Lingerie and specialist adult retailer Ann Summers partners with PMC to overhaul its data foundations

Ann Summers reports that it has completed the transformation of its data integration layer in a partnership with PMC.

As part of its transformation strategy, the lingerie retailer sought to modernise its core IT infrastructure, after its legacy systems had, through years of use, become overly complicated.  This was making its tech stack not only difficult to manage, slowing innovation and creating operational friction, but also expensive to maintain. 

“We’d gotten to the stage where we were continually building on top of things,” says Jeannette Copeland, Technology & Supply Chain Director at Ann Summers. “And that gets to the stage where you’re almost building on top of sand. We got to the point where we needed to dig in and change that.”

“With the most recent push from an AI perspective, unless you've got your data straightened out, it can hold you back.  We are trying to ensure we've got foundations within our data so we can scale in the future and that we've got options, so we don't find ourselves in a technical corner.”

The transformation project also needed to support Ann Summers’ marketplace strategy.  As a retailer of adult products, its website is often hidden from traditional online - and increasingly AI - search results. To ensure ongoing visibility, Ann Summers wanted to create more discoverability across marketplaces and third-party sellers, such as Next, which also required it to overhaul its data systems set-up.

Partnering with PMC, it replaced its legacy integrations with modular architecture, migrating its data layer to PMC’s unified commerce platform, Graphene, which is built on a microservices API led approach, cloud architecture and a headless structure.

Ann Summers reverse engineered more than 100 integrations to create a new commerce platform, offering it flexibility through more composable architecture that could adapt as its business needs changed.

“By restructuring its data integration layer, Ann Summers has opened up a much more strategic way of using insight to drive innovation, bringing its data as close to the source systems as possible,” says Elliott Winskill, Technology & Solutions Director. “By making that foundational data more strategic at the edge point, we’ve enabled Ann Summers to do more and, ultimately, deliver more, into the future.”

“We are now ready to scale and have a technology partner who can advise, develop and support new integrations during our growth strategy. This benefits teams in both businesses and, most importantly, our customers,” Copeland adds.

2026 RTIH Innovation Awards

AI will be a key focus area at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards.

The awards are now open for entries and celebrate global retail technology innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.

Our winners will be revealed at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony, taking place at The HAC in Central London on Wednesday, 4th November.

Check out our 2025 winners here.

Our 2025 hall of fame entrants were revealed during a sold out event which took place at The HAC on 16th October and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by award winning comedian, actress and writer Tiff Stevenson.

In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: “This is the awards’ fifth year as a physical event. We started off with just 30 people at the South Place Hotel not far from here, then moved to London Bridge Hotel, then The Barbican, and last year RIBA’s HQ in the West End.”

“But I’m conscious of the fact that, to quote the legend that is Taylor Swift, You’re only as hot as your last hit, baby. So, this year we’ve moved to our biggest venue yet, and also pulled in our largest number of entries to date and broken attendance records.”

He added: “This year’s submissions have without doubt been our best yet. To quote one of the judges: The examples of innovative developments across both traditional and digital retail spaces were truly remarkable.”

Congratulations to our winners, and a big thank you to our sponsors, judging panel, the legend that is Tiff Stevenson, and all those who attended our 2025 gathering.