Case Background

SiiSi CRATES is a start-up based in New York (USA) which opened for business back in
2021. SiiSi CRATES provides handcrafted gifts such personalised crates or crates cloths for
newborn babies. These gifts crates usually contain baby products and cloths that can last for a
lifetime.
Problem
SiiSi CRATES runs a website and a social media platform with roughly 291 followers and a
very small customer base. The company wants to target and acquire potential new customers
by building a platform to introduce Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the business’s website.
A subset of potential AI Projects for SiiSi CRATES are listed below:
 Advertising or targeting potential customers.
 Optimise sale and grow the customer base.
 Create a database of baby items or brands and use to create portfolio on the website.
 Create great ranking for search results.
 Get sentiment analysis from previous and new customers.
 Create a phone app to facilitate customers’ demands and save time on telephone
discussions.
 How to add personalised gift crates portfolios to the store (customer preference).
 Categorise what sort of customers are using the product feature.
 Categorise what items customers use more or less.
 Marketing the gift crates.
 Categorise customers into different cities or location.
 Collecting data over generated surveys.
 Create unique gift ideas tailored to the recipient's interests, personality, age, gender,
relationship, budget and occasion (diversify from baby brands).
 Track gift delivery via GPS.
 Content creation for social media platforms/Improve social media and email
campaigns.
 Text generating customer service chat bot on website.
 Learning the gift messages that suit different situations.

Areas of opportunity
1. Use the SiiSi website and Chatbots to grow the customers’ base:
By targeting potential customers and marketing the business to expectant mothers or
their families in hospitals, private and public companies, event planners, churches,
shopping mall and markets and so on. This new customer base would give information
on location, baby item or brand preferences, budget estimates and categorise each
customer.

2. Understand customer demands a better social media platform:

With the creation of good content, create email and social media campaigns, to market
the business and gain insights on customer demands, preferences.
 3. Target and grow the customer base with AI platform:
Create a platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and Chatbot that would generate
elaborate articles/portfolios with just a single prompt of input details. This would
generate potential gifts, get new customers, improve and grow the customer base.
Looking at the areas of opportunity, Scenario 3 seems to embody all the value propositions
involving AI and machine learning as it also incorporates all the features of Scenario 1 and 2
which can in turn generate more revenue for the business.
Target and grow the customer with AI platform
A. Dimensions of Business Value from AI/Data Science
Dimensions of Value for AI Target and grow the customer base with AI
Products platform
Direct improvement value High –200000 live births (2021 public data) in New
York. Direct product value is the sale of the gift
crates to potential 50000 (1/4) new clients.
2500000$ given an average gift crate costs $50 with
50000 new clients
Value of Understanding High – Understand the business better, customers
need, preferential brands or products. Emotional
aspects of the business, future needs to have
different portfolios based on occasion than only on
baby, understand the community of gift givers or
gift receivers.
Alignment with Business Strategy High – Directly using the platform will grow the
customer base by targeting families, friends or
employees with expectant mothers. However, there
would be a drift away from newborn business
strategy if future products branch out to
accommodate general gifts crates for any occasions.
Enabling (Option Value)
Data Platform value Very High -invest in building a client data asset.
These data asset will give the ability to perform
data-driven experiments and recommendations
perfect gift crates to customers. It would
incorporate Scenario 1 where sufficient information
(public records data) on new or potential clients are
gathered for future value-added products.
AI Platform value Very High AI platform value: AI development
using data science would create multiple products.
The LTS models themselves will be usable for other
LTS products +auxiliary AI models will be useful
for many apps (examples: creation of different gifts
portfolios other than baby, enhancement of products
with most like features, creation of a phone app)
 Overall assessment of combined value if successful is: HIGH
B. Likelihood of success
Predictive Analytic Flow framework: Target and grow the customer with AI platform

No training Budget to
Target
data Buy gifts Target
Customer customers
(potential) available (expectant family, (with different customers
friends, company, budgets or ideas)
(Need to develop) gift suggestions)

Figure 1: Predictive Analytic Flow Framework

The analytic framework shows that it would be difficult to build the AI model straight away
because of no readily available training data. The proposed first step is to have labelled data
for the target variable from the private and public data or other sources to build the machine
learning system. Once the MLS is built, it can be used as a product first and with time move
to hybrid AI and later full AI Product. This AI platform can develop multiple products such as
the potential projects highlighted above.
This platform is totally technically feasible as different companies (such as deepgram) already
use AI/data science for personalised gifts are operational in different parts of the world. SiiSi
CRATES is unique in the sense that it deals with mostly personalised newborns or baby gifts
crates which are not only memorable but can last a lifetime. Other competitors usually place
baby gifts under a single segment with little or no personalisation/creativity. These products
are also packaged in a less attractive/memorable way. SiiSi CRATES distinct personalised
aspect makes the product and service valuable though in a competitive market.
Competitors would not face an elevated cost to replicate the product because they already
have data asset and practically difficult to technically obscure. It would require to hire
superior data scientists and AI/AA management which would require heavy investment and
not feasible for a small business start-up.
Overall assessment of combined value if successful is: MEDIUM
 C. Investment required
High investment is required to build data asset because SiiSi CRATES is a startup with a
small customer base. In addition, hiring superior data analyst alongside a better management
team to develop top notch AI product for delivering high impact AI solutions.
Overall assessment of combined value if successful is: HIGH
D. Expected ROI
EROI = Probability (success) x value (if successful)/ investment required
Likelihood of Value if Investment
Success Successful Required
HIGH HIGH HIGH

E. Conclusion

The project is likely to succeed following the EROI framework and would create significant
value for the business and grow the customer base. However, the effort and financial
investment required to get the AI platform running is very high for a small start-up business. I
would suggest investing in Scenario 1 and grow the customer base using the websites, emails,
chatbots.

References
https://siisicrates.com/#/
https://giftbasketbusiness.com/how-gift-baskets-and-ai-work-together/
https://deepgram.com/ai-apps/perfectgift-ai
https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/data?
reg=99&top=2&stop=1&lev=1&slev=4&obj=1&sreg=36#:~:text=final%20natality
%20data.-,In%202021%2C%20there%20were%20210%2C742%20live%20births%20in
%20New%20York,was%20estimated%20to%20be%203%2C898%2C025.
https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/leisure/2023/04/21/this-local-company-makes-
ai-generated-gifts-for-you/
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ai-powered-company-giftpack-closes-latest-
round-of-funding-to-elevate-and-streamline-global-corporate-gifting-301934622.html