How a Unified Commerce Platform Became the Foundation for AI-First Retail

PMC first announced Graphene in 2023 as a platform designed to connect every part of a brand’s operation into a single live environment. Three years on, some of the most demanding names in UK commerce have put that original vision to the test, and the platform has expanded into four distinct modules, shaped by real-world needs and an increasingly challenging market.

Bodycare, a Premier League Football Club, Ann Summers and Crew Clothing are among the brands now running on Graphene. Each brought different challenges, and the platform expanded to meet them.

Graphene now has four distinct modules. Graphene Engage is the customer-facing layer, handling commerce across stores, stadiums, pop-ups, social and online, all from one product catalogue, basket and customer view. Graphene Connect replaces middleware and point-to-point integrations with a single commerce integration platform. Graphene Explore delivers real-time analytics across channels, and Graphene Learn brings AI and machine learning to demand forecasting, pricing and personalisation.

The rollouts have moved quickly. Crew Clothing went from first deployment to 100 stores in a month, finishing a national rollout in ten weeks. Ann Summers had over 150 integrations across its estate. Graphene Connect brought them together in four months and shifted the infrastructure from a six-figure annual cost to a serverless model at a fraction of the price. A Premier League Football Club used Graphene Engage to create match-day sales channels that simply hadn’t existed before.

Bodycare is perhaps the most striking example. After going into administration, the business was bought out and the new owners chose to reimagine the brand and start afresh with Graphene, rather than rebuild off the legacy estate it had before. Within a year, the company had reopened stores across the UK to what the retail press has called the country’s first AI-first retailer. When the Sheffield flagship store opened, there were queues out the door.