Though artificial intelligence has come a long way over the past five years, many still think of AI in terms of tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Anthropic. According to Abdul Basharat, CEO of AI logistics startup Cartage AI, the technology can be used for so much more in the retail world.
Cartage AI helps manufacturers and distributors automate their supply chains with a tool called Wilson, an embedded intelligence built by Cartage that manages freight quoting, booking, tracking, carrier coordination and exception handling in real time.
Wilson works with email, phone calls, spreadsheets and existing freight platforms alongside the logistics team. The tool also can manage real-time coordination, communication and execution across the supply chain without disrupting how teams already work.
Cartage AI has been working with several brands within the home furnishings industry for some time, including the popular mattress brand Saatva. But its partnership with direct-to-consumer furnishings brand Sundays has given a clear picture of what Wilson can do for retailers.
Sundays uses Wilson as a logistics coordinator, allowing the brand to scale rapidly while preserving the responsiveness and warmth that define its customer experience. Like any new hire, Wilson has its own company email address and works directly within the team’s existing workflows.
“At Sundays, we are unwavering about delivering the ultimate white-glove experience to our customers,” said Moe Samieian Jr., co-founder of Sundays. “Delivery is one of the hardest problems in furniture, and falling short can undo everything else a company has built. Wilson brought Sundays the middle-mile visibility and logistics coordination we needed to meet that bar consistently, all the while preserving the customer personalization we’ve always prided ourselves on.”
By autonomously managing shipments, Basharat said it saves hundreds of hours of manual coordination each month. He also said that Wilson has enabled the Sundays team to stay focused on what truly drives the business forward, allowing them to build stronger customer relationships that turn buyers into long-term fans.
“Wilson is doing the work that people would previously do, giving them time to do other things in your business,” he said. “He’s also storing and centralizing all of your data, and keeping it updated. And he’s doing all of that like he’s just like a person.”
Basharat said the retail industry is fragmented between freight, warehousing, delivery coordination and customer communication. Wilson brings those forces together and lends itself to the multiple processes involved in the logistics of shipping furniture.
“Shipping a sofa or mattress is different than shipping boxes of canned chicken noodle soup to Costco,” he said. “You can put a large number of soup cans into a package that ships perfectly. That’s what Ikea does really well in its supply chain. Furniture companies have so many pain points around their supply chain because they have to ship ‘loose’ product, and there’s wasted space.”
The problem, according to Basharat, is that everybody who builds in the supply chain ends up selling to the middleman. Freight brokers and trucking companies get the business because they will throw the most money at it.
“We really want to build a much more efficient supply chain for us that starts with the actual shippers, the manufacturers and distributors,” Basharat said.
As for the future of Wilson, Basharat has big plans.
“When you’re a smaller retailer, you actually pay more in shipping costs than a company like Amazon because of how much they ship. They also can’t do a lot of intelligent supply chain actions, like pooling different shipments together or doing multiple deliveries, because they don’t do enough volume,” he said. “But as more retailers are using Wilson, what we’re starting to see is that all the Wilsons can start to work together. So if Sundays individually have $X freight spend, collectively all the Wilsons could have $500 million. That gives us the ability to get a lower shipping cost for all of our retail partners.”
