Matalan, a UK-based omni-channel retailer, provides womenswear, menswear, homeware and furniture to customers worldwide. It operates more than 280 company-owned and franchise stores across the UK, Europe and the Middle East, and has a rapidly growing online channel.
GenAI model revolutionises retailer’s online product descriptions
Matalan
High volume workload
With such a wide range of products, the company’s copywriter team was tasked with creating a large volume of product descriptions on a continual basis. Matalan wanted to explore if Generative AI technology could alleviate some of the workload, deliver better search results to its customers, and ultimately lead to an uplift in revenue. Kin + Carta, an award-winning Google Cloud Partner, was engaged to lend its retail and technology expertise.
GenAI tool supported by humans
In just three weeks, Kin + Carta built a Generative AI and Large Language Model (LLM) solution utilising Google Cloud Platform's Gemini and PaLM 2 on Vertex AI.
The bespoke tool is capable of creating product descriptions using product metadata for Matalan's full product range. Configured to read product imagery, it selects details from images to include in the descriptions.
To ensure accuracy and quality control, the copywriter team oversees the automated descriptions.
Richer content at scale and speed
The Generative AI model is the first of its kind for the UK retail sector and has already provided several benefits to Matalan.
- Creates 100 descriptions in 30 minutes (versus 100 per day by the copywriter team)
- Generates rich, accurate product descriptions with minimal data input, leading to improved SEO and conversion rates
- Increases copywriters’ efficiency, freeing them up for more strategic work
- Enhances the customer experience with longer and more emotive product descriptions
Kin + Carta continues to support Matalan on its business transformation journey. For more information, see the press release.
As the UK’s first retailer to be leveraging Generative AI in this way, this is a hugely exciting moment for Matalan. Not only does it demonstrate innovation into new and so far unexplored areas, but it shows our commitment to putting our customers and the shopping experience first - whether they’re shopping on our website or through the Matalan app.
Ali Jones Chief Customer and Omnichannel Officer, Matalan
