Customer story
How Lucchese "Made it Smart" and got a 33x ROI
Lucchese's leading indicators were moving in the right direction going into 2025. Traffic was up, load times were better. But conversions were down, and they suspected search was the problem.
The story
Founded in 1883 by Italian immigrant Salvatore "Sam" Lucchese, Lucchese Bootmaker is one of America's most storied western boot brands. Each pair is handcrafted in El Paso using century-old techniques, taking more than 200 steps to complete.
Entering 2025 with a "Make it Smart" mandate, Lucchese's goal was to elevate the shopping experience at every point on their site. The leading indicators looked good: more traffic, faster load times. But conversion rates were going the other way. They suspected search was the culprit. Keyword-based search required constant product copy maintenance and still missed what shoppers actually meant.
They turned to Nobi to see whether AI search could improve result accuracy and move the needle on conversions.
"We want to do more for our customer while leveraging tech. We run a very lean team so we're always looking for partners that have the tech to fill in gaps, especially with things like search where we knew there was a lot of low-hanging fruit."
What changed
Three things that moved the needle
Always show results
Keyword search returns nothing when a query doesn't exactly match product copy. Nobi always surfaces the closest relevant products instead. When a shopper searched "Terlingua" (a West Texas town), Shopify returned zero results. Nobi used its knowledge base to figure out what the shopper was going for and returned the Walter boot and others with a matching look and feel. The shopper added to cart.
"terlingua" → 0 results. Sale lost.
"terlingua" → relevant boots surfaced. Sale saved.
Better rankings with RAG
Standard search ranks by keyword frequency, not relevance. Nobi uses Retrieval Augmented Generation to rank by what the shopper actually wants. For "Olive," Shopify buried the Dante Olive Chocolate boot past 16 results, past a "Load More." Nobi moved it to position 2. The shopper bought it.
Semantic search
Shoppers don't always use the same words you used to describe your products. A search for "card holder" on Shopify only returned tote bags that happened to have card slots, missing Lucchese's entire wallet and card case collection. Nobi understood what the shopper meant and surfaced wallets, card cases, and bifold options. The shopper bought a wallet in Ostrich Cognac.
"It's been really great to understand how people are typing and interacting with an agent, and understand how people are looking for our popular categories. It's also a treat to work with a partner who is just as excited to learn and dive deep."
The result
What happened
By year one, Lucchese had generated $1M+ in incremental revenue at a 33x ROI. Across the purchase funnel, Nobi search drove +12% more add-to-carts, +22.9% better checkout completion, and a +10.6% lift in average order value — from $925 to $1,023.
Key takeaways
- Always showing results, even when a search query doesn't exactly match any product, can still drive sales. Shoppers who get relevant results stay on site.
- Ranking by relevance (not keyword frequency) surfaces the right product at the right time, without requiring constant product copy maintenance.
- Semantic search recovers sales that would otherwise walk out the door. Shoppers shouldn't have to use your language to find your products.
What's next
After search, Lucchese kept going. The cart assistant launched in May 2025 and has since driven $108K in all-time revenue at an 8.5x ROI. The PDP assistant followed in August. Nobi has become a platform across Lucchese's shopping experience, not just a search layer.
"If you want to learn and be inspired, you should implement a tool like Nobi. We've seen great incremental results, but the biggest reason a brand should implement this is that you have the opportunity to apply more information towards optimizing campaigns and your broader brand and e-comm goals."
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