How Tapestry is Turning AI Into a Retail Operating System | Avinash Kaushik at CommerceNext 2025

Hello, everyone.

This is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Mazinga.

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All right, well, joining us now is Avinash Kaushik, who leads brand strategy and transformation for Tapestry.

Welcome to omnitalk.

Thanks for being here with us.

Excited to be here.

I almost thought you would say use promo code ANN for 20% off.

I mean, if they can.

If retailers want a promo code, I think that we could make that happen.

Right.

Don't put a passer.

We got Kaz up next.

That might be part of the pitch for Kaz here in about an hour.

But anyway, so tell us a little bit about yourself.

Tell us about your background and what it is that you do.

So I'm a part of the global brand transformation team at Tapestry.

Across coach Kate Spade, Stuart Weisman and I spend time with our teams in New York, London, Shanghai and Tokyo.

Oh, wow.

To figure out how to can be innovatively driving the business forward.

And I work with two different really interesting people.

Scott Rowe, our global CFO at Tapestry, and Sandeep Seth, who is our VP of global growth.

So really interesting sort of pressures to try and drive the business forward.

And what's your background?

Ah, so I.

I'm famous.

You're famous.

Oh, all right.

Wow.

Of course you are.

I've written a couple of bestselling books on analytics.

I spent 16 years at Google in product and then sales and marketing.

And then my last gig was working as a chief strategy officer at agency in London.

Got it.

And so in that role of strategy and transformation, what are you specifically focused on in particular?

Anything you want to highlight for our audience?

Yeah, so one of the things that Sandeep, our VP of Growth, sort of deeply believes is this idea of brand led growth, like growing brands in a very transformative way through brand marketing at the very core of what the company's competitive advantage is.

And he's done this sort of again and again and again.

And so that's the work that we.

Need that you're helping him spearhead.

Exactly.

Got it.

Well, and today you have a very, which I'm sure will be one of the hottest attended sessions at Commerce next year.

Today you're going to talk about AI's role in impacting digital marketing.

Tell us a little bit about what you're going to cover during that session and what you hope that the audience is going to take away.

Yeah, yeah, of course, of course.

So you know, you, you, you work for 20 years in the Silicon Valley.

You can't but be infected by the AI bug.

But over the last two years I've seen sort of a fundamental transformation about AI changing so many things that we tend to do.

So I tend to think of AI not as like a just a chatgpt or something we can use to do better forecasting, but as it is becoming an operating system for the company, every dimension of the company is impacted.

So at Tapestry, we are using AI to solve super hard problems, like answering our CFO's question around what is the incrementality of marketing?

What happens if you fire everybody in the marketing department?

It's a really difficult question to answer, but we can use advanced analytics and statistics and machine learning algorithms to answer that question.

On the other hand, we're also of course we build a lot of impressive creative campaigns around the world and AI is helping us figure out how to do that faster, cheaper, better than we have ever managed to do before.

And on the other side, you can see companies using AI to figure out how to do performance reviews better in companies for employees or predict churn for customers.

So these are just some examples where AI is truly becoming an operating system, like an OS for the company, used in many different ways.

Avinash, I have a quick question.

So you mentioned brand being core to how you do all of the work and innovation at Tapestry.

How do you think you make sure that the brand still stands out when you're deploying AI to help with things like marketing or those big campaigns?

I mean, do you think that they can coexist together?

Oh, Jesus, yes.

So remember, at the very core of extraordinary brand building is like a story And a creative idea, an ethos that you stand for.

And so about five years ago at Coach, we said that our brand led platform will be courage.

That's the platform we're going to stand for based on extensive ethnographic research around Gen Z, et cetera, et cetera and where we want the future of the company to be.

So over the last five years, 20 twice a year we built on that platform contiguous stories that still are about courage.

Find your courage, find your shine.

And all of these campaigns that we're doing and when we do these, these incredible campaigns, the research we do leverage synthetic humans and so we can move faster than going and doing very expensive and long term studies, etc.

