The news: Established brands dominated our US apparel and fashion AI visibility index in August, accounting for nine of the top 10 brands in our leaderboard.

• Nike topped the ranking for the second-straight month on the basis of its strength in the activewear and sneaker categories.
• Brands specializing in activewear and technical gear were prominent, with Patagonia, Uniqlo, adidas, lululemon athletica, and New Balance each maintaining their presence in the top 10 from the prior month.

Quince was the youngest brand to earn a place in our rankings, a reflection of its ever-broadening product assortment and frequent publisher mentions.

Behind the leaderboard: There was little change in August, with just one newcomer—L.L. Bean—and two other ranking shifts. That points to an enduring AI visibility advantage for established brands. These brands have larger assortments (and consequently more product pages for ChatGPT to pull from), are more likely to be cited by top publishers, and often have a wide range of wholesale partnerships, all of which help to maximize their chances of being recommended by an LLM.

That advantage extends to individual product categories. Two-thirds of the categories in our leaderboard were topped by familiar names like Nike, Levi’s, Ray-Ban, and Patagonia, underscoring the significant challenge that newer and emerging brands have to get in front of AI users. Quince shows the incumbent advantage isn’t absolute; its relatively high ranking despite fewer products mentioned suggests challenger brands don’t necessarily need to match top players on assortment size to build visibility on platforms like ChatGPT.