Bonus 02 · The DTC AI Toolkit
The DTC AI Toolkit
16 tools, real prices, the workflow each one fits. Built from the stacks of 1,400+ Idukki customer stores. No affiliate links, no sponsored placements.
Organised by stage of the UGC loop: capture, tag, compose, ship, measure. If a tool sits across multiple stages we put it in the one its customers reach for first.
Stage 01
Capture: get the content in
The stack that pulls real customer content from social platforms, captures it on your store, and routes it into a moderation queue.
The hub. Pulls UGC from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Threads, Google Reviews, Trustpilot. Tags it, requests rights, publishes to PDPs.
- Workflow
- Connect your handles, set hashtag and tag filters, content arrives in a queue. Approve, request rights with the templated DM, publish to a Shopify section in one click.
- Swap with
- Yotpo Visual UGC, Bazaarvoice Spotlight, Stackla, Tagshop.
- Pricing
- From £49/mo.
The post-purchase flow that asks for a review and a photo. Wire it to Idukki and the captured photo lands in your gallery within an hour.
- Workflow
- Order delivered event triggers a 5-day timer, then sends the review request. Reply-image captures into a Klaviyo profile property, Idukki ingests via webhook.
- Swap with
- Brevo, Omnisend, Postscript (SMS).
- Pricing
- From £35/mo.
When the platform API does not return what you need (rare, but it happens with Threads + LinkedIn), Apify scrapers fill the gap.
- Workflow
- Run a daily actor against a hashtag, output to a CSV in S3, Idukki ingests on a cron.
- Swap with
- Bright Data, ScrapingBee.
- Pricing
- Free tier, then ~£0.50 per 1k results.
Stage 02
Tag: turn the dump into a catalogue
The AI vision and language tools that take an unstructured pile of UGC and turn it into something a merchandiser can use.
Native to the Idukki stack. Tags every uploaded image with SKU match, scene, occasion, body-only, brand-safe. Built on a tuned vision model.
- Workflow
- Auto-runs on every ingestion. Output lands as structured tags on each asset, filterable in the gallery editor.
- Swap with
- GPT-4o Vision API, Claude Sonnet Vision, Google Vertex Vision.
- Pricing
- Included in Idukki plans.
When you need a one-off vision pass on a batch (alt text, brand-safety check, content cluster), 4o is the cheapest reliable option.
- Workflow
- Run from a Python or Node script, average cost is £0.001 per image for tagging, £0.003 for captions.
- Swap with
- Claude Sonnet (similar accuracy, slightly higher cost), Gemini 1.5 Pro Vision.
- Pricing
- Pay-per-token.
For long-form rewrites where voice consistency matters more than raw output speed. Better than GPT for paragraph-level voice match in our internal tests.
- Workflow
- Use the Prompt Pack rewrite prompt. Paste 6 voice examples, then the draft. Output is usable in one shot.
- Swap with
- GPT-4o for shorter outputs, Llama 3.1 405B if you want to self-host.
- Pricing
- Pay-per-token or £18/mo for Pro.
Stage 03
Compose: make it look right
The tools that take a tagged asset and prepare it for the surface it is going to live on (PDP, ad, email, reel).
Where most of the UGC that performs on TikTok and Instagram is actually edited. Free, mobile, surprisingly capable.
- Workflow
- Stitch UGC clips, add captions, export at 9:16. Upload back to Idukki for shoppable layer.
- Swap with
- Descript, InVideo, Riverside.
- Pricing
- Free, Pro at £8/mo.
For the moment a customer's clip is almost perfect but the background needs a clean. Runway's inpainting removes the offending wall poster in 20 seconds.
- Workflow
- Upload clip, brush out, export. Mostly used by brand teams on hero UGC.
- Swap with
- Descript Studio Sound, Adobe Premiere generative fill.
- Pricing
- From £12/mo.
When you need a background plate or a hero variant that you do not have in studio. We flag to customers: never pass off generative as customer UGC, never use a face.
- Workflow
- Used for background plates and category page hero variants, not for product imagery.
- Swap with
- DALL-E 3, Ideogram, Flux.
- Pricing
- From £8/mo.
When a great UGC photo is technically too small for a hero slot, Topaz brings it up to a usable resolution without the obvious AI-upscale smearing.
- Workflow
- Drag photo in, set output resolution, export. Use sparingly: heavy upscale starts to look uncanny.
- Swap with
- Pixelmator Pro Super Resolution, Adobe Super Resolution.
- Pricing
- One-time £80.
Stage 04
Ship: get it to the shopper
The last-mile tools that put the UGC where the shopper actually meets it.
The shoppable layer. Drops on a Shopify theme via a single script tag. 37 KB, CLS-clean.
- Workflow
- Paste the embed, pick the layout, tag the products. Shoppable in five minutes.
- Swap with
- Tolstoy, Mavryck, Tagshop, Yotpo Galleries.
- Pricing
- Included in Idukki plans.
Built-in AI for PDP copy generation and theme section composition. Good enough for first drafts, never good enough for final ship.
- Workflow
- Use the PDP copy prompt from the Idukki Prompt Pack instead of Magic's default. Output is more agent-citation-ready.
- Swap with
- Built into Shopify. The alternative is to hand-write.
- Pricing
- Included in Shopify.
The destination where most paid UGC actually ends up. Whitelisting through the creator's handle outperforms branded handle in our customer data by 1.4x to 2.1x.
- Workflow
- Get whitelisting rights, run the post as a dark post under the creator's handle, measure CPA, scale the top decile.
- Swap with
- TikTok Spark Ads, Pinterest Idea Pin Ads.
- Pricing
- Pay-per-impression.
Stage 05
Measure: prove it worked
The dashboards that turn UGC activity into something a CFO can defend at a board review.
Native event taxonomy. Surface impression, surface engagement, ATC, checkout, attributed revenue, by SKU, by surface, by source.
- Workflow
- Auto-instrumented on widget mount. Read in the dashboard, export to Looker.
- Swap with
- Mixpanel for events, GA4 for last-touch.
- Pricing
- Included in Idukki plans.
The boardroom truth-source. Idukki pushes events to GA4 via server-side, so the UGC line item appears on the same chart as everything else.
- Workflow
- GTM Server config, Idukki webhook target, GA4 measurement protocol.
- Swap with
- PostHog, Amplitude, Snowplow.
- Pricing
- Free.
Where the UGC-to-revenue chart actually gets built in a form a CFO will accept. Free, painful to learn, worth it.
- Workflow
- Connect GA4 + Shopify, build the three views: PDP-with-UGC vs without, repeat-purchase rate cohort, attributed revenue trend.
- Swap with
- Hex, Mode, Metabase.
- Pricing
- Free.