Which we also do from time to time.

Yes.

Yeah.

When we build creative, we do rapid iterations of the creative and we use that AI has a role to play in it.

Then one of our true competitive strengths is every CMO believes they are God's gift to humanity.

Right.

I don't know what you're talking about.

A creative, but we have like this very forward looking CMO June Silverstein who comes up with these extraordinary campaigns.

But we use AI to pre test them against the audience.

We're intending it so we let the target audience have a voice in the process.

We actually going to market.

So you can see how in multiple dimensions of the lens, we're able to do better brand marketing.

We're able to stand out from the competitors, do it faster and yet get our stories in front of audiences that are most relevant to us.

It's a really hard problem to solve.

AI makes it easier.

Yeah, it makes sense.

I mean the way I encapsulate what you just said is if you are deploying it correctly, it increases your probability of success.

And shout out to JC too.

The first JC drop in the history of Omnitalk retail.

All right.

I want to go a little bit deeper on the engineering side of this and this might be out of your purview a little bit too, but when you talked about the operating system, I think that's very interesting.

It's something we've been hearing a lot from different retailers that we've had on the program and different providers too.

How do you think about that?

Like we've heard things like there should be different brains or decision engines that are powering the entire organization or should there be multiple brains or decision engines powering the organization as you're setting up this operating system?

How do you think about that?

Yeah.

So for the next decade we will continue to have narrow AI and general AI, which means there will be solutions in the marketplace that do one thing, and they do that really, really, really well.

Okay.

And we see a bunch of these today, and then you see These foundational models, ChatGPT, Anthropic, et cetera, et cetera, that do a lot of different things well or very well.

Yeah.

So these two things will coexist for the next decade.

And what we have to figure out is, so one of the things we are, we, you know, working for our cfo, he's very interested in the increasing accuracy of forecasting, so we can do the right logistics, right, right products, etc.

Etc.

We use a narrow AI to solve that problem because it's a very, very, very unique and specialized problem.

And narrow AI is better for that.

But then when we do, when we're using AI for our creative processes, we use a general AI, because at the moment, these models are actually really, really good at that application.

I do think that as you look beyond 2035, you will see the emergence of what I call super general intelligence.

Really?

Which means we might live in a world where we will have this really big, fast, crazy, foundational model that may be able to do everything we humans do better.

Now, is that going to happen in, like, 2036?

Is it going to happen?

No fear.

No fear at all.

I'm an AI optimist, but that's where we're going.

That's exactly right.

That's where we're going.

And makes sense.

Every one of us that figures out, how do we do podcasting a little better, how do we do marketing a little better, how do we do finance better every single day?

Right now, it doesn't matter where we're going to head with a bunch of narrow AIs or a big general AI, people who are willing to learn and relearn and relearn.

They will be fine.

Got it.

So the bigger AIs acquire the little AIs or the narrow AIs in the long run, too.

That's probably what happens.

All right, all right, so you're at the show Commerce next.

There's a lot of cool, interesting technology here.

Is there anything you're particularly interested in seeing or that you have your eye on?

Yes.

So one of the things that at Tapestry, we are really interested in in is ensuring that we are delivering delight to our customers.

Okay.

If you like, get an email, we want the email to be as responsive to your behavior as possible.

If we come to our website, we want it to be as responsive as possible.

If you walk into our store here at Fifth Avenue, Please go.

Our flagship store.

I've been there.

Yeah.

The leather dinosaur, right?

Yes.

He's speaking the truth.

Unbelievable.

So go to Fifth Avenue when you walk into the store.

We want to be the most responsible, responsive companies.

So what I am particularly interested is it figuring out how, with the limited data we have, with permission of our customers, how can we still create experiences across all of these things that are deeply personalized and relevant to the person.

So one simple example is we have built this very sophisticated propensity model using AI that helps us understand.

Is today a good day to email Chris?

Not.

Not Chris.

And.

And yeah, Chris.

Yeah.

