerce operation
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Solution: Smart Merchandiser’s visual interface combined drag-and-drop sequencing, embedded analytics, and AI automation to optimize product placement and category flow
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Results: +17% online conversions, +70% merchandising productivity, faster page updates, and a unified creative-and-data workflow for the team
“Smart Merchandiser has become the connective tissue between our team’s intuition and what the data tells us. It helps us move faster, iterate smarter, and build a digital experience that feels curated–because it is.”
— Sylvia Niles, VP eCommerce, 5.11 Tactical
Challenge: Growing pains curb online precision
5.11 is a brand associated with precision, the same ethos that defines its audience. But their team faced a growing problem: the larger the catalog grew, the harder it became to maintain that precision online.
Each season introduced new SKUs across apparel, footwear, and accessories. The site needed to stay dynamic, yet consistent with the 5.11 identity: purposeful, performance-driven, and visually sharp.
Traditional eCommerce platforms couldn’t keep up. Merchandising required endless spreadsheets and manual SKU lists. Every category update involved multiple systems–and every change risked misalignment between creative vision and actual inventory.
As Sylvia Niles, VP of eCommerce, put it during a recent webinar with Smart Merchandiser CEO Teresa Zobrist: “Great merchandising is storytelling. Every assortment has a narrative, every homepage is a chapter”. They agreed that automation only works when it helps you tell a story faster and sharper, not when it replaces creative judgment.
The challenge was to find the balance between art and science–how to use automation without flattening the brand’s creative edge.
Solution: Visual, AI-automated merchandising
Smart Merchandiser gave Sylvia’s team the visual control and analytical clarity they’ve been missing. Instead of working from static lists, merchandisers could now see products as shoppers do–complete with real-time metrics on each tile.
Through a drag-and-drop interface, their team arranged category pages visually, sequencing collections based on narrative flow and data performance. Embedded analytics overlaid KPIs directly onto each product thumbnail.
“It’s great that I can see the analytics right on the image”, one merchandiser shared. “To be able to sort and rank products by those KPIs is a winner for me”.
The platform’s inventory overlay proved just as critical. 5.11 could view size and color availability across every item and surfacing new arrivals with one click.
Smart Merchandiser also introduced automation rules that ran nightly, automatically refreshing assortments, applying promotional sequencing, and keeping seasonal collections current without manual input.
But what truly set it apart was the way it preserved creative control. Merchandisers could pin hero products and lock top positions.
Sylvia explained it perfectly: “Merchant instinct is essential because AI can’t ask questions you haven’t taught it to ask”.
Results: Brand stories that convert
The impact of Smart Merchandiser was fast. Online conversion rates climbed to over 17%, driven by better sequencing, data-driven placement, and more intuitive category flow.
Merchandising productivity soared–a 70% gain in efficiency–as tasks that once took hours (even days) could now be done in minutes. Automation handled updates and campaign refreshes, freeing the team to focus on creative strategy.
Beyond the metrics, 5.11’s eCommerce presence evolved from a functional catalog to a living brand environment. Every product page reinforced a cohesive story: performance gear built with intent.
Their site still feels handcrafted, even as it scales with AI automation.
You don’t have to be a tactical brand to face tactical challenges. In fact, this is something every modern eCommerce brand faces: too many products, too little time, and a constant tug-of-war between efficiency and expression.
Smart Merchandiser bridges that divide. It lets merchandisers see, move, and optimize products as if they were arranging a physical storefront–only faster, smarter, and with real-time analytics built in.
The platform empowers creative teams to stay focused on brand storytelling while the AI quietly manages the heavy lifting behind the scenes. That’s the Smart Merchandiser difference: it helps bring data and creativity together.
Ready to turn every category page into a performance engine and every merchandising decision into a measurable win? Get started with Smart Merchandiser and see the results in as little as 30 days.
