Levi Strauss & Co.’s investment in artificial intelligence doesn’t start and stop with back-office operations.
This winter, the San Francisco-based company completed its first AI-focused hackathon across the teams of its Digital & Technology organization.
The event served as a capstone to LS&Co.’s company-wide AI learning and training initiatives, giving teams the opportunity to apply their knowledge and push beyond what they previously thought possible with AI.
In an Unzipped blog post, the company emphasized how AI gives individuals access to capabilities that would normally require specialized skills and training. The hackathon also highlighted how AI can enhance—not replace—employees’ expertise.
“Non-technical product managers were building functional prototypes. Commercial team stakeholders were contributing to technical solutions. Engineers were creating and presenting polished presentations with compelling narratives explaining the features and how they supported business initiatives,” the company stated.
LS&Co.’s Digital & Technology leadership team narrowed 40 teams to 10 semi-finalists. The winning team—Abhinav Srivastava and Abhik Das—created a prototype of a feature for Levi.com called Imagine on Me, which uses generative AI to help shoppers virtually try on a product on the website and see how it looks on them versus a model. The enhanced experience aims to increase shopper satisfaction and conversion rates while reducing return rates.
Imagine on Me will be incorporated into LS&CO.’s Digital & Technology team’s roadmap.
“Thank you to everyone who participated in this hackathon. Your creativity, dedication and willingness to jump in and experiment with new technologies and reimagine what’s possible is exactly what we need to be a frontier firm in AI adoption,” said David Brunelle, LS&Co. SVP of engineering. “This hackathon demonstrated how AI can break down silos and exemplified how AI will help accelerate our evolution into a best-in-class DTC-first retailer.”
Last fall, LS&Co.announced it was partnering with Microsoft to develop an integrated agentic AI platform to help “rewire and automate” workflows across global IT, human resources, operations and more.
Developed for LS&Co.’s corporate employees, the platform is built around a single “super-agent” to simplify and automate task-driven work throughout the organization. It will act as an intelligent intermediary, drawing on the strengths of each specialized agent to deliver better support, insights and automation throughout the business, making complex and repetitive work more efficient and accessible.
