Bloomreach Discovery's Impact on Sur La Table

Sur La Table offers a wide range of private label and third-party kitchenware — including cookware, cutlery, small electrics, and glassware — while also delivering immersive culinary experiences through its chef-led cooking classes and in-store events. As the brand continued evolving as a standalone business, it sought to bring its experiential heritage into the digital space and modernize its ecommerce product discovery experience.

Challenge

As Sur La Table worked to elevate its ecommerce experience, the team needed a product discovery solution that integrated tightly with Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC), without introducing a complex ecosystem of disconnected point solutions. The brand sought a unified approach that could simplify operations, improve search relevance, and support long-term digital growth.

Here’s what Sur La Table was up against:

Fragmented and overly manual search tools. The existing search engine relied on rigid keyword rules, required constant human intervention, and couldn’t interpret natural, conversational queries. Customers struggled to find the products they were looking for, and search quality depended heavily on manual upkeep from the merchandising team.
An outdated recommendations engine that lacked intelligence. The out-of-the-box recommendation tools from the previous provider were expensive, disconnected from SFCC, and not adaptive to evolving shopper behavior. Even worse, the team had limited visibility into why certain recommendations appeared, which led the team to invest too much time in tracking down answers and implementing manual fixes.
Difficulty understanding and supporting real shopping behavior. Without an intent-aware search experience, Sur La Table couldn’t guide shoppers effectively through its extensive culinary catalog. From cookware and cutlery to tools and accessories, customers often hit dead ends instead of discovering relevant, complementary items to their purchases.
A desire to streamline technology without sacrificing capability. The brand wanted to replace multiple point solutions with a single, unified AI platform that delivered strong search, merchandising, and recommendations without increasing operational complexity.

Solution

With the goal of transforming its product discovery experience, Sur La Table partnered with Bloomreach to introduce autonomous search and streamline both merchandising and recommendations. Propelled by AWS, Sur La Table’s discovery experience now offers the speed, reliability, and scalability needed to support its entire culinary catalog, supported through services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Amazon OpenSearch.

Here’s how Bloomreach helped Sur La Table elevate its digital experience:

Autonomous search that understands real shopper intent. Bloomreach’s GenAI-powered search interpreted natural, conversational queries and surfaced accurate results automatically, eliminating the rigid rules and constant tuning required by the previous system.
Instant relevance powered by over a decade of ecommerce intelligence. Instead of waiting for pixel-based learning to ramp up, Sur La Table saw immediate improvements because Bloomreach’s models are already trained on extensive ecommerce behavior patterns.
Merchandising workflows built for speed, scale, and seasonality. The merchandiser suite enabled the team to launch seasonal products, configure global facets, manage redirects, and track curated collections, shifting time away from reactive fixes and toward proactive strategy.
AI-driven recommendations that elevate browsing and increase cart value. Bloomreach’s recommendations and pathways surfaced complementary and high-intent products that helped both focused shoppers and casual browsers discover more products — ultimately driving higher average order value (AOV) across search and category pages.
Built-in automation that adapts as fast as customers do. Bloomreach’s GenAI core continuously optimized relevance, product ranking, and cross-sell logic behind the scenes, giving Sur La Table a flexible, scalable foundation for both everyday traffic and peak periods.

How It Worked

GenAI-powered search rollout with immediate lift. Sur La Table activated Bloomreach’s autonomous search engine and replaced rigid keyword rules with intent-aware models that delivered more accurate results from day one, without manual tuning or pixel warm-up periods.
Training and enablement to empower the merchandising team. Bloomreach equipped Sur La Table’s ecommerce and merchandising teams with the knowledge needed to fully utilize the platform, from relevance logic and redirect setup to managing global facets and seasonal configurations.
Streamlined merchandising workflows for seasonal and everyday needs. With Bloomreach’s merchandiser suite, the team could efficiently prepare promotions, organize curated collections, and manage redirects.
AI-driven recommendations that were integrated into the browsing journey. The addition of recommendations and pathways surfaced highly relevant complementary items, helping shoppers discover products organically and increasing overall basket size.
Unified, automated processes for faster decision-making. Bloomreach’s Loomi AI handled behind-the-scenes optimization while consolidating multiple workflows into a single platform, so Sur La Table could respond quickly to customer behavior and business priorities.

We’ve absolutely seen the value of Bloomreach. Onboarding and using new tools can feel like a burden, so it’s nice to hear from my team that it’s one of their favorite tools to use and the power it brings. It gives us the insights we need to read parts of our business. It’s just easy — it’s probably been one of my best decisions since I’ve been here.

Rachel Frederick

VP and GM, Ecommerce at Sur La Table

Results

Bloomreach’s implementation led to measurable improvements in customer engagement, product discovery, and online revenue performance across Sur La Table’s website.

11.5% boost in category AOV
7.6% increase in search AOV
6.6% lift in search add-to-cart (ATC) rate
1.6 million visits to the “You May Also Like” widget
1.4 million visits to the “Similar Items” widget

The combination of autonomous search, AI-powered recommendations, and streamlined merchandising workflows helped customers discover relevant products more easily and complete higher-value purchases. Internally, the team experienced a renewed sense of empowerment and clarity, with Bloomreach becoming one of the most valued and intuitive tools in Sur La Table’s ecommerce organization.

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Sur La Table is redefining the art of online shopping with Bloomreach, blending AI intelligence with product discovery to guide every customer to the perfect find. Experience how autonomous search and merchandising can transform your ecommerce website. Take a three-minute tour of Bloomreach in action.

Sur La Table Serves Up Smarter Searchandising With Bloomreach

Challenge