Industry guide: Retail and Consumer Goods
This guide highlights a number of sessions at re:Invent 2024 that showcase how retail and consumer goods companies are innovating faster, operating more efficiently, and collaborating together on the world’s most broadly adopted cloud service.
Ravi Bagal
General Manager, Retail and Consumer Goods, AWS
On behalf of the AWS for Retail and Consumer Goods industry teams, I’m excited to welcome you to re:Invent 2024.
In this attendee guide, you’ll find a list of relevant events and recommendations to help you make the most of your time in Las Vegas, Nevada. We recommend attending our compelling breakout sessions led by industry peers as well as hands-on technical sessions led by AWS experts. Please visit the session catalog to learn more as we will be adding more details over the coming weeks.
We also encourage you to stop by the industry demos to meet team members and learn more about AWS for Retail and Consumer Goods. In the meantime, be sure to keep an eye on the AWS Retail and Consumer Goods blog and follow us on our LinkedIn page to stay up to date on all things retail and consumer goods at re:Invent.
Breakout session
BIZ226 | Amazon Just Walk Out: Streamlining autonomous checkout with RFID
In this session, get an in-depth look at how RFID-powered autonomous checkout works and the tangible benefits it can deliver for your business. Learn how the latest RFID advancements enable a frictionless, lightning-fast self-checkout experience for customers; reduce labor costs and shrink; and streamline inventory management. Whether you're looking to enhance the shopper experience, boost profitability, or optimize operations, this session provides you with both a practical understanding of how autonomous checkout can transform your retail operations, as well as a roadmap for implementation.
SUS305 | Assessing climate risk with spatial analysis on AWS
Organizations around the globe are reacting to a rapidly changing physical environment. To stay resilient, customers need to quickly develop scalable systems to ingest and analyze large datasets with real-time climate and location information. From assessing climate impact to managing environmental risk, with Amazon Redshift support for spatial data and native integration to ML models through Amazon SageMaker, customers can rapidly develop analysis that helps them respond to natural world changes. In this session, learn how Tokio Marine Highland uses CARTO’s spatial analytics platform on AWS to manage climate risk and assess impacts of severe weather to its business.
SUS305-SC1 | Assessing climate risk with spatial analysis on AWS [SIMULCAST]
Organizations around the globe are reacting to a rapidly changing physical environment. To stay resilient, customers need to quickly develop scalable systems to ingest and analyze large datasets with real-time climate and location information. From assessing climate impact to managing environmental risk, with Amazon Redshift support for spatial data and native integration to ML models through Amazon SageMaker, customers can rapidly develop analysis that helps them respond to natural world changes. In this session, learn how Tokio Marine Highland uses CARTO’s spatial analytics platform on AWS to manage climate risk and assess impacts of severe weather to its business.
IOT205 | Beyond connectivity: Transforming businesses with intelligent IoT
This session explores how recent advancements in AI are evolving the Internet of Things (IoT) into an engine for real-world intelligence, autonomy, and actionable insights. Explore how an increasingly connected world is driving deeper systems-level intelligence across healthcare, consumer products, automotive, manufacturing, energy, and utilities. The HP Inc. team shares their journey revolutionizing the world of industrial printing through intelligent automation. Finally, learn how to get started with IoT and AI/ML services on AWS and patterns to accelerate time to value when building and deploying intelligent IoT products and solutions.
BWP302 | Building and releasing robust generative AI solutions on AWS
Discover how to release robust generative AI solutions with the Buy with Prime team. Learn best practices for building safe, reliable, and scalable merchant support and customer experiences on Amazon Bedrock, Connect, and Lex for direct-to-consumer merchants using Buy with Prime. Gain insights into evaluation and pilot approaches for quick iteration on relevancy, ensuring the best customer experience. Whether new or experienced with generative AI, explore the team's hands-on investigation of various options and frameworks for secure iteration.
