Detect and Connect: How Vusion & Qualcomm Enable Real-Time Personalization in Physical Retail | NRF

Hello, everyone.

This is Omnitalk Retail.

We are coming to you live from New York City at NRF 2026 from the Vuzion Podcast Studio at booth number 4921.

I am Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Mazinga.

And we are excited because we've got two folks here with us.

One's a return engagement.

Mark, Props, who you met earlier, if you're following our coverage very, very closely, and Art Miller of Qualcomm.

Gentlemen, welcome to omnitalk.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, glad to be here.

This is a return engagement for both of you.

Now, technically, we had Art on the podcast about a couple years ago.

All right, Mark, the reason we're bringing is you brought up the concept of Connected Store, and now we've got one of your key partners in Qualcomm here to help help unravel that concept for us a bit more.

So, you know what, what is it about the relationship with Qualcomm that helps you as Vuzion, bring the idea of Connected Stores to the retail community?

Yeah, absolutely.

So these are things that we can't do without great partners like Qualcomm.

Art and I have worked together very deeply.

You build deep relationships and to solve the world's hardest problems in retail, you've got to have the right partners.

So, you know, it's something that wouldn't be possible without that partnership.

And Art, same question, Similar question to you.

What do you enable?

What does Qualcomm's technology inherently enable a company like Fusion to do?

Sure.

So I think the good news about Qualcomm, we're investing in technology across the board.

Everything from edge AI all the way to server class AI and all the way down to the sensor level.

So we worked with Vuzion a long time ago.

They're big proponents of standards based implementations.

And actually one of our big customers, joint customers, was a big fan.

So basically we like to take any connectivity and drive it into as an input signal into edge AI.

And we're investing across the board.

We're at Qualcomm.

We're in everything from mobile phones through auto robots.

And retail is one of our big investments.

And Vuzion's our biggest partner in retail.

So what are some of the ways that your retail customers are working with both of you together?

So most often we're seen as a trusted technology advisor to the people that Vuzion will eventually sell to.

Okay, so a lot of times we'll come in and talk about use cases, others, but at the End of the day, we're not the ones selling anything to the big retailers.

Vuzion comes in, takes our technology, integrates it, adds their, you know, their, their sauce to it, and then they sell it to the end retailers.

And Mark, what has to be true about Qualcomm's capabilities, that really gives you the confidence and your customers the confidence to say, yes, we're coming in together as one unit and this is why it's going to be beneficial.

Absolutely.

So when you have a strategic partner, there's really got to be a trust, but the trust has got to be based on facts, not just opinions or experience.

So the track record with Qualcomm, the track record of that partnership, that allows us at Fusion to build a highly different differentiated product.

Yeah.

And what we would have built otherwise.

So we think about reliability, scalability, and all the things that our customers need in retail to serve.

And you, you have both a tremendous amount of experience here.

How much education are you doing when it comes to retailers and giving them the right, you know, fabric foundation for a connected store?

Like maybe tell us a little bit about how you're kind of divvying that up between the two of you are.

So I think the important part is we're talking to them about what underlying technology is necessary to be successful.

Okay, what does that look like?

We always.

Yeah, we.

Well, it usually starts with, it's multimodal, it could be rfid, it could be WI fi, could be Bluetooth, it could be vision.

Right.

Vision's a big part of it.

Vision's not all of it.

So tying all those signals together into something meaningful at the edge of, and creating insights is key.

But we don't necessarily like to talk about the tech up front.

We'd like to talk about the use case.

Right.

And then figure out the tech that enables that use case.

As former retailers, so do we.

I think too.

And Mark too.

I'm sure Mark would agree.

Absolutely.

So, you know, I think to not get too complex with it, but, you know, the signal taxonomy is sort of changing.

So there's other ways to passively collect data.

And we really want to unlock stores right now.

They sort of suffer from this need to scan barcodes continuously and all these things that don't provide a really data rich environment.

So if you really want to get to a connected store, you've got to, you know, it starts with the core and the infrastructure and then the data signals that you're capturing and then generating that makes all the difference.

And it actually is the whole ecosystem that makes it possible.

So Art, I want to ask you because Mark, you mentioned this this morning and you said the word to edge.

Can you explain that for our audience?

Because I don't think that's a term that many in the retail community by and large is 100% familiar with, especially if you're in merchandising.

I doubt you're talking about edge computing all that much.

So can you talk about that?

I think we're all familiar with cloud computing.

Right.

But the problem is I don't think it makes Sense to stream 4K video to the cloud to say there's four people standing here talking and just think of that as the most basic use case.

So making decisions where it needs to be made makes sense, not doing everything in a central location.

So we believe this distributed compute will be there.

Cloud is not going away.

There's going to be a backroom server, there's going to be compute at the edge, so doing the compute where it makes sense and then passing those relevant signals back to the other layers of compute.

So when we talk about moving to the edge, it's more about distributed compute and not just streaming video and audio back to cloud and letting them figure out what to do with it.

So Mark, from your perspective then if you take that approach that Art just described, what does that enable a company like Vuzion or what does it enable actually just the connected store idea in general to do that we couldn't do in the past before an edge technology came about.

Oh wow.

So this is a, you know, there's a lot of complexity in retail today.

They're having to adopt to just increasingly number of ESCRs.

And so if you think about, you know, what's happening, you've got the ability, if you think about retail 30 years ago, earlier I talked about 10 years ago, a year ago, people just had a shelf and there was no data coming from it.

