Beyond the Storefront: How Academy Sports and Outdoors is Redefining Omnichannel with AI

In the rapidly evolving landscape of modern retail, the term "omnichannel" has undergone a radical transformation. For decades, it simply described a frictionless bridge between a brick-and-mortar storefront and an e-commerce website. Today, however, that definition is being rewritten by the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

Academy Sports and Outdoors, a major player in the North American retail sector, is at the forefront of this shift. Recognizing that the future of retail lies not just in where a product is sold, but in how it is discovered, the company is fundamentally re-engineering its digital ecosystem. By treating AI platforms as critical new "channels," Academy Sports is betting that the key to sustained growth lies in the maturity and scalability of its product data.

The Foundation: Data Maturity as a Scaling Mechanism

At the heart of Academy Sports’ digital strategy is a belief in the power of structured, enriched product data. Sumit Anand, Chief Information Officer at Academy Sports and Outdoors, emphasizes that the transition to an AI-augmented retail environment does not require a complete overhaul of existing business logic; rather, it requires an evolution of how data is managed.

"It all boils down to how we mature our product feeds for one channel, and that can be scaled across the others," Anand explains. According to Anand, the "ecosystem" of retail remains largely the same, but the "scale" at which retailers must now operate has increased exponentially. The retailer, which currently holds the 142nd spot in the Digital Commerce 360 Top 2000 database, manages hundreds of thousands of stock-keeping units (SKUs). Manually updating this volume of data for every new AI interface or third-party marketplace would be an impossible task.

To combat this, Academy Sports has adopted a "wave" approach. By enhancing product attributes—the specific descriptors that define a product’s features, utility, and appeal—department by department, the company avoids the trap of a never-ending, unmanageable project. This methodical approach ensures that when a product feed is refined for the website, those refinements automatically flow through to mobile apps, LLMs, and external marketplaces like DoorDash, where Academy has maintained a presence for over a year.

Chronology of a Digital Transformation

The journey toward an AI-integrated omnichannel strategy did not happen overnight. It is the result of a multi-year effort to modernize the retailer’s technological stack:

• Initial Digital Integration: The first phase focused on basic e-commerce functionality—syncing inventory between physical stores and the online store.
• Third-Party Marketplace Expansion: As the e-commerce landscape matured, Academy Sports expanded its reach to external platforms like DoorDash, necessitating more robust API-driven product feeds.
• AI-Enhanced Content Enrichment: Recognizing the limitations of manual data entry, the company began implementing scraping services and AI-driven tools to automatically identify and append product attributes that improve searchability.
• The "Agentic" Shift: Currently, the company is transitioning from static search functionality to "agentic" search. By utilizing AI agents that understand natural language, Academy is positioning itself to interact with consumers who use conversational prompts rather than keywords.
• Strategic Collaboration with Google: Academy Sports is currently on a short list of retail partners working directly with Google on four distinct initiatives aimed at modernizing Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

The Rise of Agentic Search and Generative Engine Optimization

One of the most significant shifts in the retail landscape is the move away from traditional, keyword-based search toward "agentic" search. In this new paradigm, consumers do not merely search for "blue running shoes"; they ask an AI, "What is the best shoe for running on gravel trails in wet weather?"

To capture these customers, Academy Sports is leveraging AI for deep content enrichment. By adding rich metadata to its product catalog, the retailer ensures that its products are not only visible to traditional search engines but also discoverable by the sophisticated algorithms driving LLMs.

"We’ll have scraping services that’ll help us inform and add another five [attributes]," Anand notes. "Then we have this AI tool that we’re using that goes on the web and figures out: Are there any other attributes that could increase searchability or findability?"

This process is a hybrid model. Once the AI tool suggests a list of attributes, the merchandising team—human experts who understand the retailer’s specific customer base—curates and approves them. This ensures that the data is not only technically accurate but also contextually relevant for the brand’s specific audience.

This data strategy is the backbone of the company’s push into Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking in a list of blue links, GEO focuses on how brands appear in the AI-generated summaries and answers provided by LLMs. By providing AI models with high-quality, text- and image-based attributes, Academy Sports aims to ensure its products are recommended by these platforms, directly influencing the customer’s purchase journey before they even reach the retailer’s own site.

Implications for Operations and Fulfillment

While the "front-end" of the business is becoming increasingly automated, the "back-end" remains a complex logistical challenge. The goals of Academy Sports are clear: reduce cart abandonment, increase the number of units per transaction, and boost the average order value (AOV).

To achieve these goals, the company has invested heavily in its merchandising and supply chain platforms. A key component of this is real-time inventory visibility. The company’s product feeds are updated with high frequency to reflect current stock levels across all channels. When a purchase occurs, the order management system (OMS) automatically decrements inventory, whether the product is being shipped from a warehouse, a store, or being held for a Buy Online, Pick Up In Store (BOPIS) order.

"You’ve got brick and mortars, you’ve got e-commerce, but in the agentic world that we’re living in, this space is changing on a weekly basis," Anand says. "It’s a constant: How do we reinvent the way we want to show up to our customers, make it easy for them, and enable an experience that takes any friction out of the whole experience for them?"

The integration of AI also extends to predictive demand planning. By ingesting vast amounts of contextual data—such as weather patterns, local sporting events, and macroeconomic trends—the company can better predict where stock needs to be positioned, minimizing the friction inherent in last-mile delivery.

Looking Toward the Future

The implications of Academy Sports’ strategy are profound for the retail industry at large. By treating AI platforms as vital channels and prioritizing the maturity of product data, the retailer is effectively "future-proofing" its catalog.

As LLMs become the primary interface through which many consumers discover products, retailers that fail to optimize their metadata for these "agents" risk becoming invisible. Academy Sports’ proactive partnership with Google and its commitment to internal AI-driven enrichment signals a shift in the retail arms race. It is no longer just about who has the most stores or the best website; it is about who has the most "intelligent" product catalog—one that can speak the language of the AI engines shaping modern consumer behavior.

For Academy Sports, the work is ongoing. The "modernization" of their approach is not a destination but a continuous process of refinement. As the technology evolves, the retailer remains focused on the fundamentals: findability, accurate attributes, and a seamless fulfillment experience. By successfully bridging the gap between traditional retail operations and the emerging world of generative AI, Academy Sports is demonstrating that in the digital age, the most powerful tool in a retailer’s arsenal is the data that tells the customer—and the machine—exactly what they need to know.