Peak, a pioneer of the AI System, announced today at the US National Retail Federation conference that it has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Retail Competency status. This accreditation supports Peak’s expansion to the US market, establishing itself as an AWS Retail and Machine Learning Competency Partner on a global scale.

Peak’s first-of-its-kind AI System is future-proofing retail businesses by providing both the technology and capability to be successful with AI. It aligns with business strategy to drive growth, enhance profitability and build sustainable competitive advantage from data. Peak offers outcome-focused artificial intelligence (AI) solutions and technology working across the entire retail value chain – controlling the supply and demand cycle, improving growth, profitability and customer experience. It works with leading global fashion retailers including ASOS, boohoo and Footasylum, and is on a mission to help businesses ‘do great things with data’.

“Many retailers are reinventing their operations and brand experience with new innovations in the cloud,” said Tom Litchford, Head of Retail Business Development, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “We are delighted to welcome Peak to the AWS Retail Competency Program. Their solutions for retail operations, powered and vetted by AWS, can help our customers to accelerate their transformation, modernisation, and customer engagement efforts.”

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In order to become an AWS Retail Competency Partner, Peak had to demonstrate success in offering end-to-end solutions for retail on AWS as an Advanced Consulting Partner offering strategy and deployment services to retailers, to help accelerate their digital transformation.

AWS Retail Competency Partners undergo rigorous validation by AWS to ensure alignment to AWS best practices for building secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient cloud infrastructure for industry applications – to give customers increased confidence when making decisions.

Achieving the AWS Retail Competency differentiates Peak as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member that delivers highly specialised technical proficiency. To receive the AWS Competency designation, APN Partners must possess deep AWS expertise and deliver solutions seamlessly on AWS.

“We work with major global retailers, such as ASOS and boohoo, who are transforming and optimising its business using AI. Combining this with our expansion plans for 2020 sets us up to become the global leader in enterprise AI for retail.” commented Richard Potter, CEO at Peak.

“Having been an Amazon APN Partner for several years, and one of the few in Europe with AWS Advanced Machine Learning Competency status, we’re extremely proud to achieve AWS Retail Competency status. With AWS we are helping retailers acquire and retain customers with hyper-personalised marketing communications, make better demand decisions and have more efficient fulfillment processes.”

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Leveraging its partnership with Peak, UK-based streetwear retailer Footasylum introduced AI into its social media and email advertising campaigns. Using machine learning algorithms, Footasylum achieved an 8400% return on ad spend (ROAS), 30 times more than the industry average and ten times higher than Footasylum’s standard marketing ROAS.

“We’re gaining a lot from being an AI-driven retailer, and the results of our recent social advertising campaigns with Peak speak volumes,” added Tom Summerfield, Head of Commerce at Footasylum. “AI and machine learning are complementing our marketing efforts perfectly, allowing us to speak to customers at the right time when they are ready to make a purchase, and scaling communication back when they aren’t.”

“The Retail Competency status strengthens Peak’s position as it expands into the US market, leveraging its close relationship with AWS to service a growing global customer base,” continued Potter.

In particular, UK-based, global retailer boohoo is working with Peak to optimise its merchandising function. “Trend-led fashion is at the heart of who we are at boohoo, so we need to run our business at a pace which enables us to meet our customers’ expectations,” added Ryan Short, Head of Business Transformation at boohoo. “We partnered with Peak to explore the opportunities of developing and implementing an AI strategy to further enhance our competitive advantage in this fast-paced market. We are already seeing positive early signs from deploying AI in our merchandising team and have plans to utilise AI across other areas of the business to drive greater efficiencies and ultimately give our customers the best experience.”

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