Next-generation retail show · Melbourne
Retail Show Australia 2026
Retail runs on the floor. So do our AI co-workers.
For three days, retailers, store operators and founders asked us the same question in different words: where does AI actually fit in the way we already run things? Our answer was not the demo. It was the Thursday morning version of the job. Stock queries, supplier follow-ups, and figures someone retypes from one system into another every day.
About the show
Retail Show Australia is a show built only for retail, focused on what happens in the store. Its second edition ran under the theme “Resilience, Reinvention, Rebound” at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, with AI-Powered and Future Store zones on the floor. It came two weeks after The AI Summit Australia, in the same building.
retail-show.com.au
The co-worker the organisers picked
The show's organisers picked out our inventory co-worker as the example to see. It checks stock, prepares the next replenishment step, and leaves the approval with the retail team before anything moves. It works inside the tools the store already uses, so nothing has to be replaced first.
Plug the leaks
One wall mapped the six places where retail quietly loses money: contracts and compliance, stock-outs, point of sale, finance, ecommerce, and a daily stand-up that puts every department on one page. Each came with the AI co-worker that plugs it, working with SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Excel and Drive.
Built on the floor, not on dashboards
Our retail work is shaped by Shahrukh Dastur, our strategic advisor for retail. He spent 25+ years on the retail floor, including at Carrefour MENA (Majid Al Futtaim), overseeing 400+ stores across 16+ countries. His point, printed on our banner: good retail processes are the ones that hold up under pressure. That is the bar we set for AI co-workers.
Tight margins, honest budgets
Visitors ranged from large Australian retailers to small shops, plus consultants and partners. One point kept coming up: retail runs on thin margins and cannot spend big on technology. So AI co-workers have to be safe, up to date, and priced for what a retailer can actually afford.
What is the one process in your business that still runs on someone's memory?
Vivek Satasiya, Chief Product Officer, after Retail Show Australia