Because we, based on his behavior, his preferences, etc, when is a good day to email so we don't have to spam the entire world every single day?

That's good.

And then the second question is like that, if today is a good day to email Chris, can we use our AI to figure out what should we email you about?

Yes.

It doesn't have to be men's, Right.

He just loves wearing women's handbags, right?

Yes.

And we have an awareness through his behavior.

We're going to send you on Friday, when you're ready for it, an email about women's handbag in the red color.

Yeah.

And that is how sort of every single day we are trying to deliver to life.

So any tools, any new algorithms, any companies are working in that space, I call it responsive behavior.

I'm really excited about that.

So lower cost as well as better productivity from the deployment of the advertising.

Okay.

Yeah.

At the core is we want to do it because it is delivering customer delight.

If it happens to be at a lower cost, Happy birthday.

If it turns out that it's roughly the same, it's fine.

And our CFO's belief is if it takes a little bit more to deliver delight and be relevant to the customer, that's okay too, because that's the competitive edge.

It's not about saving money, fewer people.

Right, right.

And Avinash, are you, Is that something that you think is unique to you and Tapestry and the Tapestry brands, or do you think that's something that all retailers should be exploring right now?

No, all, all retailers, we are very blessed with a CEO and an executive suite that believes in this forward looking view of how we should think about retail.

And so we're very lucky that under that rubric we can do some really cool, exciting work.

But at Google, I worked with the top 100 companies on the planet.

And so as I reflect on booking.com or I reflect on Macy's, I reflect on Marks and Spencer's in London or Istan in Tokyo.

All of these, they solve different retail problems.

The problems we're solving at Tapestry, they also face the same challenges.

They have a different market dynamic.

So they may have to adapt.

But these solutions would work for anybody.

Right?

And imagine that's just one example where you could take that idea and spit it out into other things too.

Like you could think about it in terms of the post purchase communication that's going out to consumers.

How often do you need to tell them about their delivery?

What can you tell them when you're talking to them about their delivery?

How do you create a brand experience out of that, that whole thing too, right?

No, exactly.

It's like there's this concept at Google that we worked on called moment of truth.

And so zero moment of truth is what we've talked about, the sales experience, et cetera, et cetera.

But the first real moment of truth is when your customer holds the product.

The second most critical moment of truth is when a customer has a problem.

Right across those three moments of truth, we sort of obsess about what is the experience for the customer.

And so we use a framework for marketing we call See, think, do, care.

It's a different way.

I hate the funnel marketing funnel.

I could really.

Oh, we gotta talk more about that later.

Okay, so.

But care is all about what you said, Chris, which is once the customer is ready, has the product in their hands, what's the experience after that?

In our case, what do you think about the leather when you open the box?

What about the white tissue, the little blue dot, like something's deeply, deeply thought about that because it is so important to think about not just see, think and do, but also care.

Like what happens in the post purchase experience when you call us or email us, how do we respond?

And at the moment we're not ready to throw AI at you because we still want to get it right in that second moment of truth.

But you're learning, you're using AI in the background to help learn how you can do that better.

And we've got the time here.

So why do you hate the marketing?

No, so one of the great blessings if you work at Google is you have access to tons and tons of data.

You work with some of the best companies on the planet.

And one of the things I figured out very early is that this whole idea that people in the, remember, the three of us work at companies, so we look at the world Differently.

But when we walk out of the door of the company and we're looking from the outside in.

Yeah, you think very differently.

So one of the things I figured out, there's nothing in the data that seems to suggest that people are waiting.

They are self categorizing themselves into categories.

Like, I'm ready to be aware of you.

Oh, my God, I'm aware.

But please, please consider.

And so this, this idea that we have to wake up in the morning every single day and put advertising in the world whose only purpose is just shove people down the funnel.

The thing doesn't seem to exist at all.

Like, there's no evidence in the data.

Yeah.

We are very complex creatures.

So, for example, I'm a huge, insane fan of the brand Patagonia.

Okay.

I love, love Patagonia.

Okay.

