#Germany #Düsseldorf #Hanshow #Store Digital Twin #EuroShop

Hanshow Unveils the Future of Retail

At EuroShop 2026, taking place in Düsseldorf, Germany, Hanshow, a global frontrunner in electronic shelf labels (ESLs) and digital retail solutions, is set to make waves with its pioneering Store Digital Twin technologies. With the retail landscape becoming increasingly complex, traditional manual processes and retrospective analyses are no longer sufficient. Hanshow's innovative solutions bring a shift from reactive management to proactive, data-driven operations that promise to enhance efficiency and customer engagement.

The Transformation of Retail Operations

The advent of real-time data, AI, and interconnected infrastructure has become essential to ensure efficient operations and profitability. At EuroShop, Hanshow introduces its revolutionary Store Digital Twin solutions, highlighting products like the NexShelf smart shelf and Smart Cart as integral components designed to improve the shopping experience while strengthening customer loyalty. The Smart Cart adapts the advantages of online shopping — personalization, real-time suggestions, and data-driven interactions — to the physical retail space, providing customers with a seamless and engaging offline shopping experience.

NexShelf: The Smart Shelf

Central to Hanshow’s offerings at the expo is the NexShelf solution, featuring the Nebular Ultra ESLs. This advanced electronic shelf label technology anchors products and shelves with real-time location-based information, effectively transforming traditional shelves into dynamic, measurable, and connected digital assets. Despite the retail industry's evolution over decades, shelves remain pivotal in customer decision-making yet underutilized in digital innovation. NexShelf addresses this gap by enabling precise product localization, real-time stock monitoring, compliance tracking, and immediate updates to product information. By making the conditions of shelves visible and actionable, it establishes the foundational data needed for accurately representing physical store conditions in a digital twin environment, turning shelves into operational command centers.

Reliable Infrastructure for Large-Scale Operations

NexShelf operates on Hanshow's proprietary HiLPC communication protocol, designed for energy efficiency and reliability in expansive retail environments. This protocol facilitates continuous data transmission while minimizing infrastructure complexity and energy consumption across stores. Open integration allows NexShelf to seamlessly connect with existing systems, cloud platforms, and future in-store technologies, offering one of the lowest total ownership costs for extensive shelf digitization.

Nebular Ultra: The Backbone of Spatial Intelligence

As a core element of NexShelf, Nebular Ultra represents a remarkable advancement in ESL technology, elevating its role beyond mere price displays. Acting as a georeference point, it enables NexShelf to construct a detailed digital map of shelves, products, and operational conditions in real time. This mapping is critical for an accurate digital twin representation, enriching insights at the shelf level. Furthermore, intelligent energy optimization extends Nebular Ultra's lifespan up to ten years, reducing operational costs and ensuring continuous reliability at scale.

Smart Cart: Bridging Customers with Digital Twin

Hanshow's Smart Cart integrates with the Store Digital Twin, transforming each shopping cart into a connected, location-aware touchpoint within the retail space. By capturing real-time positioning data, Smart Cart completes the “human” aspect of the digital twin, connecting seamlessly with NexShelf’s shelf and product data. As customers navigate through the store, the Smart Cart enables interactions with prices, promotions, and product details in real time, facilitating item searches, cart tracking, and self-checkout. This not only reduces friction but also enhances shopping efficiency and the overall customer experience.

For retailers, the Smart Cart represents a dual opportunity for revenue and operational gains. By linking customer locations with live shelf data and ESLs, it allows for location-based promotions and retail media activations at the point of decision-making, enhancing basket values and creating new revenue streams through retail media networks. Reducing reliance on traditional checkouts improves store efficiency and optimizes staff deployment.

Enriching the Store Digital Twin with Insights

Continuous location and behavioral data collected from Smart Carts enrich the Store Digital Twin with insights into traffic patterns, dwell times, and customer engagement, enabling data-driven optimizations for store layout, merchandise assortment, and execution. Additionally, integrated positioning, AI-driven monitoring, and electronic locking mechanisms enhance asset protection and loss prevention without sacrificing the shopping experience.

By aligning real-time customer behavior with shelf execution, product availability, and spatial context, Smart Cart effectively closes the loop between people, products, and spaces within the Store Digital Twin, establishing a pathway for data-driven, AI-enhanced retail operations.

A New Era of In-Store Experience

“Smart Cart is redefining the in-store shopping experience by creating a unique, personalized media channel at the point of purchase,” states William Shao, Head of Smart Cart Solutions at Hanshow. Its capability to bring the essence of online shopping to physical stores opens up new avenues for engagement, efficiency, and the monetization of retail media. By combining NexShelf as an intelligent shelving foundation with Smart Cart's ability to connect the in-store experience with real-time customer interactions, Hanshow empowers retailers to transition from visibility to AI-driven operational strategies, turning physical stores into continuously learning and digitally mirrored environments.