Value-led health & beauty retailer, Bodycare, is galvanising its High Street return with a community-led social strategy, optimising content from its fast-growing micro-influencer network with a custom-built AI platform, designed and delivered in partnership with commerce specialist, PMC.

As the retailer continues its comeback at pace, having already opened five stores in Sheffield, Derby, Leicester, Bradford and Dudley, Bodycare’s partnership with PMC is bringing its vision of a connected, community-led and AI-first store estate to life.

From store footfall to social feeds

Blending commerce and experiences in-store, Bodycare now runs all store operations through its proprietary, custom-built AI platform, AIMEE, which connects data across customers, inventory, trends, social content and store performance to continually improve decision-making.

Designed and built by PMC as the AI brain powering Bodycare’s store network, AIMEE underpins each store’s dedicated, free-to-use content production studios, which allow digital creators and micro-influencers to generate hyper-localised content that drives community engagement.

AIMEE onboards, briefs and collaborates with micro- and nano-influencers across Bodycare’s creator community, while analysing regional social trends against store inventory to optimise content subsequently produced by creators and Bodycare’s in-house production team.

“We’re not just bringing Bodycare back to the High Street; we’re reimagining what a value-led beauty store can be,” said Bodycare’s CMO, Tash Courtenay-Smith.

“Our ambition is to create spaces that are as much about community, creativity and connection as they are about commerce, always giving shoppers that reason to pop in.”

“By putting creators at the heart of our store experiences – and using AI to connect social trends with what happens on the shop floor – we’re creating a more responsive and relevant retail offering.  Working with PMC, we’ve been able to turn that vision into reality, building a new generation of stores that are shaped by the communities they serve.”

Powering engagement with micro-influencers strategy

Since its first store opening in July, Bodycare has onboarded 700 creators, with micro- and nano-influencer content already generating 7.5 million views. Insights from its digital creator network are then fed back into AIMEE, allowing the retailer to inform inventory allocation and forecasting based on live demand signals from social engagement.

Connecting the entire retail ecosystem, from social content creation through to in-store execution, AIMEE also informs the dynamic digital experiences delivered through PMC’s Interact digital display solution.

Transforming screens across Bodycare’s store estate into interactive customer touchpoints, Interact enables dynamic promotions, hyper-localised community content and user-generated content (UGC) takeovers, bringing engagement from social feeds directly into the physical store environment.

Blending boundaries between stores, social and AI

Supporting the wider in-store commerce experience, PMC has also deployed its Graphene Engage platform to power traditional, mobile and self-service checkout (SCO) experiences, delivering the connected transactional infrastructure underpinning Bodycare’s expanding store network.

“Bodycare is challenging the boundaries between physical retail, social commerce and AI to create a store model where content, community and commerce don’t just co-exist but become truly connected,” said Elliott Winskill, Technology & Solutions Director at PMC, who is also acting as Technical Lead for Bodycare.

“By building robust, composable foundations, we’ve enabled AIMEE to become the AI brain behind Bodycare’s operations, supported by connected digital and transactional infrastructure that brings together social intelligence, customer engagement and store operations.”

Building a new blueprint for AI-powered stores, Bodycare and PMC have been shortlisted for two 2026 Retail Technology Innovation Hub (RTIH) Awards. Named as finalists in both the Bricks and Mortar and AI Innovation (UK) categories, the partnership has been recognised for bringing cutting-edge innovation and live AI use cases to physical retail environments.