Tapestry Collects Feedback from Thousands of Store Associates Using AWS

Tapestry is a global house of brands, including Stuart Weitzman, Kate Spade New York, and Coach. The company employs over 18,000 people, many of whom are frontline retail associates who work directly with customers. These associates possess invaluable insights into customer preferences, product performance, and store operations.  

However, Tapestry lacked an efficient way to capture and harness this wealth of information. Corporate teams regularly visited stores, but these visits only yielded anecdotal information that could not be scaled or analyzed across the entire retail network. To bridge the gap between the shop floor and corporate decision-makers, Tapestry needed a scalable, extendable solution that could turn fragmented insights into actionable business intelligence.  

As a data-driven organization, Tapestry recognized the potential of generative AI to solve this challenge, and it turned to AWS for the technology to power a new solution. “A lot of our core data systems run on AWS,” says Muhammad Chaudhry, global head of data engineering at Tapestry. “AWS had the services available that were suited to our needs; the synergy already existed, and the foundation was already in place. Whenever we have used AWS for new projects, they have always been successful.”

Tapestry’s engineering team used close to 20 AWS services to develop a generative AI engine that can be used to build various applications for both its retail stores and corporate offices. Amazon Bedrock—a fully managed service that offers a choice of high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies—serves as the foundation, hosting the large language model that powers the engine’s generative AI capabilities. As of October 2024, the team has built two applications: Tell Rexy and Ask Rexy. Tell Rexy is a feedback collection app that is used by store associates to share their observations and experiences throughout the workday. Ask Rexy is a chatbot that lets corporate analysts at Tapestry query and gain insights from the collected feedback data.

The Tell Rexy app is deployed on store devices like tablets and point-of-sale systems so that associates can provide feedback throughout their shifts. Associates can speak their observations, which are then turned into written text using Amazon Transcribe, a fully managed automatic speech recognition service. The app also incorporates Amazon Translate, a neural machine translation service, to help associates provide feedback in their preferred language. This feedback is automatically translated into English for centralized processing. By removing language barriers, Tapestry can capture and use valuable insights from all associates across its global workforce.

“We’ve got Tell Rexy live across most of our North American Coach stores,” says Deepak Chandak, senior director of omni-innovations and product management at Tapestry. “It has been used by several thousand associates, and we’ve gathered close to 30,000 feedback pieces in 1 year. And with the chatbot feature, we’ve also empowered our stakeholders internally to
gather relevant insights.”

By implementing Tell Rexy, Tapestry has improved its ability to address store-specific needs and manage its inventory. Associates can use the app to communicate about the products that their customers are demanding, which helps the company decide which items to stock in different locations. This near real-time feedback loop has helped align inventory and local customer preferences, which may help reduce lost sales due to stock issues.

“If we’re not giving associates the right products, they’re losing sales,” says Chandak. “Now, using Tell Rexy, they’re telling us what items they need, and now, we can make systematic changes to our merchandising processes.”

This improved communication not only helps address immediate concerns but also fosters a sense of value and inclusion among frontline staff. As a result, Tapestry has created a more engaging work environment, which may, in turn, improve the level of service that customers receive.  

“The beauty of this project is that we’ve templated it and made it a service, so now this foundational capability can easily be used to spin off personalized knowledge bases from any business function across the value chain,” says Fabio Luzzi, global head of data and analytics technology at Tapestry. “This approach lets us rapidly scale our AI-driven insights across the entire organization, empowering teams with tailored, actionable intelligence.”

Tell Rexy and Ask Rexy have helped Tapestry bridge the gap between in-store knowledge and corporate decision-making, ultimately contributing to a more productive workforce and improved customer experience. “Using AWS, we’re generating the kinds of insights that help our teams to be even more successful,” says Chandak.

With the generative AI engine in place, the retailer is poised to build upon this success. The company’s Kate Spade New York stores are next in line to adopt the applications. Tapestry plans to expand the use of the generative AI engine across its company, with other business units already developing internal applications for their own use cases. This extensible engine has accelerated Tapestry’s ability to develop new AI-powered applications by 10 times—and the company anticipates even greater innovations and efficiencies in the future.