BWP303 | Centric Brands: A journey using AWS analytics and Amazon services
Learn how a leading retailer, Centric Brands, created a direct-to-consumer business using AWS analytics services and Amazon’s composable ecommerce services such as Buy with Prime, Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment, and Reviews from Amazon. Hear how they used AWS to build core capabilities such as automated order management and financial reconciliation to eliminate manual effort and how this same model can be reused to enhance your ecommerce offerings.
BWP304 | Fast evolving GraphQL schema with federation
In this session, dive into advanced strategies for managing and scaling high-performance GraphQL APIs through the lens of the Buy with Prime API, Amazon’s first API that enables developers to build Prime and non-Prime shopping features into their ecommerce systems. Discover innovative version management techniques, streamlined release processes, and scaling solutions for federated GraphQL architectures. Explore practical examples of AWS Fargate–based patterns and generative AI testing approaches used in Buy with Prime’s implementation. Join us to enhance your GraphQL infrastructure for scale and resilience.
AMZ301 | Generative AI for millions: Amazon's Rufus and review highlights
This session explores two Amazon.com generative AI solutions: Rufus, a real-time shopping assistant, and review highlights, which summarizes customer reviews offline. The Amazon teams behind these solutions share strategies for using generative AI at scale, addressing unique challenges, and meeting customer needs. The presentation delves into Amazon's approach of combining hybrid ML workflows using Amazon SageMaker and massive-scale, real-time inferencing using 80,000 AWS Inferentia and AWS Trainium chipsets. Discover how Amazon continuously evolves its generative AI solutions to create cost-effective, high-quality, and customer-centric experiences for customers.
IDE202 | Grupo Boticário’s AI-accessibility journey for inclusive e-commerce
Grupo Boticário, a prominent Brazilian beauty company, embarked on a transformative journey to enhance the accessibility of their e-commerce platform through the power of artificial intelligence. Using Amazon Bedrock and the Anthropic Claude 3 Sonnet model, they automated the generation of rich, descriptive alternative text for product images, revolutionizing the experience for visually impaired users and improving search engine indexing. This session delves into Grupo Boticário’s innovative approach, the challenges they overcame, and the measurable impact on inclusion and accessibility within their digital ecosystem, serving as a blueprint for organizations aspiring to create truly inclusive online experiences.
SEG207 | HelloFresh’s data journey: Insights from scaling to 1 billion meals
HelloFresh’s explosive growth—200% yearly data expansion while scaling to eight brands across 18 countries—isn’t just a typical data mesh story. It’s a journey of hard-earned lessons in navigating a cultural transformation to fully harness the power of data. In this session, discover how HelloFresh, with AWS Cloud solutions, built an innovative, cost-effective data ecosystem. Explore how they overcame initial failures and challenges through cross-functional collaboration, training, and enablement. Gain practical insights into scaling data platforms, early-stage planning, and building the foundations for delivering personalized, scalable food solutions globally. Learn the lessons they wish they had known from the start.
ARC328 | How Amazon.com uses AWS Regions to improve customer experience
Learn how and why Amazon.com is expanding to more AWS Regions and building services so they can be easily deployed and moved to different regions. In this session discover the benefits of using multiple AWS Regions and Amazon.com’s learnings and best practices for building and managing regionally flexible services. Learn about approaches for decoupling services from specific regions, managing application latency and dependencies, and architecting to leverage the benefits of region diversity, customer proximity, and cost optimization that can be gained from a region flexible deployment.
RCG206 | How Nykaa automates product descriptions using generative AI
Inaccurate or incomplete online product descriptions can lower a retailer’s conversion rates and impact revenue. Join this session to learn how Nykaa, India’s largest online beauty and personal care retailer, is using machine learning and generative AI to identify product attributes from images and generate standard product descriptions, improving accuracy, productivity, and click-through rates.
