Halloween remains one of the biggest shopping events of the year. In 2024, U.S. consumers spent a record $12.2 billion on Halloween, with costumes accounting for nearly half of total sales. But predicting which costumes will be the most popular each year has historically been a guessing game for brands and retailers. New Generation (New Gen), a technology company building infrastructure for the AI internet, today announces the launch of its Conversational Tracking capability. The platform lets shoppers describe exactly what they want, and gives retailers the ability to translate those natural language requests into near real-time SKU matching. This shortens the merchandising loop and ensures catalogs align with customer demand before seasonal sales spikes occur.
Market leaders like Nike, Ralph Lauren, and Daydream are already experimenting with conversational shopping apps, marking a generational shift in how consumers browse and buy – but these apps only scratch the surface of agentic commerce’s potential. New Gen is leading this shift by creating AI-ready infrastructure that makes brands discoverable across all human and agent search, and is now building shopping experiences that highlight trending styles and give merchants real-time insight into shopper intent, preferences, and language during peak shopping periods like Halloween.
“Brands and retailers have a very short window to get seasonal demand right, especially this year,” said Adam Behrens, co-founder of New Gen. “By making product data structured and conversational, we’re giving them the ability to see what shoppers want in real time — before it shows up in their sales reports. That means they can act faster, optimize inventory, and capture sales their competitors miss.”
Conversational commerce and natural language search provide predictive insights that guide merchandising, inventory decisions, and strategic planning across seasonal or category spikes. AI-driven traffic is reshaping the path to purchase, with traffic to U.S. retail sites from generative AI sources surging by 4,700% this year. However, most retail sites remain invisible to AI agents, meaning brands are missing the opportunity to convert this high-intent traffic.
The platform equips brands and retailers with:
Real-time trend tracking: Surfaces costume and product demand as shoppers ask in natural language, revealing emerging hits before sales data lags.
Inventory optimization tools: Use conversational data to help retailers anticipate order volume and conversions, avoiding shortages, excess inventory, or missed customer opportunities.
AI subdomain integration: Ensures retailer products are discoverable by both human shoppers and AI agents through a dedicated AI entry point (e.g., ai.brand.com).
Actionable shopper insights: Provides first-party research on how consumers compare products, what influences their decisions, and where friction occurs in the buying journey.
“Halloween is a perfect illustration of how shopping behavior is changing,” said Jonathan Arena, co-founder of New Gen. “Shoppers aren’t just searching ‘witch costume’ anymore. They’re asking for outfits that are ‘scarier,’ ‘more creative,’ or inspired by trending characters. These natural language requests reveal intent in a way legacy e-commerce search was never designed to handle — and allow brands to fulfill SKUs that directly match that demand.”
With backgrounds spanning Stripe, Meta, Bridgewater, and Patreon, co-founders Arena and Behrens combine technical, product, and design expertise to reimagine how brands meet customers in an AI-powered environment.
