DTC Briefing: How brands like IQBar & Oats Overnight build awareness in retail

It’s one thing to get on a retailer’s shelves, but another task entirely to stay on those shelves. Founders of brands like IQBar, Oats Overnight and Curie said that influencer partnerships, sampling opportunities, and selectively running promotions have helped build awareness in retail. But, just like on brands’ DTC sites, it’s ultimately a combination of promoting a unique, eye-catching product at the right price that convinces people to buy a product in retail stores.

“With any big retailer, I think there is a lot of responsibility as a brand to move inventory off the shelves and move product,” Sarah Moret, founder and CEO of deodorant brand Curie said. “It is not just going to magically happen.”

When Curie launched nationally in Walmart last year, it was the brand’s first major retail launch and “we wanted to really make a splash,” Moret said. Curie partnered with out-of-home advertising startup Adgile to run ads on trucks in three of Walmart’s key markets in the months after the launch. Curie worked with Aisle, a digital sampling startup, to give customers discounts to try Curie products in stores — a tactic that Moret said was mostly useful for existing customers.

Curie also seeded gifts to some influencers ahead of the launch. Some were influencers that Curie had worked with in the past, while some were Walmart-focused influencers who have built their followings online by highlighting top deals and new items at America’s largest retailer.

Curie sent these influencers a box with Curie products, as well as a gift card to encourage them to buy the products at Walmart. “That was really effective,” Moret said. 

Will Nitze, the founder and CEO of plant-based protein startup IQBar, also said that his company does a big social media push whenever IQBar launches or expands its presence in a particular retailer. IQBar is now available in over 12,000 retail doors, including at Costco, Albertsons and Walmart. 

Nitze said that, overall, success in retail comes down to nailing a few things: selling products at a price that makes it easy for people to try a new product, creating eye-catching packaging and, of course, selling a quality product. “There’s still a large percentage of customers that want to try something in a retail store,” he said. “People will try stuff if it’s not going to break the bank.” 

When it comes to in-store promotions or sampling demos, “we try to just do the highest ROI promotional stuff,” Nitze said. That is based on data IQBar has gathered over the course of the five years that it’s been in retail. 

“There are things where we have seen enough data where we just know that, oh, this is going to work,” Nitze said. And it can be retailer-dependent. For example, “demoing in club [retail] always works,” he said. “Dump bins in Sprouts, or shippers always work.” 

But, he said, “outside of things that are, like, reducing the price of the product on-shelf or getting an off-shelf placement… we try to avoid all other promotional moves.”

When Oats Overnight, which sells spoon-free oatmeal mixed like a protein shake, launched in retail three years ago, it was a big change for the brand. Founded in 2016, it had been online-only and primarily DTC until that point. Today, it is sold in around 8,000 retail doors and announced on Monday that it had raised a $35 million Series B round. 

One of the big changes Oats Overnight made to launch into retail, according to founder and CEO Brian Tate, is that it changed up its packaging and product display entirely for retail. Online, Oats Overnight is sold in pouches, which people would mix with a milk or milk alternative in a jar or shaker of their choice. But in stores, Oats Overnight is sold in a bottle that people just add water to.

Oats Overnight did this for two reasons: First, the brand creates a lot of online content showing people how to mix up the product. Tate felt that it would be easier for customers to understand the product if they saw it on the shelf as a bottle rather than a pouch that they had to transfer to a different container. Tate also thought it would help the product stand out better on shelves. Oats Overnight has an in-house content team that films videos at retail stores to promote on social media. The brand also works with influencers.

“If [people] see a bottle in the oatmeal aisle, they’re instantly curious,” Tate said. 

To that end, Tate said that Oats Overnight also focuses on participating in promotions that primarily get the brand into unique placements, such as on a side cap or an end cap. For example, Oats Overnight is running a promotion right now where a four-pack of its Chocolate Peanut Butter Shake is available in Target for $7.99 compared to $11.99 normally. As a result, its products are being placed on a side cap to promote the deal. 

Of course, promotions like these also eat into a brand’s margins. To that end, Nitze said that the things brands can invest in to promote their products in retail ultimately depend upon their gross margins. 

He advises brands just starting out in retail to “work backward from what you can afford to do, and work backward from your goals. Are you trying to grow top-line or bottom-line? Are you trying to clear a certain velocity benchmark?”

“I can’t emphasize enough the unit economics piece,” Nitze added. “That dictates what can even work.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correctly note the year that Oats Overnight launched. It launched in 2016.

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