RCG203 | How US Foods successfully built and scaled a generative AI sales tool
Join this session to learn how US Foods, a leading foodservice distributor, built an automated order guide to enable sales productivity using Amazon Bedrock. The VP of Machine Learning Engineering shares how he and his team identified the right use case, quickly built and tested feasibility with a lightweight proof of concept, quantified business impact to secure executive buy-in, and moved to production.
SUS205 | Integrating generative AI effectively into sustainability strategies
Generative AI can materially support sustainability programs by simplifying the process of analyzing environmental data to simulating new designs to evaluating product lifecycles in a fraction of the time. This session covers the fundamentals of generative AI in sustainability programs, including how to ensure alignment with broader organizational objectives. Learn how Amazon Bedrock helps AWS customer Mercado Diferente reduce 35 tons of organic food waste per month.
RCG201 | Kellanova and WK Kellogg’s cloud-powered transformation with AWS
When the global snacking powerhouse Kellanova, formerly known as Kellogg Company, announced the separation of its North American cereal business, WK Kellogg, both companies relied on cloud technologies to power everything from manufacturing to supply chain to pricing. After the split, their CIOs knew they needed to continue to build a dynamic environment on AWS to optimize their SAP workloads, enhance revenue growth management and trade promotion management, and increase sales. In this session, learn the instrumental role AWS played in their journey and how the companies are using the power of the cloud and AI to unlock new opportunities.
DEV204 | Searching images through patterns: An AI-powered serverless solution
Discover how we leveraged Amazon Bedrock with Claude 3 Haiku to simplify image searching in the textile industry. This session describes the implementation of a scalable, secure, and cost-effective solution for searching textile patterns using AI-driven attribute recognition. We'll explore the use of AWS Lambda, Amazon Aurora Serverless, AWS Step Functions, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon Bedrock to process and index thousands of images. Gain insights into applying cutting-edge AI and serverless technologies to solve industry-specific challenges while maintaining security and optimizing costs.
IOT204-S | Transform troubleshooting in manufacturing with AWS gen AI services (sponsored by Cognizant)
Manufacturers are using advanced digital technologies to address complex support issues for machines. By setting up an emerging manufacturing technology lab, Cognizant and Trane Technologies have implemented solutions that help in real-time monitoring of machine performance, perform remote triage, and troubleshoot issues. In this session, learn how Cognizant’s APEx utilizes large language models, RAG orchestration, and generative AI running on AWS IoT services to develop new digital technologies. Discover how Trane Technologies envisions deploying these technologies across their factories and assets, and learn about Cognizant and Trane Technologies’ joint vision of incorporating additional use cases in the coming months. This presentation is brought to you by Cognizant, an AWS Partner.
MAM208 | Transforming manufacturing with AWS, RISE with SAP, and Amazon
Leading manufacturers are using RISE with SAP, purpose-built AWS services, and Amazon’s extensive sourcing and logistics capabilities to transform their operations. In this session, hear how manufacturers have migrated to RISE with SAP on AWS, streamlining operations and benefiting from the performance, reliability, and security of ERP in the cloud. Learn how companies are extending their SAP environments to MES and PLM systems with 200+ AWS services—including generative AI, IoT, and analytics—to optimize productivity, quality, machine availability, and sustainability. Lastly, discover how Amazon Business and Supply Chain by Amazon can help optimize procurement, global shipping, storage, and fulfillment.
RCG205 | Unlocking a unified experience: Hermès’ journey to composability
Hermès, contemporary artisans since 1837, created veritable houses for objects both online and in its international network of stores that differ from one another through their unique offers. To deliver this omnichannel experience, Hermès embarked on a journey to build a composable commerce system using a robust set of APIs, AWS serverless technologies, and managed databases. Learn how Hermès broke down data silos, streamlined the movement of products between their digital and physical channels, and created a unified customer experience to delight its loyal community.
