DOUGLAS Group and NETCONOMY Bring Personal Beauty Consultation into the AI Era with ‚ANNA‘
To bring the personalized advice customers receive in around 1,970 DOUGLAS stores directly into the digital space, the DOUGLAS Group has partnered with NETCONOMY to launch its new AI Beauty Advisor, ANNA. Following a successful phase of A/B testing, this advanced conversational companion is now officially live for customers using the DOUGLAS app and online store in Germany.
How people shop is changing: instead of typing keywords into a search bar, shoppers expect to describe what they need in their own words and receive genuine advice. With 76% of consumers wanting AI-powered shopping assistants, translating the personal consultation of an in-store visit into the digital space is a massive opportunity. The DOUGLAS Group is setting the new industry standard by doing exactly that with ANNA.
The name ANNA – which stands for AI Needs and Navigation Advisor – honors Anna Carstens, who opened the first „Parfümerie Douglas“ in Hamburg in 1910 together with her sister Maria. The AI assistant acts as a personal beauty consultant that understands individual preferences and guides shoppers through their unique beauty journeys.
Unlike conventional chatbots that stick to rigid pre-written scripts, ANNA actually consults. She understands the real intent behind a customer’s question, draws on live product database details, and references individual beauty profiles to guide users step by step. Rather than functioning as a static question-and-answer machine, she delivers a natural conversation and explains exactly why a recommended product fits.
Through this personalized approach, ANNA supports beauty shoppers along their digital journey by:
- answering frequently asked questions
- recommending products based on individual skin profiles
- building personalized beauty routines
- guiding shopping through simple, natural conversations
An Expert Advisor that Knows the Shelf and the Shopper
To help beauty shoppers find exactly what they need without friction, we connected the customer-facing chat interface directly to the underlying product and customer databases. This integration ensures that ANNA delivers highly personalized recommendations tailored to each customer’s real-time needs.
ANNA combines Google Cloud’s latest Gemini models with live product databases and each customer’s individual beauty profile. This means recommendations always reflect what is actually on the shelf, at current prices, and what fits the person asking for the recommendation. The assistant also explains the reasoning behind every suggestion, helping shoppers make confident, informed beauty choices.
By automating routine questions on product pages and simplifying the search process, the solution improves customer experience while giving shoppers the confidence to make informed beauty choices. ANNA is set to have a positive impact on customer satisfaction, conversion rates, item value, and basket size.
A True Partnership Built on Collaboration
Building a sophisticated AI assistant in a complex enterprise environment is a team effort. The launch of ANNA is the direct result of a close, cross-functional collaboration between NETCONOMY and the internal teams at the DOUGLAS Group.
“We are strategically leveraging AI to continuously elevate the customer experience. Our new AI Beauty Advisor ‘ANNA’ is an important milestone on this journey, bringing expert consultation into the digital space and extending the personalized advice customers know from our stores – inspiring and empowering confident beauty choices anytime, anywhere.”
– Marcel Uphues, Chief E-Com Officer, DOUGLAS Group
NETCONOMY brought its deep expertise in AI-powered commerce and customer experience directly to this project. We worked together with DOUGLAS AI Engineers and Beauty Experts as one team to design the conversational experience, integrate the advisor directly into the existing online store, and make sure every recommendation is accurate, clear, and on-brand.
„AI is moving incredibly fast right now, what is state of the art today is standard tomorrow. What kept us on track was that the vision was clear from day one: bring the personal advice customers love in DOUGLAS stores into the digital world. Everything we built together, we measured against that vision. And because both teams truly worked as one, we didn’t just keep up with the pace of AI we turned it into something customers actually feel. The whole team can be proud of what has been built together.“
– Daniel Reicher, Client Value Partner, NETCONOMY
Looking Toward a Personalized Future
The launch in Germany is just the first step in a broader digital roadmap. As a next step, we will be continuing to refine ANNA and making the shopping experience even more personalized, while preparing a phased rollout to additional European markets.
If you would like to learn more about our work with agentic AI in retail, or discuss specific agentic AI use cases that would be valuable for your company, get in touch with our team.
