Want to Sell It? Let Them Try It First

01 /The Concept

Triyit invites people to "discover new favorites for free" – meaning new personal care, home, and food products they might want to keep buying after trying them.

The setup is straightforward: sign up, fill out a profile, and start receiving periodic packages tailored to your interests.

A typical package might contain food products, cosmetics, fragrances, personal care items, pet care products, household cleaning supplies, and similar goods.

Users can't choose what goes in their box – Triyit assembles each shipment based on subscriber profiles, making sure every product reaches someone who falls within the manufacturer's target audience. Brands pay Triyit for these targeted distributions.

Subscribers receive packages at no cost. The only obligation: share feedback on each product through the platform's survey system. The next package arrives only after the previous survey is completed.

Triyit has been operating since 2016 and has accumulated a subscriber base of 1 million. Its brand roster includes both emerging labels and established names like AB InBev, Mars, and Kellogg's. The company bootstrapped to profitability without outside investment – but has now raised £1.1 million to expand into Europe, Australia, and the US.

02 /Why It Matters

The standard FMCG promotion playbook relies heavily on discount coupons. But distributing actual product samples outperforms coupon campaigns on sales lift by 27%.

73% of consumers say that if they try a product, they'll very likely buy it afterward.

When a product is available to sample, its sales run 41.6% higher than comparable products that aren't.

24% of consumers say trying a new product could lead them to switch away from a brand they were already planning to buy. That's a significant number for challenger brands trying to break habitual purchasing patterns.

Sampling, in other words, is a serious business. In the US alone, product sampling companies generated $26.1 billion in 2023.

Currently, most samples reach consumers through in-store displays, purchase inserts, or event giveaways. But 27.7% of consumers already receive samples by mail – a share that's growing.

The pleasant reality for Triyit is that it doesn't need to convince brands to run sampling campaigns – brands already believe in sampling. The pitch is simpler: mail samples instead of handing them out in stores, and route them through us.

The competitive landscape is taking shape. Turkish service Denebunu, founded the same year as Triyit, built a loyal following on a lean $1.5 million in total funding. Its founders have now raised a separate $1.8 million to launch a clone called Samplico ([covered previously](/review/chtoby-kupit-nuzhno-poprobovat)) targeting international markets, with the UK – Triyit's home turf – as the initial priority.

One more data point worth noting: sampling increases word-of-mouth referrals by 22%. For a brand that wants organic buzz, getting products into people's hands is the most direct path.

Stack Influence ([related review](/review/malenkij-pokupatel-luchshe-chem-bolshoj-bloger)) – founded in 2017, just a year after Triyit and Denebunu – built a platform where brands recruit micro-influencers to promote products through authentic use cases. Brands ship samples to creators; those who genuinely like what they receive post content about it. Compensation comes in the form of product, not cash. Stack Influence raised its first $1.27 million in outside funding in late 2023.

03 /Opportunities

The sampling market has been quietly profitable for years. Companies like Triyit and Denebunu sustained themselves for a long time without significant outside capital – a strong signal that unit economics work. Now they're all fundraising at the same time, which suggests the market is about to shift gears.

The accelerant is the explosion of new consumer brands. Private-label manufacturing on contract factories has become accessible and cheap, driving a surge in D2C brand launches. US online D2C sales have nearly tripled over the last five years, reaching $212.9 billion.

With thousands of new products competing for shelf space and consumer attention, brands are searching for discovery channels that deliver strong ROI. Targeted sample boxes appear to be one of the better answers – which is why the category is now attracting capital.

The obvious direction: build a competing sampling service and claim a piece of a global market Triyit estimates at around $135 billion annually.

There's no deep structural moat in this model – it scales through volume and distribution network breadth. But maybe that's fine. The market is large enough that a focused player can generate meaningful returns without a proprietary breakthrough.

That said, there is one interesting angle worth exploring: instead of building a standalone sample-box service, consider becoming a distributor that partners with e-commerce retailers – letting them slip product samples into their existing shipment volumes. Add a referral code model where retailers earn commissions on purchases that trace back to their sample insertions, and suddenly the value proposition for retail partners becomes genuinely compelling.

A [related review](/review/deshevle-budet-prisoseditsja) covered Dealt, which built a marketplace for installation and repair technicians and then partnered with e-commerce stores to offer those services at checkout. The structural logic is the same: find where the customer already is and attach your distribution there.