AIM269-S | Using open source blueprints for building AI applications (sponsored by MongoDB)
Generative AI is advancing rapidly, making it crucial to adopt an open architecture that supports learning and accelerates application development. Integrating MongoDB at the core of an AI stack, especially within open source AI blueprints, boosts the AI development lifecycle. MongoDB’s ability to handle large, diverse datasets (including vector data), coupled with its scalability and flexible schema, make it essential for AI-driven architectures. By centralizing data management and offering seamless integration with AI models, MongoDB accelerates development, deployment, and scaling of AI applications. It simplifies complex data workflows and ensures that AI solutions are robust, adaptable, and prepared for real-world challenges. This presentation is brought to you by MongoDB, an AWS Partner.
MAM223 | Versuni rapidly reinvented their enterprise with RISE with SAP on AWS
Hear how Versuni, home to some of the world’s most renowned domestic appliance brands, accelerated its cloud transformation by deploying RISE with SAP and migrating 80+ business applications to AWS in only 18 months. Following a transition within this 130-year-old company, Versuni had to act fast to transform and migrate its technical estate. Versuni selected AWS for RISE with SAP. In record time, it implemented a complete business application landscape – supporting more than 40 countries and 7,000 employees – while minimizing business disruption. This session provides learnings to accelerate your own business transformation with AWS and RISE with SAP.
PRO205 | Warehouse automation with cutting-edge supply chain solutions
Discover how Amazon created the world's fastest, most agile, and complex network of fulfillment centers through Warehouse Automation and Optimization (WAO). This session explores the digital warehouse transformation journey, the roadmap to achieve an optimized state, and demonstrates AWS's cutting-edge supply chain solutions, including facility design, simulation, automation, robotics, warehouse systems, connected data strategy, computer vision, IoT, digital twin, document digitization, and analytics and visibility. Although WAO is built for fulfillment/distribution centers, it can also be leveraged for yards, sort centers, cross-docks, transload sites, reverse logistics/returns centers, and other related nodes of a supply chain network.
Chalk talk
RCG302 | Boost consumer goods advertising performance with AWS and Amazon
In this chalk talk, consumer goods companies learn how to use innovative AWS and Amazon services to optimize advertising and marketing performance. Learn how to effectively segment and target customers, securely plan and collaborate with advertising and marketing partners, use generative AI to create engaging and visually rich experiences, and generate near real-time analytics that can be used to measure and enhance campaign results.
IOT309 | Design smart home solutions for resiliency and scalability on AWS IoT
Unlock the full potential of IoT in the smart home domain with AWS IoT. In this chalk talk, learn how to build robust and scalable smart home solutions with AWS IoT. Explore key considerations and best practices for designing resilient and scalable architectures that can handle large-scale deployments. From device connectivity and management to real-time interaction and control, discover the strategies and architectures that will empower you to create an IoT ecosystem that delights your consumers.
SEG301 | Drive consumer engagement with AWS graph database service & gen AI
Businesses grapple with customer relationships spanning multiple channels. Understanding these interactions is essential for enhancing engagement. This chalk talk explores how AWS graph technology, used with generative AI, can unravel these complexities. The talk demonstrates how to use Amazon Neptune, Amazon Bedrock, and AWS End User Messaging to model a 360-degree customer and extract entity relationships. Learn how end-to-end data integration not only automates the identification of user behavior patterns but also enhances engagement strategies across diverse industries where complex relationship modelling is required, bringing your data from insights to action.
RCG301 | Generative AI for retail API development
In this chalk talk, the AWS retail tech team shares their experience using generative AI to design API models and build API implementation code for retail solutions. Learn an open source framework they developed to help customers build service-oriented retail applications. The framework leverages generative AI capabilities powered by Amazon Bedrock to streamline API development processes. See a demonstration on how it can be used for rapid prototyping and accelerating the delivery of retail services. During the talk, evaluate the framework, and then discuss with the team how it can be applied to your own retail services development initiatives. Feedback and collaboration opportunities are welcome.
