The Maze:
Seattle commerce software company Firmly raised $15 million and launched Ask Agent, an AI shopping chat for retailers’ own websites. The two announcements address different decisions for online stores. Ask Agent helps people who have already arrived at the store find and buy a product. The funding will expand Firmly Connect, an existing service that lets retailers sell to shoppers in outside apps and marketplaces.
The Details:
A shopping conversation on the retailer’s site. A customer can describe what they need in plain language, and Ask Agent uses the store’s product list, current prices and stock to suggest items. Firmly’s product demo shows a shopper asking for a rain-ready two-person tent within their budget. The assistant narrows the options and offers to add one to the cart. Firmly says merchants can add the widget with one line of code and it handles most of the setup. A store can send shoppers to its usual checkout or, if the store has enabled it, let them pay inside the conversation. The tent example is a demo. Firmly’s launch materials give no country-by-country availability list.
An existing connection for sales outside the store. Each outside shopping service needs current product, stock and checkout information before it can take an order. With Firmly Connect, the retailer gives Firmly permission to connect to its existing ecommerce system. Participating services can then use that connection to show the retailer’s products and offer checkout in their own apps. The retailer stays responsible for the sale and keeps its payments provider and customer relationship, according to Firmly. The company says AI shopping app Wizard already uses Connect for checkout in chat. That example predates the Ask Agent launch and illustrates what Connect does for an outside shopping service.
The money goes toward expanding Connect. Investment firm Squarepoint Capital led the round, with J.P. Morgan Payments, Mastercard and Samsung NEXT among the other backers. The company says it will use the capital to connect more stores and destinations, including marketplaces, social platforms and AI assistants. Mastercard already had a working relationship with Firmly. In September, it named the company as a partner helping stores share their product catalogs through Mastercard Agent Connect, a service that links retailers, AI assistants and payment providers. That partnership gives Firmly another route to participating businesses. It offers no measure of how many shoppers or orders the network will bring.
MarketMaze Take:
An online retailer should put these products on separate scorecards. With Ask Agent, the test is whether people who would have visited the store anyway complete more purchases. A store could show the chat to one group of visitors and compare completed orders against a similar group that shops the usual way. Counting orders that touched the chat would also count shoppers who were already going to buy.
With Connect, the question is whether an outside app brings profitable orders the retailer would otherwise have missed. The store can keep its payments provider and still depend on the app to show its products to shoppers. Which apps participate, where they put the retailer’s products, and what it costs to serve those orders will determine how much the new route is worth.
Sources: GeekWire · Firmly’s announcement · Firmly’s press release · Ask Agent product demo · Mastercard
