Interview with Armaan Mehta and Karan Gupta, Co-Founders at Beauty Brand Sampling Company: Odore

We’re on a mission to give beauty marketing a 21st-century makeover. Specifically, beauty product sampling. Our platform gives brands all the tools and support they need to build, run and monitor sampling campaigns in one place. Driven by hyper-personalised insights, our tech enables brands to better understand their customers in order to more accurately target the right person, at the right time, in the right place, with the right sample. Most importantly, we enable brands to track the outcome of that sample, and fine-tune the whole process accordingly.

Whether it’s inviting customers to complete an interactive quiz on a brand’s website, or directing them to independent brands through swipe up links on influencers’ stories, the objective is the same: to help customers find their perfect product sample whilst building brand loyalty, and ultimately to drive full-sized product conversions.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
Product sampling is a huge part of the beauty industry. From more traditional methods like handing out testers in department stores or including freebies with magazines, to newer beauty box subscription services that let customers try a whole array of minis. The problem is determining where exactly samples end up; whose hands they fall into and whether or not they achieve their desired effect.

Despite investing so heavily in sampling, brands often have no way of gauging their ROI, let alone optimising campaigns and their conversion rates. That’s where our tech comes in. We give brands all the information they need to inform more effective campaigns, and all the tools they need to control them. From learning which skin concern a customer might have and matching them with a sample to solve it, to delivering the mini to their door and crafting a follow-up strategy based upon the resulting conversion or customer feedback.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
When we started out, we were primarily focused on in-store sampling solutions. The interactive, instantaneous nature of our vending-machine style sampling devices were a big hit with customers. But of course, we’ve had to evolve with their needs, and adapt to new challenges faced by brands.

All beauty brands now need a way to let customers try products safely, from the comfort of their own homes. They also need to build lasting relationships with their customers, and consolidate their online presence in order to cut through such a crowded market. The shift to online shopping was always coming and our online platform was always on our roadmap, but the pandemic has hugely accelerated its growth.
 

What can we hope to see from Odore in the future?

 
We recently completed our first Seed round, raising £600k in VC and angel funding. Through this we’ve been able to expand our team, investing in the best engineers and tech to match. Our online platform already serves international beauty brands including Guerlain, Clive Christian, and L’Oréal, and with this new injection of engineering talent we’ll be continuing to develop our platform in line with each of our clients and their customers’ needs.