Pixyle AI CEO discusses product data ownership as an organisational problem in retail

Svetlana Kordumova, founder and CEO of Pixyle AI, joined a LinkedIn Live session of the AI & eCommerce Talks series on 23 June 2026 to discuss a persistent problem in retail: who is responsible for product data, and why does that so often go wrong? Her conversation partner was Meriel Neighbour, Global Transformation Director and former leader at British fashion retailer River Island.

The discussion focused on fragmented data processes and unclear ownership questions that hold retailers back in their scaling ambitions. Kordumova and Neighbour explored how such bottlenecks arise, what consequences they have for retail performance, and what organisations can concretely do to better align their product operations.

Product data as an organisational issue

Central to the session was the observation that product data problems are often not technical in nature, but organisational. In many retail companies, responsibilities are spread across buying, marketing, e-commerce and IT, with no single team or function holding ultimate accountability for the quality and consistency of product information. This leads to duplicated work, errors in descriptions and delayed time-to-market for new collections.

Topics covered included product data governance, cross-functional collaboration and the question of how to structure organisational ownership. Neighbour brought hands-on experience from her time at River Island, where such issues play out at scale. Kordumova complemented that with the perspective of an AI platform that works with the data realities of fashion retailers on a daily basis.

Pixyle AI, founded in 2018 and headquartered in Amsterdam, builds software that enables fashion retailers to automatically generate product data and descriptions based on images. The company had around 24 employees as of March 2026 and works with retailers including Tendam, Otrium, Miinto and Depop.

Background on Pixyle AI

Kordumova completed a PhD in AI and Computer Vision at the University of Amsterdam before founding Pixyle AI. Co-founder Roland Simon joined the company in 2020. In December 2022, Pixyle AI raised a seed investment of one million euros from South Central Ventures; earlier, in November 2018, Rockstart participated in a prior seed round for an undisclosed amount. Total capital raised stands at approximately 1.05 million euros.

The platform has processed more than 250 million images to date, according to the company. Pixyle AI operates from the Netherlands and also has an office in North Macedonia.

Relevance to the broader AI and retail sector

The discussion connects to a wider debate in the European retail sector about the role of AI in streamlining content and data processes. As fashion retailers offer more SKUs online and seek to move faster, the pressure on product information systems increases. This makes questions of governance and ownership pressing, regardless of which technology a company deploys.

For Dutch AI companies targeting retail, the session illustrates that technical capability alone is not sufficient to gain traction with large retailers. The question of how to bring internal organisations along on data improvement is at least as decisive as the quality of the underlying model. The fact that Kordumova engages in this conversation publicly alongside an experienced retail transformation director reflects a positioning that goes beyond product demonstrations alone.