JO DRAKE
THE TECHNOLOGY INTERVIEW
Joni jeans, skater skirts and biker jackets: for years, these defined the Topshop brand. Earlier this year, however, the British label set out to redefine itself through a world record – breaking catwalk event. Partnering with THG Studios, PayPal and Google Cloud, Topshop turned the traditional runway into a living, shoppable ecosystem. Driven by AI and featuring 30 in-person models, the show allowed attendees to purchase 85 % of the collection live on the night, seamlessly merging high fashion with real-time tech.
“ Topshop wanted us to create the world’ s longest AI immersive catwalk,” says Jo Drake, Chief Technology Officer( CTO) at THG Ingenuity, the enterprise e-commerce, digital marketing and fulfillment platform provider.“ We built an app where you could hold your phone up as the models walk down the catwalk and actually buy the items directly through your camera lens. Normally, catwalk trends take months to hit shelves. This time, you could buy the look the moment it stepped off the runway.”
THG Ingenuity developed the shopping agent for Topshop using Gemini, as well as Virtual Triumph – a feature allowing users to test product combinations in an outfit builder to check if a dress goes with a pair of shoes, jacket or bag.
“ We built these super duper quickly for Topshop, got the world record and then everybody wanted us to get these products to market even faster,” Jo recalls.
This set the scene for THG Ingenuity’ s AI Shopping Assistant. Powered by the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, the tool moves past the limitations of traditional, rigid chatbots to serve as a hyperpersonalised, context-aware digital shopping companion that learns a brand’ s unique tone of voice and complex product catalogue.
With a bit of tweaking, learning and testing, THG Ingenuity brought AI Shopping Assistant to Google Marketplace.“ We realised it needs to be child’ s play – anyone needs to be able to run this assistant on any website,” Jo says.
The team from THG Ingenuity showcased the new app at Google Cloud Summit London in June.
“ As retailers came up to us to talk about the product, we were building it for them there,” Jo says.
JO DRAKE
TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
COMPANY: THG INGENUITY INDUSTRY: E-COMMERCE LOCATION: MANCHESTER, UK
With a career spanning Accenture, the BBC and Skyscanner, Jo brings deep tech experience to THG. Now CTO of THG Ingenuity, she leads its AI-driven retail revolution.
28 September 2026