I'm one person running this brand, what's a realistic AI stack, not 50 tools I'll never open?

Founders who actually stick with AI go deep on two or three tools, not wide on ten: a general assistant (ChatGPT or Claude) for copy, customer emails, and thinking-out-loud; one category-specific tool where you have real volume pain, photography, support, or forecasting, pick your biggest bottleneck; and a lightweight newsletter habit so you know when something better ships. Resist the subscription pile-up, most retailers have tried some AI tool but very few have actually scaled one, and that gap between trying and scaling is where the money is.