Debanhams Group signs agreement with AWS to scale up adoption of AI tools and drive growth

Debenhams Group, parent company of brands such as Karen Millen, PrettyLittleThing, Boohoo, and department store chain Debenhams, has signed a new multi-year partnership with cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate its adoption of AI-driven tools.

Through the new agreement, Debenhams Group will use generative AI to streamline its operations for Debenhams, enhancing its efficiencies and improving its personalisation and product discovery for customers.

The partnership builds on the Group's current use of AWS cloud services on its Debenhams platform, which powers its marketplace model by assisting a speedy onboarding of third-party sellers, allowing a wider product offering, and a seamless shopping journey.

The Debenhams Group has implemented Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service from AWS, to build and scale GenAI applications, to automate product descriptions and translations across tens of thousands of products, driving consistency, localisation, and speed to market for the Group.

"Collaborating with AWS is a key part of our long-term strategy to transform Debenhams Group into a modern, technology-led retailer," said Dan Finley, CEO of Debenhams Group, in a statement. "We've successfully replaced outdated legacy systems with scalable, cloud-first architecture that's adaptable, resilient, and built to support innovation well into the Group's future."

The Group will also deploy Debenhams' Interactive AI Room Style, developed together with AWS's prototyping investment programme, allowing shoppers to upload a photo of a room, choose a design style, and receive customized decor suggestions linked to shoppable listings.

In addition, using AI-powered product attribution will make it easier and more intuitive for customers to search and discover relevant products quickly on the Debenhams platform. The Group is rolling out AWS solutions across its other brands, with Boohoo the most recent brand to adopt the tools following the successful rollout of the AI tools across Debenhams and its labels.

"Our strategic investment in AI and emerging technologies will not only future-proof the business, but create a faster, smarter, and more personalised experience for our customers," continued Finley. "Working closely with a hand-picked team of engineers and AWS specialists, together, we're not only accelerating our digital road-map, but making Debenhams Group an exciting place to work for the next generation of tech talent."

Duncan Stewart, Head of Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods UK & Ireland, Amazon Web Services, said the following on the partnership: "We're delighted to expand our collaboration with Debenhams Group as they continue to accelerate their adoption of AI. The team at Debenhams has already achieved impressive results, developing a highly innovative digital commerce platform on AWS that is a strong example in the retail industry."

"By leveraging the flexibility and scalability of the cloud, Debenhams Group now has the technology foundations to quickly build and deploy innovative new AI-powered products and services across all of its brands, which will help drive business productivity and growth. We look forward to supporting their continued success."