STG303-R1 | How to optimize AWS storage for generative AI and ML workloads [REPEAT]
Scaling deep learning programs into production often comes with its challenges, and you can’t have high-quality data modeling if your storage isn’t optimized for performance scalability. Getting this wrong can lead to unexpected cost and performance issues. In this interactive chalk talk, get answers to your questions related to selecting and optimizing storage for AI and ML workloads so you can build better, innovate faster, and deploy at scale.
RCG303 | Maximize customer engagement and ROI with retail media networks
This chalk talk dives deep into the world of retail media networks, exploring how retailers can leverage these powerful channels to drive results. Participants gain a comprehensive understanding of how to architect a retail media network using AWS services for activation, intelligence orchestration, analytics and data collaboration, storage processing integration, and collection ingestion. Leave with actionable strategies to enhance customer engagement and drive measurable ROI.
IOT201 | Retail revolution: AWS IoT & computer vision for frictionless stores
In today’s retail landscape, consumers expect seamless shopping experiences. In this chalk talk, dive into how AWS IoT and Amazon Kinesis Video Streams help retailers enhance in-store interactions using computer vision. Explore how to integrate AWS IoT Core with in-store cameras and sensors and use Kinesis Video Streams for real-time cloud video streaming. By deploying advanced computer vision algorithms, retailers can create automated stores, bypassing traditional checkout processes. This talk covers the architecture of frictionless store solutions and practical strategies for overcoming deployment challenges, illustrating how these technologies boost customer satisfaction and operational efficiency in contemporary retail settings.
BIZ204-R1 | Smarter, faster, better: Using generative AI on your supply chain data [REPEAT]
Join this chalk talk to learn how you can use the generative AI capabilities in AWS Supply Chain to get more value from your supply chain data. The talk includes an interactive discussion about how you can access a broader range of data faster, then use that data with the help of generative AI to minimize risk, lower costs, and make better supply chain decisions.
BIZ204-R | Smarter, faster, better: Using generative AI on your supply chain data [REPEAT]
Join this chalk talk to learn how you can use the generative AI capabilities in AWS Supply Chain to get more value from your supply chain data. The talk includes an interactive discussion about how you can access a broader range of data faster, then use that data with the help of generative AI to minimize risk, lower costs, and make better supply chain decisions.
IOT312 | Talking to your smart home using conversational generative AI
Discover how generative AI can revolutionize smart home experiences by enabling intelligent, responsive multistep task planning and execution, such as building grocery lists based on fridge contents. In this chalk talk, learn foundational concepts for connecting smart home devices to the cloud and building conversational generative AI systems to interact with the physical world. Using large language models, explore how to integrate sensor data, automate smart home devices, and orchestrate applications to generate actions and recommendations based on context from sensors or cloud data sources.
Workshop
AIM206-S | From prototype to production: Build a RAG app using DataStax and AWS (sponsored by DataStax)
DataStax offers a comprehensive platform to accelerate AI application development and deployment that supports RAG applications from prototype to production with high relevancy, low latency, and scalability. In this workshop, learn more about Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), and explore how to use DataStax Astra DB, Langflow, and Amazon Bedrock to ultimately build a complete gen AI chatbot. You must bring your laptop to participate. This presentation is brought to you by DataStax, an AWS Partner.
BIZ206 | Implementing resilient omni-channel notifications with AWS
In today's fast-paced business environment, it's critical to have reliable and timely communication channels to reach your customers. In this workshop, walk through the process of building a resilient omni-channel notification system that uses both primary and fallback communication channels to ensure your time-sensitive messages are delivered. Learn how to use AWS services like Amazon API Gateway, AWS Lambda, AWS End User Messaging, and Amazon SES to create a solution that monitors message delivery and automatically triggers a secondary channel if the primary channel fails within a specified time. Gain the knowledge to deploy your own customizable omni-channel communication solution that provides redundancy and improves customer engagement. You must bring your laptop to participate.
