CASE STUDY: SECRET SALES
Building an AI-enabled operating model for scalable growth
Secret Sales partnered with Retec to move from AI experimentation to a structured, measurable and scalable operating model, identifying more than £1m in annual growth and efficiency opportunities.
High-value automation opportunities
50
Annual growth and efficiency opportunties identified
£1m+
90 hours
➔ minutes
Monthly processes completed faster
Secret Sales is a business built on reinvention. Since relaunching as a curated marketplace, the company has combined brand strength, international expansion and technology-led execution to become one of the most dynamic players in off-price fashion.
As the business continues to scale, Secret Sales is now taking the next step: building an AI-enabled operating model designed to increase speed, improve decision-making and unlock operational leverage across the organisation.
From AI experimentation to scalable value
Secret Sales had already embraced AI, automation and modern tooling across parts of the business, particularly within technology, marketing and operations. The opportunity was to move from experimentation to a structured, measurable and scalable approach.
The ambition was clear: use AI and automation not as isolated tools, but as part of a repeatable operating model that could reduce manual effort, improve data visibility and give teams more time to focus on growth-driving decisions.
“We had already started using AI in pockets of the business and could see the potential. What we wanted was a way to turn that potential into something structured, measurable and built to scale.”
— Anthony Farrow, CTO, Secret Sales
Proving value quickly
Secret Sales partnered with Retec to deliver a focused, fast-moving engagement using OpsPilot AI, Retec’s structured delivery framework for AI automation powered by Claude agentic tools from Anthropic.
In just three weeks, the joint team:
assessed current operational processes;
identified and prioritised 50 high-value automation opportunities;
deployed working automations using real Secret Sales data;
created a scalable AI blueprint and operating model.
The results demonstrated immediate value. Monthly processes that previously required up to 90 hours of manual effort can now be completed in minutes. The wider roadmap identified more than £1m of annual growth and efficiency opportunities.
“The point wasn’t to introduce a clever tool and hope performance improved. We focused on real, repeatable tasks, proved the automations on live data and made the value clear.”
— Rodrigo Soares, Partner, Retec Group
Secret Sales Surface:
The semantic layer for AI execution
A key outcome of the engagement was the design of a coherent AI architecture, built around Secret Sales Surface.
Secret Sales Surface is the company’s semantic and business-logic layer. It gives AI agents, workflows and micro-apps governed access to the business context they need to operate accurately and securely.
Rather than asking AI to work directly across disconnected systems and raw data, Secret Sales Surface provides a shared layer of meaning. It connects core commerce, finance, trading, fulfilment and customer data with the definitions, rules and context that matter to the business.
This means automations can be built faster, governed more effectively and reused across multiple business processes.
The architecture is structured around four layers:
Core Systems
The business-critical platforms that support commerce, finance, fulfilment, trading and customer operations.
Data Platform
The data backbone that consolidates and contextualises information from across the business.
Secret Sales Surface
The semantic and integration layer that gives AI agents and workflows secure, governed and traceable access to business data and logic.
AI Agents & Automation
The value layer, where agents and workflows use business context to automate reporting, reconciliation, trading and operational tasks.
This approach ensures governance, traceability and security are built into the foundation, rather than added later. Every new automation can inherit the same controls and standards.
Building a repeatable AI capability
With the first automations already proving value, Secret Sales is now building Secret Sales Surface at pace and moving through the prioritised roadmap of opportunities.
The objective is not a one-off AI project. It is a repeatable delivery model that allows Secret Sales to identify, build and scale high-value automations across the business.
“Working with Retec we proved what was possible in weeks. Now we are building the foundation that lets us do it again and again.”
— Anthony Farrow, CTO, Secret Sales
For Secret Sales, this is the next stage of a familiar story: thinking ambitiously, moving quickly and using technology to create a more scalable, intelligent and efficient business.
AI and automation are not replacing the expertise of the team. They are giving experts more time, better data and stronger tools to make the decisions that drive growth.