Today we’d like to introduce you to Justin Lutz.
Hi Justin, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
Sampoll started as a conversation at a bar back in 2016 among a few high school friends. At that time I was leading the emerging technologies team at a digital agency in CT. My future partners were also employed at digital marketing agencies as a developer, project manager, and a marketer. We all played in different sandboxes but the common thread here was about digital marketing and leveraging technology to create more engaging/informative digital experiences. The craft beer boom was underway across much of the United States, specifically in our area, and we were attending lots of beer festivals.
The team (perhaps selfishly) identified an immediate issue with the festivals, which was that we all typically forgot the vast majority of the beers and spirits we were sampling by the time we got home. This was partly because of the sheer number of samples we were trying and frankly because you end up catching a bit of a buzz once you get an hour or so into a beer festival!
So we all sobered up and I sat down with another developer friend to design and build what would become the first version of Sampoll – a mobile app that helped us track and categorize all the samples we were trying really quickly and easily. It allowed us (or anyone) to see all the beers they could sample at the event, rate them, and provide feedback.
We recognized pretty quickly after that the first-party data we were capturing was also of huge importance to the vendors and distributors themselves. They spend TONS of money giving away free products at these events and get next to nothing in return with regard to quantifiable feedback/data about the consumer.
Fast forward a few months and we were hooked. We spent several months heads down building an MVP (minimum viable product), and then hosted our own launch party which doubled as a home-brewer competition where attendees would help us test our mobile app as they were sampling beers.
Soon after that, we got serendipitously connected to a gentleman named Brett Hollander (an executive at Hartford Distributors Incorporated – HDI) who helped us understand that there was real value in our solution. At this time, however, we were just a couple of kids working in digital marketing. We had a very limited understanding of how physical promotional marketing and product sampling events worked, but we knew we had to dive into the deep end and immerse ourselves in the industry in order to figure it out. I don’t know how we did it, but we were able to convince Brett to let us own and manage product sampling campaigns for a couple of his brands including Sweetwater Brewery and Brooklyn Brewery as a test run. It was time to learn how things really worked, and see if our solution really had legs.
So we printed out a bunch of banners and tabletop signs with QR codes that said “Scan here to rate this sample and provide feedback and get entered to win a free [insert prize here]]!!”, we ordered a bunch of lanyards and other Sampoll swag to giveaway, and then we stood next to the brand ambassador at every single one of the sampling events for the next month or so in order to see how people were using our app. We were pumped to have finally made it!
And… it was a total flop! Nobody wanted to stop and pull out their cellphone while they were walking through a package store to pick up a six-pack on a Friday afternoon. Beyond that many of the stores had terrible cell service and the folks that did try to engage couldn’t download the app. Talk about a frustrating experience! Our margins were absolutely terrible and the contractor that handled staffing called us a few weeks into it and said “Listen – this just isn’t worth it for me. It’s a huge headache and the money is terrible!”
So back to square one for the Sampoll team. We went back to Brett with our tails between our legs and admitted that it just wasn’t working. We had just one last event to attend at Total Wine in town. As I walked into the store that evening and looked at the young girl standing behind the sampling booth handing out samples to people as they walked by I had the proverbial lightbulb moment!
What if it wasn’t the consumers that were using our app, what if it was the promotional staff (brand ambassador) who is paid to be there? The person whose job depends on handing out tons of samples and relaying information back to her employer (usually a promotional marketing/staffing agency) about how the event went and whether people liked it!
This provided new life for the team and we immediately proceeded to interview as many promotional marketing agencies, CPG brands, and distributors as we could. What information were they collecting at these events? What data did the brands end up getting? What does success look like? The best part – was nobody was collecting ANY DATA!
When we asked brands what data they were getting from agencies they’d tell us “well, they give us a report usually a month after the campaign is over and it usually just says how many units were moved and what times and stores the events occurred at.” This may not seem like a big deal to someone that isn’t intimately familiar with this space, but did you know that the value of data surpassed the value of oil a couple years ago?! Suffice to say data is king and these brands were getting NONE OF IT! They were shooting in the dark.
So our task now was to create a mobile application that could be used by the brand ambassador at the event to quickly capture demographic information and feedback from the consumers that were walking by trying the samples that were being handed out. We’d capture appx age, gender, location, whether or not the consumer liked the product, whether they were planning to buy it, etc. Then we’d feed this data back to the agencies and brands via a real-time reporting dashboard.
This finally felt like the thing that would take us to the next level. The year was now 2019 and we were ready to re-launch once again after getting some initial investment money from an angel investor and building out an entirely new product. In early 2020 (before the pandemic lockdown) we were formally accepted into an accelerator run by Gener8tor called “The Brandery”. Then in March 2020, the world stopped and just as we were about to launch our first-in-market test of the new solution, all in-store sampling got shut down. Indefinitely.
