With a degree from the University of Southern California in computer science and years of experience in software building and robotics, Shahan Ohanessian spent 15 years as one of the largest Amazon independent vendors, assisting with logistical work and special projects, such as AmazonGo.
“I know we have smartphones and smartcars, but we don’t have any smart retail,” he said. “We are working for retail, and retail should be working for us, and I told my team about my vision of starting smart retail.”
When asked what he had in mind, Ohanessian told his team, “We need a store that is super customer-friendly, smart and fast, safe and secure, open 24 hours a day, easily installed, remotely managed with no employees, no cost of entry with a very high profit margin, and I want it to be in every vertical. (My team) looked at me and said, ‘Shahan, you’re getting old. We can’t do this, this doesn’t exist.’” Instead, Ohanessian took these notes as a starting point for day one of getting his groundbreaking project started.
Since the founding of VenHub in 2021, the Pasadena, Calif.-based startup now has four stores (two corporately owned, two privately owned) across Los Angeles. Its first unit launched in October 2024.
Guest Experience
In order to purchase a product, the guest must use VenHub’s smartphone app, whether they’re near the store or miles away. As the guest’s location moves closer to the specific store, the order is prepared so that it is ready at the delivery window by the time of the customer’s arrival. Once the guest pings near enough to the store, the dual robotic ‘arms’ pick up the selected items through its artificial intelligence (AI)-based vision system.
As of yet, there is no keypad transaction center for guests to conduct a purchase at the location. “There’s no display window, and that’s because we can’t protect it,” said Ohanessian. “The whole store is fully protected: The glass is bulletproof; there is steel framing with interior steel and exterior steel; and the middle part of it is concrete foam blocking, so it is weatherproof.”
The system, said Ohanessian, is fully redundant, meaning it has backup processes in place for critical functions. For example, an item for purchase is known by the AI system as its SKU, as the product name (Cherry Coke, for example), and by its individual location (at the intersection of column three and row five).
Seven Days of Construction
While VenHub operates its own stores, it also sells the stores for private ownership. The store owners, by use of the mobile app, can change the items being sold inside the store. The interior layout of the products is also customizable. “For example, if you have a deal with Diet Pepsi and you want Diet Pepsi to be at the front of the store, you can realign everything within the store, and the robots will do that for you.”
One VenHub store takes only seven days to be built and ready for opening. At present, there is a very large queue of stores waiting to be built as the brand fine-tunes its model. At the debut of the first company-operated store in 2024, Ohanessian opened the system for pre-ordering new stores to be built, assuming that this would get VenHub up to 10 new stores in the future. Instead, the brand was met with millions of dollars worth of preorders as well as in-store deals from top brands.
Ohanessian was confused by the initial public response after opening his first store. After the grand opening, unknowing locals confused the store for a public art installation. “We had to put ‘open 24/7’ on the top of the logo so people would know they could interact with it,” he added.
When a store is set to be built, the entire unit arrives on-site tightly packed. Once the 220-square-foot store is built, after just a few days, AI and vision systems are installed and acclimated with the new space. “It’s the first time in history where you can go from zero to a store in seven days, and have a grand opening without the agony that typical storeowners have to go through,” he said.
At present, two of VenHub’s four stores are corporately owned. “In a typical year, we may add 10 to 20 new corporate-owned locations,” said Ohanessian. “The pace of corporate-owned expansion depends on the municipalities, communities, and partners we work with, and we will continue to scale to accommodate demand.”
The Future
At the brand’s newest unit, a store within LAX Airport, the VenHub store sells LAX-branded cups, hats and other merch. “As long as you give us a few hours for the vision system to ‘learn’ the product, we can have it in the store,” said Ohanessian.
“In our previous world of Amazon, (they) were ‘the store of everything’ in 17 years,” he said. “So our goal is to become the store of everything in 10 years. Through our machine learning and AI system, that will help us expedite our process. Today, we’re working as convenience stores, the next variation may be smart lockers, pharmaceuticals, pet food, electronics or retail clothing. Whatever you’re imagining, we can have it.”
With VenHub’s autonomous model, there are no in-store employees, just two robotic arms (lovingly referred to as Barb and Peter as an ode to two of Ohanessian’s acquaintances). “In any new technology, you’ll have some job displacement and also some job opportunities, so we recognize that and we’re sensitive to that. We’ve been in the logistics and retail space for a long time, so the cost of employment, cost of rent, cost of insurance, cost of shrinkage, cost of crime — there are so many different problems that store owners are facing today. We wanted to come up with a solution to all those problems, having that vision of making a smart retail store.”
Today, AI can be equipped to solve countless problems. At VenHub stores, AI is used to learn the buying habits of a specific area (taking into account upcoming weather changes, nearby events and festivals). From this, the system can prepare a list of what the store owner should and should not reorder in the coming months, by combining its analytics with real-time individualized data. The AI system also takes into account the weight of specific products, such as placing cans or bottles into a bag before adding easily crushable items, like a bag of potato chips.
“We are the first ones in the world to do this, so there are no other companies to follow and learn from,” Ohanessian said. “It’s a great opportunity, and I can’t wait to continue learning.”
