Meet the AI tool that's helping independent brands compete with retail giants this holiday season

The countdown is on. Three weeks before Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend, a founder is stretching her small team to accomplish more with less. Inventory forecasting. Marketing messaging. Reinforced customer support. Check, check, check.

Then, an 11th-hour discovery: copy across the site still needs updating. Rather than push her team to the brink, she turns to Sidekick. In minutes, every product description is replaced with copy that converts.

Think of Sidekick as a merchant's AI co-founder that sits right inside Shopify. Many shops saw the benefit of having a built-in assistant, with over 750,000 of them using the tool for the first time in Q3. From creating email campaigns to delivering data insights, Sidekick is like having five bonus employees in one-designer, copywriter, marketer, tech support, and data analyst-all with deep knowledge of every merchant's unique business. The tool gives brands an edge during the critical pre-holiday period, helping teams move faster on the work that matters.

Entrepreneurs everywhere are discovering AI's potential to transform their holiday prep. In fact, 88% say they're investing in AI discovery this season. Here's how four businesses are using Sidekick to reclaim time and sharpen strategies as they gear up for the impending rush.

Holiday marketing at scale

Merchant: Brave Little Ones
Products: Children's wear
Location: USA
Sidekick superpower: Site updates and asset creation

Family clothing line Brave Little Ones is no stranger to the power of AI. Ahead of last year's busy holiday season, the brand migrated its site to Horizon, Shopify's newest theme foundation with built-in AI. "I was actually pretty shocked that within a day you could get everything migrated over to a new theme," says co-founder Jon Ezell.

Brave Little Ones can whip up holiday-themed site content in minutes, keeping the site fresh and responsive to customer behavior.

Modifying the site ahead of big sales is a common practice for the brand. Sidekick now helps Jon do this more nimbly. "Sidekick allows us to come up with a concept and then immediately create a section and throw it on the website and see if it worked or not," he says.

This year, he plans to use it to create custom banners for BFCM. Sidekick will extend Jon's capacity to test iterations of banners quickly, responding to customer behavior in real time.

An onboarding buddy that knows the ropes

Merchant: BlackMilk Clothing
Products: Apparel and accessories
Location: Australia
Sidekick superpower: Technical expertise and global growth

BlackMilk is a brand best known for its bold prints and collab collections with franchises like Barbie, Super Mario, and Star Wars. CEO Jackie Kruger says Sidekick is helping the business prepare for the holiday rush in some pretty unique ways.

Jackie found a clever way to use Sidekick as the team hires staff. New employees can self-serve their learning journey, using the tool to better understand the business. "Sometimes you don't want to sound like an idiot and ask questions that you should know the answer to," she says. "Sidekick helps with that. It knows the store so it can help to answer technical questions." Brands hiring seasonal staff to alleviate the BFCM crush can follow BlackMilk's formula, tapping Sidekick for onboarding support.

Beyond the holidays, BlackMilk is focused on growing its business in other markets. "We're looking at the data split so we can regionalize the activities we are doing," Jackie says. "Sidekick is definitely helping with that."

Data-driven forecasting made easy

Merchant: Cancha Bags
Products: Accessories
Location: UK
Sidekick superpower: Inventory management

Former pro tennis player Jack Oswald had the idea for Cancha Bags when the alternatives on the market didn't match his jetsetting lifestyle. The brand now ships across the world, and managing all the moving parts of a global business is no small feat. Unsurprisingly, Jack is a big fan of AI.

"It allows me to approach strategic planning in a way that simply wasn't possible a year or two ago," he says. "As a solopreneur, I'm often managing multiple interdependent plans without a co-founder to bounce ideas off of."

Cancha prepares for "bag drops" and big sale seasons using Sidekick as an inventory forecasting assistant.

The brand uses Sidekick to prepare for its big moments like pre-order campaigns (or "bag drops") as well as holiday sales. As BFCM approaches this year, Cancha is employing it for forecasting. "We used Sidekick to plan inventory production based on last year's Q4 sales velocity," says Jack. "It was incredibly useful for work that otherwise would have taken hours."

The six-figure employee you don't have to hire

Merchant: Félix & Norton
Products: Gourmet cookies
Location: Canada
Sidekick superpower: Team productivity

Before Sidekick launched, cookie delivery brand Félix & Norton was poised to hire a data analyst. "AI tools make it so we don't have to hire," says COO Simon Paquin. "I get to be a COO, CMO, part-time CFO, and I get all of my work done in my 9 to 5," Sidekick helps him analyze business data without the need for headcount.

With the busy holiday season approaching, corporate gifting and large party orders are bound to ramp up. Simon turns to Sidekick to get the most out of his marketing dollars during this time. "We have an online sales conversion campaign on Facebook and that's the bread and butter of the business," he says. "When I put my Facebook costs into Sidekick, it tells me what I should do."

The new holiday playbook

The holiday rush is in full swing, with both sides of the retail equation embracing AI. While most businesses are investing in AI-driven discovery and assistance, shoppers too are turning to AI tools to discover deals and the gift ideas

Sidekick-a tool that's processed nearly 100 million conversations to date-is just one more essential in the retail holiday toolkit. It puts sophisticated capabilities once reserved for corporate giants directly into the hands of independent merchants, letting them match enterprise-level efficiency during the peak season.

With AI managing the operational heavy lifting, merchants can focus on what truly matters: creating memorable experiences for holiday shoppers and building relationships that last beyond the season.