Built on Thirty Years of Retail Reality
// About Brand Experience Lab
Built on
Thirty
Years
of Retail
Reality.
We sit at a deliberate intersection: operators who understand the shelf, strategists who understand the shopper, and builders who can take a validated concept from pilot to national rollout without changing partners.
// By the Numbers
Where We
Come From
Brand Experience Lab is a retail innovation consultancy at the intersection of strategy, technology, and in-store execution. We help retailers and brands identify where technology creates real value, test it in real environments, and deploy it at scale — backed by the manufacturing and fabrication capabilities of our parent company, Unified Resources in Display.
We are not a research firm. We are not a technology vendor. We sit at a deliberate intersection: operators who understand the shelf, strategists who understand the shopper, and builders who can take a validated concept from pilot to national rollout without changing partners.
Since our founding, we've operated at the leading edge of retail technology — from early experiments with computer vision and IoT to the incubation and launch of Invigo Retail, our first internally developed product. We don't just follow where the industry is going. We help define it.
With Invigo Retail spun out as a standalone venture, BEL returns to its core mission with renewed focus: connecting strategy, innovation, and execution for the retailers and brands ready to lead.
"A playroom for marketers and agencies."
Ad Age — on Brand Experience Lab"They can think about interesting new technologies that work at 30,000 feet and show how it works at ground level."
Brian Collins, DesignerBacked by 30+ Years of Retail Manufacturing
BEL is part of Unified Resources in Display — a creative retail resources company that services some of the most iconic retailer and CPG brands in the world. Every solution we design can be built and deployed at scale. One partner, from concept to shelf.
The People
Behind the Work
A team of retail strategists, technology evaluators, experience designers, and business builders — united by a single standard: does it drive sales, improve efficiency, and create a better experience for the shopper?
Our Team
David polinchock, president and co-founder
David is Co-Founder and President of Brand Experience Lab, with a long history of connecting retailers, brands, and agencies to emerging technology. An early pioneer in experiential advertising, he directed the first AT&T AdWorks Lab and has spent three decades identifying how technology can create more compelling, authentic, and relevant brand experiences.
His work on the AudienceGames cinema AR program won a Bronze Lion and two gold Pencils. He has directed TechX programs at Advertising Week in New York and London, and has been named a RETHINK Retail Top Expert and Top AI Leader.
Jim Ackerman,
CEO and co-founder of BEL & Unified RID
Jim is the CEO of Unified Resources & Brand Experience Lab. He began his career as a practicing attorney specializing in corporate, securities, and mergers and acquisition law. His client base included many large manufacturing, service, financial, and real estate companies.
For over a decade, Jim was a principal of the Ackerman Consulting Group serving as an advisor to many companies in the paper, packaging, and point of purchase display industries for mergers, acquisitions, financings, and strategic alliances. He was the founder & CEO of Sloan Securities Corp., an investment bank and stock brokerage firm with nine offices throughout the US. Sloan was an early adopter of institutional online trading, spearheading the creation of a prime brokerage unit for small institutions providing capital to emerging public technology companies.
He has & currently serves on the board of directors for several Charitable Associations. Jim graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and received his Juris Doctor from Villanova University School of Law and is admitted to the bar in New York and New Jersey.
Mitchell edelman,
President of Unified RID &
Co-Founder of BEL
Mitchell has vast experience creating, growing, and leading some of the In-Store Marketing & Retail Packaging Industries’ most successful companies. He has been responsible for the acquisition, integration, and sale of numerous manufacturing operations, sales & design offices, and supply chain facilities globally. Mitchell participated in building & operating the first 100% recycled liner board paper mill in the US. In 1990 he co-founded Phoenix Display & Packaging, the first combined Point of Purchase Display Manufacturing and In-Store Marketing Agency. It was sold to Union Camp Corp. Some of the high-level highlights accomplished during his tenure at UCC/IP were opening the first design center in Bentonville to support Walmart.
As well as, the creation of the first J&J non-company owned GMP facility for Direct to Retail distribution. In 2005 he co-founded Visual Image Display. An early stage leader in the Venue Based Media & Digital OOH space. VID created and executed many high-profile programs, networks & technology experiences for companies like Estee Lauder, Victoria Secrets, Disney, and Mercedes Benz, for which they launched and ran a narrow-cast network scheduling & delivering custom content to every MB dealership in North America.
Alexandra Zelcer,
Marketing and project manager
Alexandra leads marketing and project management at Brand Experience Lab, with a focus on building the systems, content, and client-facing materials that support BEL's growth. Her background spans marketing, economics, and experiential brand strategy — with previous experience at the intersection of luxury retail and technology.
At BEL, she manages the marketing engine across all three brands — BEL, Invigo Retail, and URID — developing everything from sales enablement content and campaign strategy to product launches and event presence.
david bayliss,
head of european development
David, before getting a proper job, spent 21 years in the Royal Air Force flying around the world drinking wine in many different countries. Next on his career path, David was quick to embrace the internet and all it had to offer and worked with several software companies to bring their products to market.
David has worked on many technology projects but ultimately found himself trying to find ways these solutions could help brick and mortar retail evolve in a digital world and even headed up a project called “Saving the High Street”.
David, now based in France, works as the European Lead seeking out technologies to bring to the lab. He uses his connections and experience to help companies realize their potential, and of course would be happy to discuss more about how the lab can help you, if you are interested.
Part of the Unified Resources in Display Family
Brand Experience Lab is part of Unified Resources in Display — a 30+ year retail manufacturing and creative resources company servicing some of the most iconic retailer and CPG brands in the world.
Paul Klutes,
Strategic Business Development Consultant
Paul has over thirty years of food industry experience in sales leadership, brand management and new product innovation for companies like Coca-Cola, Welch’s and C. H. Robinson Worldwide, and working on products as diverse as nationally branded fresh produce imported from Latin America, to shelf-life extended fresh fruit sold here in North America, to confectionary fruit snacks that are now sold globally.
Paul is also passionate about health and nutrition and spent over a decade working to improve the American diet by participating in the volunteer leadership of the Produce for Better Health Foundation, culminating in a term as Chairman in 2010. He is also an avid offshore sailor and the proud father of one recently graduated aspiring artist and one college student/soon-to-be-certified fly-fishing instructor!
Paul joined BEL because he believes that contactless transactions are going to be a critical component of on-premises food delivery in workplaces around the world and that BEL technology provides best-in-class solutions for facilitating those transactions.