Catalyst Brands Moves Off Legacy Martech Stack to Power 1:1 Personalization Across Its Portfolio

Attentive®, the omnichannel marketing platform for retailers, apparel brands, and e-commerce companies redefining how brands and people connect through relevant personalized experiences, today announced that Catalyst Brands, the recently formed parent company of JCPenney, Aeropostale, Brooks Brothers, and other leading retailers, has transitioned to Attentive’s omnichannel platform for SMS, email, push, and AI-powered decisioning. This migration reflects a broader transformation within the retail industry, as the traditional martech model, characterized by fragmentation, high costs, and a lack of purpose-built AI, becomes obsolete. Nearly half (47%) of marketing leaders cite their current stack as a barrier to value, according to McKinsey. Attentive delivers a leaner, consolidated approach that prioritizes data clarity, revenue and connection, making it possible for marketers to drive real-time personalized experiences at scale.

Catalyst Brands’ predecessor organization began working with Attentive in 2020 and expanded the relationship in March 2025 to include the entire Catalyst Brands portfolio on Attentive’s omnichannel platform. The migration to Attentive consolidated billions of customer interactions across all Catalyst brands into a single platform, removing the need for multiple point solutions and CDP dependencies, and delivering efficiencies that resulted in annual cost savings.

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From Fragmentation to Consolidation

“When bringing together five distinct businesses under the newly formed Catalyst Brands, we had a rare opportunity to reimagine our marketing technology from the ground up,” said Marika Bigler, Vice President, Customer Growth and Loyalty at Catalyst Brands. “By consolidating on Attentive, we replaced a complex system with a single, easier-to-manage platform that reduces overhead and enables more personalized customer engagement across every brand.”

With Attentive, Catalyst Brands is redefining personalized messaging across its portfolio of companies through:

• Unified Omnichannel Engagement: Catalyst Brands moved all portfolio brands to Attentive’s omnichannel platform for email, push, and SMS, reducing costs while unlocking stronger cross-brand and cross-channel customer engagement opportunities. With a more unified view of each shopper, Catalyst Brands can deliver more personalized messages in the channel most likely to drive engagement.
• Agentic AI to Scale Personalized Customer Engagement: Catalyst Brands is leveraging Attentive’s agentic AI solutions, including AI Pro and AI Grow, to personalize messaging in real time and convert more visitors into subscribers across its portfolio. Acting on real-time customer signals, Attentive’s AI agents determine who to message, what to say, when to send it, and which channel is likely to perform best for all customers across all of Catalyst’s portfolio brands.
• Mobile-First Identity for Better Customer Experiences: Attentive’s mobile-first identity gives Catalyst Brands a more accurate way to recognize customers across devices and interactions, creating a unified view of each customer. By connecting behavioral signals, purchase activity, and customer profiles around a customer’s mobile device, Catalyst Brands gains a more detailed understanding of each customer and can deliver more personalized experiences across channels and brands.
• Enterprise-Scale Migration: Attentive successfully transitioned customer messages and data points for Catalyst Brands to its unified platform, with the migration managed entirely by Attentive and supported by a dedicated customer success team.

“The legacy retail martech model centered around a CRM and stitched together with point solutions is no longer delivering the performance retailers need,” said Amit Jhawar, CEO of Attentive. “This outdated model is expensive, complex, and not designed for AI. Catalyst Brands saw an opportunity to reimagine what their martech stack could deliver. By consolidating their stack on Attentive, they’re moving beyond fragmented technology to unlock the full potential of AI-powered personalization, driving higher-performing campaigns and greater revenue.”

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