So all the use cases, using things like CVAI with cameras attached to the shelf edge, they let you get all the way down the visibility, all the way down to a sku.

And so we have to really be thoughtful on the approach on these capabilities that we build in stores because ultimately the stores, they want to serve their customers, customers.

And so we have to be very prognostic with our clients so that we're telling them about these technologies that are possible today that let them understand the inventory availability, fix their problems with out of stocks on shelves in ways that couldn't have been done 10 years ago.

And quite frankly as agentic AI is coming in as another doorway into the store.

It's going to be increasingly more important because, you know, you think about the LLM that you're running on your phone, Chris, you know, somebody's going to, you know, go into a digital world and it may actually, you know, come out in a physical procurement, in a store experience or it may be delivered to their own more than likely.

So super important.

Same question you are too.

And I know you and I were talking a little bit about this before we hit record here today too.

Like what are some of those capabilities that, that you, you all are starting to put into market or you're seeing use cases for develop around how to do retailing better under the connected story.

Yeah, I think one of the, one of the things we're demonstrating is the ability to do closed loop attribution.

Okay.

Understanding who your consumer is when they walk in, then taking, let's say, things that aren't smart devices, dumb devices, and dealing with an edge box that running multiple models at the time to then engage with those people in real time.

And then not just that, once we understand context in where they are in physical space, then directing them around the store, so moving them to the store, creating upsell opportunities, taking advantage of the Vuzion solution where you can find flash a tag when someone's nearby and then maybe auditing a basket with rfid, completing the transaction with maybe something that's, you know, it's soft POS implementation which doesn't require a dedicated card reader.

So I think when you look at it, how do we track intent, like who we're talking to intent, make sure you get a sale and then track that whole thing that today hasn't been possible in physical space in real time.

Right.

Maybe after the fact.

Right.

But this is all happening in real time now.

I just love to follow on to that comment because, you know, we want to always demystify.

So everybody's got a cell phone in their pocket, it's probably got a Qualcomm chip on it.

And so if you think about detect and connect, you know, this is, I understand who you are because of these assets that are in a store and they're spatially located.

So earlier I talked about tying together live static and spatial data.

And so art's like, you know, very masterfully talked about how it's done.

But as a shopper, it gives you a really personalized experience in a physical store.

For an operator that's trying to provide the best E Comm experience, it provides these operational excellence attributes.

Of speed, of precision, that can't be done without the technology.

So well said.

I just wanted to follow up.

Well, I love what you just said there too, and I think it's a great capsule into this conversation too, because we started off talking about the connected store, but you just said a word in there that I've never heard mentioned before.

Detect.

It's actually detect and connect.

So it has to be a detecting store as well to actually ultimately enable the connection that we're all seeking.

So that is really interesting, Mark.

Thank you for that.

Yeah.

And it's, it's such a important piece of it because the elasticity of that connection, you know, it's very durable.

And so, you know, you understand who's there, you understand the proximity and you understand, you know, how can you give that personalized experience?

So technology is changing.

Those that are adopting right now, you know, they're, they're actually experiencing great results.

If you're, you know, still just testing, you need to get into mode where you're operationalizing it, because again, there's going to be a gap between those that do and those that don't over the next couple of years.

And you guys, what.

Let's close it out.

I'm curious, what has this meant for your clients?

Customers?

What is changing about my customer, my experience as a shopper in a store?

Because your store has connected capabilities, I think.

And this just goes on a little bit more.

What Mark was saying, it's a personalized experience.

Understanding these signals, understanding intent.

I mean, you'll start hearing people talk, associate and consumer.

But at the end of the day, it's now with agents and AI on device, it's going to be about your personal ui.

It's how do you behave, what is your expectation as a consumer and what is your device able to deliver to you?

And having all these input signals in physical space finally closes the loop to have something meaningful.

Yeah.

Just like it's, it's.

I'd like to call it as a physical online experience.

Yeah, right.

They know where we track how long we're on a page.

Now they're going to know the same thing in physical space with great precision.

Right.

That now you will opt into, which.

Will be incredibly important.

I imagine, too, as we as consumers start having our online experiences more personalized to us, we're going to expect some of those things to happen in store, too.

Yeah.

And since, since our, you know, very, very well spoke about what would happen for the experience in a physical store, you know, the retailers need to sweat their greatest assets, a store to be able to pick from their store.

So they think of that as a node.

So, you know, the future is not just thinking about what your first time pick is or the pick rate.

It is thinking about what's my timing to make that delivery.

Because that's going to become another hero metric as consumers are moving now really rapidly into, gosh, I really want that item in under 30 minutes.

And you know, even with that promise, it's, well, how much under 30 minutes is it?

So all these things go together and so the precision that's needed to be able to get that, it's high.

And that's why, again, I've loved working with Art over the years and built a relationship fusion with Qualcomm to build great products.

And those are things that we can do together that you can't do without technology.

And I love how all these conversations just ladder together because we had Greg Cathy on talking and asking him, you asked him, right?

How do you get from 95% to that last 5% in under 30 minutes?

Right.

Which is what you're just talking about, Mark.

So well, thank you both.

That was really enlightening.

Appreciate the time.

Art from Qualcomm, Mark from Vuzion, and until next time, we'll be back tomorrow as well as Tuesday from the Vuzion Studio in booth 4921.

So until next time and be careful out there.