Defending and Correcting melin’s #1 Visibility Spot in LLMs
SearchTides reshaped how AI models perceive melin, taking it from a mid-tier mention to the premium headwear brand LLMs recommend and cite.
The exact methodology we follow lives here.
About melin
melin sells hats, but not just any hats. They are committed to building the world’s most premium headwear by focusing on the highest quality materials and unique details. With more than half of B2C/D2C consumers using AI to make purchase decisions in 2025, VP of Ecommerce, Nate Onesian knew he and his team needed a framework and implementation partner to win in the AI era of commerce.
Too often, smaller names in the apparel industry are overlooked in AI-assisted shopping journeys.
This actually wasn’t the case for melin: melin was already a top recommendation in LLMs when they came to SearchTides in late 2025.
Defending a spot in LLMs is a totally different game: everyone is coming for you, fast. melin’s problem wasn’t being invisible, it was being inconsistently spoken about, being associated with mid-tier brands, and fending off house-hold names like Nike and Patagonia.
Less than 7 months later, AI now speaks about melin consistently and sees them as the category leader that they are. But, melin didn’t start there, training LLMs to think about a brand differently takes a holistic approach both on-site and off-site. Additionally, like many e-comm businesses, seasonality is a large contributor to melin’s business. SearchTides started working with melin just before the December holidays in 2025.
TL;DR Overview
In just 5 months working with SearchTides…
315%+
Increase in LLM-attributed sales
20%
Increase in Overall AI Visibility
60%
Increase in Citation Share
47.3%
LLMs cite melin more as a result of engagement
20x
LLMs consider melin a premium brand more
41%
Non-branded AI Visibility high (up from 25%)
Here’s how SearchTides rewrote melin’s narrative on ChatGPT and other LLMs, recovered the brand’s visibility from a post-holiday drop off, and increased LLM-attributed sales by 315%.
The Problem melin and Other High Quality Product Companies Face
There’s a misconception that smaller companies can’t compete with house-hold names. This is especially frustrating for companies that clearly have a superior product and deserve to be recommended by LLMs. In melin’s case, they might have the highest quality performance headwear on the market but it’s rare that lesser-known brands can compete with giants like Nike, Patagonia, and New Era.
melin is a perfect example of a brand that does one thing really really well and is now also recognized and rewarded by AI-assisted search platforms. TL;DR, yes, melin is now recommended with and above the Nikes, Patagonias, and New Eras of the world.
Building AI’s Confidence in melin’s product
AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity need third parties to reinforce and validate the information a company says about itself.
In melin’s industry, community discussion forums, review sites, and “best of” lists highly influence what LLMs surface and say about a brand.
SearchTides’s off-site PR, community, and content departments put special emphasis on the Language and Distribution layers of the AI Undercurrent.
“Reddit, branded listicles, and PR placements were at the center of our strategy” – Derek Iwasiuk, Chief AEO/SEO Officer
Reddit became the #1 source of LLM citations for the premium headwear industry. SearchTides was able to identify and contribute to the threads and conversations that matter to LLMs.
In this example, a SearchTides-created thread became the 4th highest-cited page anywhere on the internet for “which premium hat brands are worth investing in”
In addition to a cohesive reddit and community strategy, SearchTides leveraged its 13+ years’ of outreach experience to get melin placed in top fashion publications.
“LLMs give you the answers, they tell you exactly what webpage are being cited for a specific prompt. Getting your brand included in that existing citation does two things: it shows AI that your brand deserves to be listed among peers and tells AI systems that this is a new addition. Recency bias is real when it comes to AI Visibility.” – Derek Iwasiuk, Chief AEO/SEO Officer
melin also earned a spot in the Google AI Overview for “best premium hat brands for me”
“LLMs need to verify facts and human perceptions by looking at reputable third-party platforms. SearchTides has the expertise to place and create “superfeeders” faster and better than anything else on the market.” – Drew Schweppe, SearchTides CEO
Targeting Intent in the AI Era
After a Cyber 5 dip and change in how AI ingests Shopify product pages, SearchTides adapted its strategy, recovering and achieving a new all time AI Visibility high against industry leaders.
Off-page initiatives like reddit strategy and superfeeder inclusion can only take you so far if the web properties you control are not optimized to the latest algorithms.
SearchTides noticed that the products winning AI recommendations had a different Shopify product page layout than melin, one that AI favored over the existing format melin used. Fast forward a few hours of research, a regroup, and a product page overhaul, melin recovered its visibility and surpassed its previous all time high.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
Deconstructing search algorithms for nearly two decades gives SearchTides a competitive advantage. According to the client:
“SearchTides really helps with the external resourcing to get brand visibility and actual product visibility. They really stood out and were true to their statement of usually knowing what’s going to trend in terms of the AI world months before, or even a long time before other businesses, or even Shopify gets to it” – Justyne, melin developer
This was further confirmed after melin and its sister brands ran their sites through Shopify’s AI readiness tool:
“Out of all of our brands, melin ranked the highest, so all the work that we’ve been doing makes sense.” – Justyne, melin developer