Physical retail has spent the last decade watching e-commerce lap it on data. Every click, every scroll, every abandoned cart tracked, tagged, and fed back into decision-making within hours. Meanwhile, in-store teams have been making million-dollar layout decisions off spreadsheets, planograms, and gut feel. That gap is finally closing — and one of the more interesting companies pushing that shift forward happens to be Australian.

We’re a certified Planoverse implementation partner in Australia. Here’s why.

Physical retail’s data problem is finally getting solved

In its recent write-up of the 2026 NRF APAC Innovators Showcase, Forrester made the point directly: physical retail has lagged far behind digital in data sophistication — but that’s changing. This year’s in-store innovators are bringing the intelligence layer that brick-and-mortar has long been missing, using AI, sensors, and digital twins to give retailers the same granular visibility offline that they’ve enjoyed online for years.

Planoverse was mentioned for their work with Woolworths on store space optimisation. Notable company for an Australian startup.

How does Planoverse deliver value?

Planoverse is an AI-powered 3D software platform that builds digital twins of physical retail stores. Not a diagram or a planogram — a full interactive 3D environment where every asset (shelves, cameras, POS systems, refrigeration units, signage) is represented with its actual data attached. That means:

• Layouts can be tested and simulated before a single fixture moves.
• Fragmented systems — inventory, POS, CCTV analytics — are unified in one visual layer.
• Refits can be modelled digitally, cutting the guesswork out of major capex decisions.
• Store teams can navigate their store’s data the way they navigate the physical store.

The idea sounds simple. The execution is not. Getting every store system to feed into a single visual environment reliably takes real engineering — and clean data underneath it.

Why the data layer matters (and why we’re in the picture)

That last point is the reason EdgeRed exists in this partnership.

Planoverse can only optimise what your data lets it see. If your inventory data doesn’t line up with your POS, if your shelf metadata is out of date, if your CCTV analytics live in a system nobody’s connected to the main warehouse — the digital twin will still be value adding but not living up to its potential. This is the pattern we see over and over: exciting tech waiting on a data foundation that isn’t ideal or ready.

As Planoverse’s first certified implementation partner in Australia, we do the data work that makes the platform actually deliver — building the integrations, cleaning the inputs, and connecting the disparate systems into something Planoverse can render against.

How a joint pilot works

Planoverse runs pilots in four to eight weeks. Here’s how our joint delivery breaks down:

• Business strategy: we run workshops to understand your pain points and where digital twins can move the needle.
• Proof of concept: Planoverse builds a working digital twin against a use case you select, at minimal cost.
• Pilot with clarity: we do the data work to elevate what Planoverse can see, they customise their software to your workflows, and we implement it together.
• Scale with confidence: once the pilot validates the outcomes, we build the roadmap to roll it out across your network.

The four to eight week pilot window is deliberate. It’s short enough that you can validate real business impact before committing to scale — and long enough to actually do the data work properly.

What this means for Australian retailers

Retail in Australia has some structural things going for it: a small number of large players, sophisticated supply chains, and (in the top tier) genuinely good analytical maturity on the e-commerce side. What’s been missing is the in-store equivalent.

Planoverse is one of the few tools we’ve seen that closes that gap credibly. And with EdgeRed handling the data layer, retailers can get to real value in weeks rather than years.

Want to see if this fits your stores?

If you’re thinking about how AI and digital twins could work inside your retail operations — or if you just want a look at what Planoverse actually does — we’re happy to run through it. As the first certified Planoverse partner in Australia, we can walk you through the tech, the pilot process, and what your data foundation would need to look like to get real value out of it. Chat with us.