AI Strategy Lessons From Coach, Walmart, And A Small Golf Brand

The clearest AI Strategy lessons come from companies of different sizes like Coach, Walmart and a 250 door women’s golf brand. And retailers globally are taking the lead. NVIDIA’s 2026 State of AI in Retail and CPG survey found 91% of retail and CPG companies are using or assessing AI, and 58% are actively deploying it, up from 42% a year earlier. And a lot of retailers are already seeing strong ROI from their AI investments.

AI Strategy Lesson From Coach: Train It on Your Own Work

Tapestry, parent of both Kate Spade and Coach, reported second quarter revenues of $2.5 billion in February up 14% from the year earlier. Its CEO Joanne Crevoiserat said that AI is now how its designers work. Designers still begin with hand sketches but use AI to iterate and test color variations. As Joanne told Business Insider, “there is still a human and a need for design eye.”

At Coach, the company’s largest brand, design teams use the same approach on handbag colorways, so a single sketch can be tested across a full season’s palette before anything goes to a factory.

At Kate Spade, the tool is custom Adobe Firefly model trained on the brand’s own patterns, textures, and details, so generated concepts arrive already looking like Kate Spade. Variations that used to take weeks, now take minutes. The lesson learned from both brands, was that anything that carries your brand, your voice or your archive deserves a model that learns from you.

AI Strategy Lesson from Walmart: Measure The Time You Save

Walmart supplied the hardest number so far. Its Trend-to-Produce tool scans social media, runway footage, and sales data, generates mood boards, and once design and merchants have edited them, produces a tech pack for suppliers. Walmart says ideation now takes about an hour and items reach shelves in six to eight weeks instead of the roughly six months the industry considers standard, a cut of about 18 weeks.