IOT302 | The future: Where smart home meets AI-powered robots
In this workshop, embark on a journey into the future of smart homes by bringing cloud-connected robots to life. Use AWS IoT Core to seamlessly integrate a robotic companion into a home network. Unlock its full potential with AWS IoT Greengrass, deploying cutting-edge AI capabilities like vision processing and natural language interaction powered by Claude 3, a multi-modal large language model. Witness your robotic assistant choreograph delightful dance routines and respond to your commands with the magic of Amazon Bedrock generative AI. Finally, explore innovative IoT scenarios including intelligent appliance control orchestrated by your cloud-connected robotic companion. You must bring your laptop to participate.
IOT303-R | Unlock real-time video intelligence with Amazon Kinesis & Rekognition [REPEAT]
Dive deep with real-time video intelligence in this immersive workshop, featuring Amazon Kinesis Video Streams and Amazon Rekognition. Through interaction with real cameras, gain practical insights into ingesting and storing video from camera devices, enabling both live and on-demand playback, and facilitating seamless video file downloads with Kinesis Video Streams. Discover the cutting-edge capabilities of Amazon Rekognition Video and explore object recognition and near real-time video analysis. Whether you’re a developer, data scientist, or technology enthusiast, join this workshop to unlock the possibilities of real-time video intelligence and elevate your understanding of modern video analytics solutions. You must bring your laptop to participate.
IOT303-R1 | Unlock real-time video intelligence with Amazon Kinesis & Rekognition [REPEAT]
Dive deep with real-time video intelligence in this immersive workshop, featuring Amazon Kinesis Video Streams and Amazon Rekognition. Through interaction with real cameras, gain practical insights into ingesting and storing video from camera devices, enabling both live and on-demand playback, and facilitating seamless video file downloads with Kinesis Video Streams. Discover the cutting-edge capabilities of Amazon Rekognition Video and explore object recognition and near real-time video analysis. Whether you’re a developer, data scientist, or technology enthusiast, join this workshop to unlock the possibilities of real-time video intelligence and elevate your understanding of modern video analytics solutions. You must bring your laptop to participate.
BWP301 | Unlocking insights from enterprise ecommerce data with Amazon Bedrock
This workshop empowers participants with the knowledge and skills to leverage Amazon Bedrock, a state-of-the-art AI platform, to explore ecommerce data using natural language inputs on any ecommerce data source. Learn to ingest and store ecommerce data from Buy with Prime APIs using AWS services and gain experience creating personalized recommendations generated by Amazon Bedrock. Through real-world case studies and interactive discussions, acquire practical skills for using Amazon Bedrock and raw data from Buy with Prime APIs to create a data explorer that generates responses using dynamic SQL queries from a natural language input interface. You must bring your laptop to participate.
AIM317 | Voice of the Customer classification with Amazon foundation models
In the retail industry, understanding the Voice of the Customer (VOC) is crucial for insights into customer preferences and pain points. By analyzing and categorizing customer feedback, retailers can improve their products, services, and overall customer experience. This two-hour hands-on workshop guides you through four labs focused on classifying VOC using Amazon foundation models on Amazon Bedrock. These cover prompt engineer, use of embedding models and semantic classification, use of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) for VOC classification, and fine-tuning of a large language model (LLM) using a custom dataset to achieve precise VOC classification tailored to your business needs. You must bring your laptop to participate.
CDN302 | Write, deploy & monitor Amazon CloudFront Functions & KeyValueStore
Amazon CloudFront offers programmable and secure edge CDN computing capabilities to run lightweight JavaScript code at edge locations. This serverless computing solution is designed to operate closer to end users, which results in reduced latency and improved performance. In this workshop, dive into building and deploying edge compute functions, including URL rewrites and access authorization, using CloudFront Functions and KeyValueStore. Discover how to leverage Amazon Q Developer, an AI-powered tool designed for developers, to streamline code creation and enhance efficiency. Gain the skills to deploy, monitor, and write functions with confidence. You must bring your laptop to participate.