Health and beauty retailer, Bodycare, says it is boosting its high street return with a community led social strategy, optimising content from its micro-influencer network with a custom built AI platform, designed and delivered in partnership with PMC.

The retailer, which last year closed all its stores after collapsing into adminstration, is continuing its comeback, having opened five stores in Sheffield, Derby, Leicester, Bradford and Dudley. Blending commerce and experiences in-store, it now runs all store operations through its proprietary 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,” says 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.”

Since its first store opening in July, Bodycare has onboarded 700 creators, with micro- and nano-influencer content now 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 experiences delivered through PMC's Interact digital display solution. Supporting the wider in-store commerce experience, PMC has also deployed its Graphene Engage platform to power traditional, mobile and self-service checkout experiences.

“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,” says Elliott Winskill, Technology & Solutions Director at PMC, who is also acting as Technical Lead at 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."

2026 RTIH Innovation Awards

Bodycare and PMC have been shortlisted in two categories at the 2026 RTIH Innovation 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.