AI training at Cowshed

Cowshed is a botanical beauty and wellness brand. It was born in 1998 at Babington House in Somerset, the first Soho House club outside London, where perfumer Richard Howard formulated the original products using the house's Victorian walled garden.

Cowshed now runs 13 spas, from Primrose Hill and Soho Farmhouse to Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin and Miami, and sells bath and body, hair, skincare, candles and gifts direct to customers, through wholesale and through retail partners.

AI skills at Cowshed were mixed. Some people were confident users, while others didn't yet see how AI applied to their own roles, and there was a gap between sceptics and believers.

There was no structured way to adopt AI across the business and no shared foundation in the basics. Cowshed wanted to bring everyone to the same baseline, close the gap between basic and advanced users, and build a culture where AI is part of everyday work.

The 19 attendees came from five teams across the business:

• Commercial
• Brand
• Ecommerce
• Product
• Supply chain

General Purpose delivered three programmes for Cowshed, starting with a workshop in London on 9 April 2026:

1. 1Mastering ChatGPT: a workshop built on live Cowshed materials, from competitor tracking and contract review to retailer new line forms and buyer roleplay
2. 2AI Activation Programme: regular AI champions meetings and a custom use case library, built from the best use cases from the training, to keep adoption going after the workshop
3. 31:1 AI Coaching: one-to-one calls so team members can apply ChatGPT to their own projects

• 100% of attendees enjoyed the workshop, would recommend it to a colleague and said it will help them get more value from ChatGPT at work.
• Attendees expect to save 75 minutes each per day using ChatGPT, worth an estimated £115,000 a year across the team and a projected 8x return on the programme in its first year.
• 94% feel more confident spotting bias and hallucinations in AI output, and 89% feel positive about AI's impact on their career.

• Order tracker: pulls up outstanding orders and deliveries from Outlook
• Stock reconciliation: checks Business Central stock against Shopify across the business
• Customer pricing bible: one skill in place of several pricing spreadsheets
• Safety data sheet reviewer: a shared GPT that reviews product safety data sheets
• Website analytics: tracks average order value, conversion and device trends
• Buyer roleplay: sense-checks negotiations before buyer conversations
• Contract reviewer: reviews and compares supplier and legal contracts
• Sales and forecast tracker: compares sales with forecast, from Christmas lines to supply chain planning