We were heartbroken, but more driven than ever to figure out how to make this work. So we hunkered down and tried to wait it out – hoping that a new normal would emerge soon. We focused on states where pandemic restrictions were minimal, and in July 2020 I finally quit my agency job to focus full time on Sampoll with the support of my wife.
It became pretty clear, however, that the new normal wasn’t going to happen for a while. Beyond that, we soon found out that selling products to promotional marketing agencies wasn’t a walk in the park either. Every agency has a different workflow, different tools, and different needs.
It became impossible to accommodate everyone’s needs without dealing with a phenomenon known as “feature creep”, where your product/solution gets excessively watered down and overly bloated because you continue including features that often have niche use cases or are only used by a few people. Investors were telling us outright that they wouldn’t invest in a company that sells to marketing agencies because it’s notoriously difficult and the market isn’t big enough.
At that point, the entire team was very deflated and wondering whether it was ever going to work. We finally had a solution we felt the market needed. We spent nearly $100,000 to build that product. But we made a huge mistake (we didn’t test it in the market before building it). It sounds contradictory but you’ve got to test your assumptions early and often to make sure you’re building something the market actually wants. This truth coupled with covid shutting down all in-store sampling meant we needed to pivot one last time or die trying.
Fast forward again – it’s now early 2021 and we’ve been accepted into another accelerator called “Food Foundry” which is based in Chicago and backed by Gordon Food Services. We’re still holding out a sliver of hope that maybe the product we built for promotional marketing agencies (called Recapp) would find its place in the market. But at this point that’s not the only thing we’re doing – we’ve recognized an entirely new opportunity.
CPG brands have been panicking because they can’t do in-store demos/sampling anymore for the foreseeable future. They’re frantically looking for ways to connect with new consumers and get them to try their products and they’ve got all this marketing budget available now that can no longer be used for in-store demos. For several months now we’ve been experimenting and testing this idea quietly.
What if we created a DIGITAL brand ambassador that could do all the things a real person did when someone walked up to a sampling booth in a grocery store?! This digital brand ambassador could capture all sorts of information about the customer, educate them about the product, and ultimately offer them a way to get their hands on the product for FREE.
It was one of those things that seemed to be “right place right time”. There was a huge need and we had the technical chops to develop a solution pretty quickly. So that’s what we did – a few months heads down again, all the while talking to as many CPG brands as we could to see if they’d actually buy it.
We launched Sampoll v2 (our digital brand ambassador nicknamed Sam) into the market with our first brand in August of 2021 and the market loved it, so we leaned in and made a decision to focus all of our efforts on continuing to develop Sam.
Three quarters into 2022 and we’ve now been growing significantly with a compound monthly growth rate >30% and monthly revenue has topped $80,000 in July. We’re finally paying ourselves small salaries and have been inching towards the ever elusive “product-market fit”.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
We’ve dealt with many obstacles including holding down multiple jobs and building the product nights and weekends for years, stressing our personal relationships, misunderstanding the market (no market need), biting off more than we can chew, and trying to do too many things for too many people instead of just focusing on being really good at one core problem.
COVID!!! The pandemic shut down all in-store sampling after we spent over six figures (our entire budget) to build a solution. This rendered our solution unusable indefinitely, overnight. Running out of funding and having to bootstrap our way back into the market with a new product was quite a journey. At points we also honestly had bouts of doubt and second guessing. Imposter syndrome is real, but you’ve got to fight it every step of the way and believe in yourself and your team!
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Sampoll, Inc.?
Sampoll is the “Request a Sample” solution for CPG brands. Our unique digital brand ambassador helps packaged goods brands connect with consumers through interactive product sampling experiences that build awareness, trust, loyalty, and increase sales velocity.
This “Click to Brick” approach to product trial is infinitely scalable, and affordable, and allows brands to immediately increase sales velocity at targeted retailers across the country all while capturing deep insights and ROI (return on investment).
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Be embarrassingly open and honest. Vulnerability begets vulnerability and you have to open up to people if you want them to open up to you. Being coachable is something most people would say they are but are they really? When you get tough constructive feedback do you get defensive and shut down? If so – use the 24-hour rule. Resolve not to react to the feedback for 24 hours and beyond that, reframe the feedback. If it was given to someone else would you still find it offensive?
I always try to find people that are really good at the things I’m not good at. I love hearing different perspectives and angles. Lastly – people are just people. I try not to put anyone on a pedestal. Certainly treat everyone with respect, but no man is above any other.
Pricing:
- All-Inclusive “Grow Plan” – $1999/mo
- All-Inclusive “Pro Plan” – $2499/mo
- Bring your own Marketing (ByoM) – $999 setup + 0.33/signup
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sampoll.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sampollapp/?hl=en
