THE CHALLENGE

The Original Agency was brought on in 2016 to manage Tibrio, which owns the Samples.com property. At the time, the Samples.com site was a blank slate. By leveraging Tibrio's other assets, The Original Agency hoped to build Samples.com into a leading online sampling provider in the multi-billion dollar CPG industry.

THE SOLUTION

The Original Agency first drove growth to Tibrio's primary lines of business, tripling EBITDA to drive millions of dollars in incremental revenue within two years and allowing the creation of the Samples.com business.

By capitalizing on strong consumer interest in receiving free physical goods, The Original Agency built a compelling product that served both consumer desire and advertiser needs. Samples.com visitors could come to the site each day to find all kinds of free samples, deals, and coupons from across the web. By signing up, members gained access to a "Savings Shelf," which held exclusive samples. Members could further upgrade to a paid subscription, which guaranteed them a certain number of physical samples per month.

Cross promotion of the Samples.com property from Tibrio's other properties would allow the site to achieve scale rapidly.

THE RESULTS

Within 6 months of The Original Agency's direct management of the product, Samples.com grew a membership base of over 300,000 users, 15,000 of whom became paying customers.

“Thinking differently about how to serve our customers helped us grow Samples.com smoothly,” said Ben Stein, Tibrio’s former Chief Product Officer and The Original Agency Co-Founder. Stein improved customer experience across the organization, leading to happier users and ballooning membership on the Samples.com property, officially launched in 2017. “I’m incredibly proud that we were able to build such a robust savings-focused platform and drive it to profitability within a year of version 1’s release. Samples.com’s early successes should ensure Tibrio maintains a strong market position for years to come.”