Digital twins, augmented reality, and agentic AI are typically not things that come to mind when going out shopping.
And yet these technologies and more are constantly running behind the scenes to improve efficiency, at a time when consumer goods companies can lose up to 26 percent of their potential sales due to in-store execution issues.
Informing The Sociable on the industry’s present and future is Ruslan Okhrimovych, co-founder and CEO of Effie AI — a retail execution platform where humans and AI agents operate in a real time closed loop, turning shelf data into immediate action and verified execution.
Okhrimovych has been in the retail game for some 20-odd years, and he’s seen first-hand where companies were doing things right, but equally as important, where they were needing improvement.
“We are moving from systems of record and reporting toward systems that can interpret what is happening in a store, determine the appropriate next action, and help drive execution in real time”
Ruslan Okhrimovych, Co-Founder and CEO at Effie AI
“What’s very important is validation. You can think about it like an AI supervisor; right at the shelf, it’s checking and verifying if an execution went correctly or not“
Ruslan Okhrimovych, Co-Founder and CEO at Effie AI
From scanning shelves and identifying gaps with AR and computer vision to creating and executing entire action plans with agentic orchestration, Effie is not just making shopping trips smoother for customers, but saving retailers and merchandisers billions while speeding up their onboarding processes.
“Traditional retail execution platforms are very good at capturing data and highlighting execution gaps, but they generally stop there. They identify the problem rather than actively helping resolve it. AI is beginning to change that model,” says Okhrimovych.
“We are moving from systems of record and reporting toward systems that can interpret what is happening in a store, determine the appropriate next action, and help drive execution in real time.”
To illustrate how anybody could use Effie’s software with no training whatsoever, Okhrimovych and team set up a demo at an event in Chicago where passersby would simply hold up a phone, scan items on a prop shelf, and then follow the agent’s action plan.
In a few short moments, the users were able to complete tasks that would meet the standards of big corporations like PepsiCo without having any previous onboarding knowledge.
On the hardware side, right now the scanning process is done by a rep holding a phone and taking video. Okhrimovych says that in some cases this could one day be done with someone wearing AR glasses.
When it comes to takeaways concerning shelf audits, one of the most important aspects in this process, according to Okhrimovych, is validation.
“We’re not only making the first step to understand what is on the shelf compared with what should be done, then have tailored actions, but what’s very important is validation,” he said.
“You can think about it like an AI supervisor; right at the shelf, it’s checking and verifying if an execution went correctly or not.”
“Sales are made at the shelf […] What we give to our clients is this digital twin of what is going on at the shelf”
Ruslan Okhrimovych, Co-Founder and CEO at Effie AI
The shelf is where sales happen. Knowing where to place each item is crucial for putting eyes on the product — like promoting drinks and candy bars at the checkout stand, or displaying toys in a lower area where kids can see them.
Still, 78 percent of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies are dissatisfied with their ability to execute effectively at the shelf, according to the latest “State of the Industry” report from the Promotion Optimization Institute (POI), of which Effie is a member.
This is why having data of what’s happening at the shelf can provide key insights for optimization.
Said Okhrimovych, “When we are talking about data with our service, the main takeaway is that sales are made at the shelf, what we give to our clients is this digital twin of what is going on at the shelf.”
“When you combine all the information, it is good food for thinking, and we help with the thinking with our agent for analytics to make decisions.”
The future of in-person retail looks bright, with 80 percent of sales still happening in brick-and-mortar stores, but challenges still remain.
As for the CEO of Effie, he sees “an untapped opportunity to apply agentic technology to the real physical world at scale.”
Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.
Image Source: AI generated with Grok
