Kate Spade debuts Amazon Alexa conversational AI tool
Kate Spade New York is leveraging a new solution that puts Amazon Alexa conversational shopping capabilities in the hands of other retailers.
Tapestry Inc., parent company of fashion brands such as Kate Spade and Coach, is offering Kate Spade customers the Kate Spade AI Gift Concierge, a conversational retail artificial intelligence assistant utilizing the new Agentic Shopping Assistant on Amazon Web Services (ASA on AWS) solution.
ASA on AWS uses the same foundation as the recently released “Alexa for Shopping” conversational shopping tool for consumers, which combines the personalization capabilities of the next-gen Alexa+ voice model with the functionality of the Rufus generative AI shopping assistant to deliver a targeted shopping experience where customers can browse and shop using voice, touch, or both.
[READ MORE: Amazon enables conversational shopping via Alexa voice assistant]
ASA on AWS uses the same foundation as Alexa for Shopping but with different features that are tailored to each retailer's specific catalog, customer base and shopping environment. Each deployment is customized to match the retailer's brand voice and domain expertise.
Kate Spade used ASA on AWS to create its own conversational shopping experience. ASA on AWS is built on AWS AI services such as Amazon Bedrock, AgentCore and OpenSearch. Kate Spade developed the experience based on real gift shopper behavior and insights drawn from the questions customers asked Amazon's Alexa for Shopping and the answers that drove successful outcomes.
The result is an interaction model designed to feel like talking to someone who knows the Kate Spade brand and how to find a suitable gift. Built on Anthropic's Haiku 4.5 model with Amazon Bedrock, Tapestry moved directly into production and completed roughly 2.5 months of testing before making the solution customer-facing.
"We are excited about the possibilities agentic commerce can bring to our customers,” Yang Lu, chief information and digital officer at Tapestry, said in a corporate Amazon blog post. "AWS brought the recipe, but together we built the customization our consumers needed."
Tapestry also recently received a U.S. patent for Mira, a proprietary AI platform designed to connect data across all areas of the company to enable rapid, enterprise-wide decision-making. In 2024, Tapestry rolled out the Bluecore customer identification platform in the Kate Spade. Banner.
How Amazon develops ASA on AWS solutions
Amazon serves as "Customer Zero" for AWS, meaning every component has been tested in its proprietary retail environment. However, each retailer's deployment is customized to match its specific catalog, customer base, shopping environment, and brand voice.
Retailers obtain a technical foundation based on Amazon AI shopping while keeping their competitive advantages from proprietary customer insights, domain knowledge, and brand relationships. According to Amazon, retailers can deploy ASA for AWS solutions in roughly 60 days with guidance from the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center team.
Amazon has also opened technologies including its Just Walk Out cashierless shopping platform and AI-enabled Dash Cart smart carts to third-party retailers.
