Discover Belle Fashion’s ingenious use of GenAI to revamp its retail service operations, transforming challenges into successes.
Chinese retail giant Belle Fashion Group, known for its vast footwear empire, has taken a significant leap in managing its colossal network of brands and stores through GenAI. Their retrofitted approach to service operations has sparked a revolution in the retail and consumer products industry, showcasing the operational impacts of GenAI.
Initially, managing nearly 10,000 stores and multiple brands, such as BELLE and STACCATO, was a Herculean task. With the introduction of GenAI, Belle transformed this challenge into an efficient, streamlined process. A simple example is how store managers now query daily sales through their phones, receiving instantaneous and precise data—a task that once required cumbersome manual effort.
The journey began with the integration of a custom foundational model within Belle’s existing systems. This integration, highlighting Belle’s retrofit approach, led to substantial improvements in data management. Key to this success was the utilization of DingTalk’s “group” feature, which slashed the time for information consolidation from days to mere hours, dramatically enhancing operational efficiency.
Further innovations included a “group structured management” plan introduced in 2020, which simplified inventory replenishment – a previously complex and multi-system task. The integration of GenAI transformed it into a streamlined in-group operation.
The pinnacle of Belle’s GenAI integration came with the launch of their “Digital Employee for Goods” in 2023. This AI assistant automates the handling of goods reception and delivery discrepancies, tasks that traditionally required significant human intervention and communication. This adoption of GenAI not only streamlined processes but also boosted employee productivity and customer service quality.