So for Patagonia, I am a customer.

Yeah.

But in my day to day life, I'm like a product prospect.

I want to hear stories about their ambassadors.

I want to hear how they're saving the earth, all of these initiatives they're doing sometimes.

Yeah, we're going to go to Glacier Bay national park next week.

And so I'm kind of like, oh, I got to get, get a jacket maybe.

And so at the same time, as I am in the upper funnel and the mid funnel, I am in the lower funnel.

Right.

By the way, I got tons of Patagonia stuff.

Exactly.

Right.

So, so great marketing isn't waking up in the morning and shoving people down the funnel.

Yes.

It's about being able to understand what is the customer's intent and can we respond to that intent in the moment.

So in the morning, it might be me looking for solutions on Google, let's say, or Bing or perplexity about environmental causes.

And for Patagonia can show up there in the afternoon.

If I'm looking for a jacket for my Glacier Bay trip, it can show up with an ad for a product or when I go home.

One of the things I love about Patagonia is once a quarter, they send you a little book with stories from their brand ambassador, all these athletes that they support.

I love that thing.

And it's all about care.

Right?

Right.

Every moment.

Companies that figure out how to respond to intent will do spectacularly well.

Respond to intent.

Exactly.

So at Tapestry, at the very core of what we do globally, the way we differentiate ourselves from other marketing teams is we do intent centric marketing.

We don't wake up in the morning and say, we're gonna spray and pray today, baby.

We figure out how to find 20 million people, scream at us.

It's insane.

Which is why AI is gonna be so important to the continuation of your business and where things go, because you need that power to that compute to get to that level.

So intent on Bing is easier to figure out because I typed in the query.

But when you're on meta, or when you're reading the New York Times or when you are subscribing to a newsletter, in that moment, the ability to identify intent is much better with every passing day, even with the restrictions in data, even with pii, even with gdpr, et cetera.

One of the things AI is really good is it's analyzing millions and tens and millions of data points about Chris and say, in this moment, this is Chris's intent, so let's not respond to him with a pimpy coupon.

Makes no sense.

Yeah, right, pimpon.

We have to respond to him in a different way.

Marketers that embrace this intent centricity will have more success because at the end of the day, you're not doing marketing because you have, you have a campaign to get out of the door.

Marketing, responding to what is the right story for today?

Right.

Well, I feel a little ridiculous asking you this next question because you're talking about 2036 already, Avinash.

But when we think about marketing on, based on intent, some of the things you talked about today, your work with your teams in AI, what are you most excited about for the rest the remainder of this year?

What are you thrilled to be working on?

So one of the things that we are doing, and again under the auspices of our cfo Scott Rowe, is we have taken a whole bunch of AI approaches and we've managed to figure out how to scale them.

Then we have a whole bunch of experiments we're running, trying a lot of different things in space.

Goddamn changes all the time.

Yeah.

So for the next 18 months, 12 to 18 months, our mission is to figure out how do we scale AI so that it's not just a group of small group of people playing with it and getting benefit from it.

And it's not just some areas in which we have taken it quite far.

Especially in 10 centric marketing, we've taken it quite far.

But what about the person in operations?

What about facilities?

What about finance?

What about logistics?

What about our factories?

How do we waste less leather?

So the next sort of 12 to 18 months are all about figuring out how do we scale our deployments so it truly becomes an operating system at Tapestry.

And in that sense, we are a little bit early in our journey.

That's great.

That's the first time we've heard that.

Yeah.

Believe it or not, it's kind of crazy when I sit back and think about this.

I know we talk to retailers every other week and that's the first time I've heard somebody actually say it like that.

And it feels like there is a big opportunity there.

Oh, absolutely.

Well, Avinash, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time with us today.

Thanks for sharing your insight.

Where do people get the books?

Oh, just Google Avinash.

Avinash.

I'm easy to find.

Yeah, Google Avinash.

Get your books.

Check out his session today here at Commerce Next.

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And until the next interview, be careful out there.