Review of Smytten — a company with a unique business model of premium brand discovery and experience through targeted sampling

Okay, first off, I am in love with this product (the idea too!) and thrilled because the founders are my alums from ISB!! So now that I’ve moved past the fangirl moment and finished riding the what-am-I-doing-with-life wave, let’s talk about the company and their current product.

Founded in 2015, Smytten is touted as an online discovery and trial platform and places itself at the top of the luxury beauty funnel. Smytten’s business model involves partnering with premium and luxury brands to provide them with a targeted sampling strategy in India. I went through available literature online and it looks like the product has gone through a lot of changes — the earlier focus was on exclusivity (invite-only app) and premium/luxury products and services, while today, the focus is on beauty products only and there is barely any exclusivity.

I had never heard of the app before (I don’t have friends to invite me) and ‘discovered’ it through an Instagram ad (These days, I pretty much open Instagram for the ads. Those recommendations are great for discovering local brands). Also, come to think of it, this product is the perfect candidate for a listing on Kunal Shah’s Cred. Anyway, I downloaded the app out of curiosity and mainly because the ad talked about trying 6 beauty products for Rs. 199! I could not remember the last time someone did that since Tupperware aunties. Once I downloaded the app, I loved the experience — A simple sign up form and I was in.

Smytten has a true mobile-first approach and it works so well for discovery-based use cases. Each trial product is presented to you as a Tiktok-like feed on a full screen which you can swipe up and down.

You get 6 trial points for signing up and you can redeem these points against trial products that are curated for you. The redemption value for most trial samples is 1 point and can sometimes even be 6 points if it is a full-sized product. I have placed 6 orders in the last 2 months and I’ve only just started obsessing about my skin. So, they are employing some very clever growth hacks for acquisition, activation, conversion, and retention. My intent through this essay is to try and deconstruct some of these ideas and think about what I would do differently (hire me, please?)

Smytten’s core focus is on enabling discovery and trials for users and brands. The process of discovery and consequent trial needs to be as smooth as possible. Smytten manages to do that with the feed-like layout and clear CTAs. There is no need for onboarding as most actions are intuitive. Apart from being frictionless and engaging, the process of discovery needs to ensure that you view as many brands and options as possible, even if you do not try or buy them. The swipe-motion discovery and very few filter options ensure that you check out as many products as is possible. Once you’ve ordered a few trial products, Smytten wants to make sure they get you to come back and try some more. This is where the repeat trial structure really shines through.

Once you place your first trial order (You also pay a fee of 199/ which is claimed as a shipping fee), you get a cashback from them which can be redeemed in the following ways:

1. Rs. 169 credited in your Smytten wallet — this can be redeemed against purchases from the app in the next 30 days but have minimum order tiers for the entire discount

2. ANOTHER 6 trial points credited to your account — with a lifetime validity (This offer is not always valid but it’s been on for the last 2 months that I’ve been using Smytten so my guess is — most of the time)

Clearly, they want you to keep sampling new products.. and that is a very clever idea. They keep adding new trials every other day and so the hook of additional sampling is enough to make you log on to the app again. It’s a great habit-forming technique that prompts users to log on without the need for an external prompt(The team has probably read Hooked a lot). I want to check their DAU/MAUs as well as push notification CTRs as compared to say, Nykaa. Smytten also sometimes sends free bags/wallets as an additional item and who doesn’t love free stuff?!? But I do think there’s a monetization opportunity somewhere by having a cute bag as an add-on item and charging a bundling fee for it. The delivery process is seamless, and I got all my deliveries on time through BlueDart; the packaging was spot on too. Bubble wrapped products in a black Smytten-branded box.

The Google Playstore ratings, as well as their Facebook page, does indicate some issues with their customer service and deliveries. A lot of complaints are around changing policies, lack of customer support, and inefficient deliveries. I am unable to comment on customer support and delivery issues since I did not face it. My guess is deliveries in Tier 2 cities and towns are delayed and this is causing a bit of friction. A lot of users are also unclear about the trial system and why those offers keep changing. A user onboarding process, maybe in the form of a video could help some of these issues.

The focus of this article though is on ideas they could pursue as they scale up. Smytten is not positioning itself as a pure e-commerce company but a platform for discovery and engagement. This positioning opens a lot of possibilities for social and gamification hacks in its product. This becomes a lot more apparent when you start thinking about the category they operate in — beauty. Reviews and recommendations matter a lot more in this category than others.

The lowest hanging fruit I’d pick up is their referral program. Smytten first started as an invite-only platform and has recently opened up its product to all users. My guess is that most of their user acquisition is through paid ads. Their SEO or ASO seems negligible and their referral program feels like an unattainable feat. Currently, you can invite as many friends as you want to use the app. Once they sign up and place an order, you get a referral bonus of Rs. 200 in your account. You can start redeeming this bonus against a few chosen products and the minimum balance you need, to start using the bonus, is Rs. 500!

This means you need to onboard 3 successful referrals before you see any reward out of it. That’s a lot of friction! Incentives need to be quick and with a time constraint. I started thinking about social e-commerce products and Pinuoduo is such a great example of exploding growth because of its ‘team buy’ concept. Pinduoduo has grown at a staggering pace because of some of its very clever growth hacks and one of them is the ‘team buy’ concept. It essentially lets you shop an item for a heavy discount if you can get your friends to purchase it too. The higher the number of friends who join your team, the higher is the discount. I think a referral system with a similar vein could be much more effective in getting referrals. Smytten could:

1. Convert referral money into trial points directly without these minimum tiers or limits

2. Subsidize the cost of trials. For example, the shipping fee of Rs. 199/- can be halved for both the user and the referral if the user manages to get the referral to order

3. Offer more trial products to the ‘team buyers’ for 199/-. If the user manages to get 1 referral to sign up, both the user and referral get 1 more trial point in their next order. If the user gets 2 referrals, or if the first referral gets another referral, the ‘team’ of 3 gets 2 more trial points and so on

The next thing I’d focus on is product details and reviews. In its Tiktok-like trial product feed, Smytten focuses on showing you a product picture, a few details about the product, and reviews from trial users.

Before trying any product, I’ve always checked out the average rating and read some reviews. If I am trying a new brand when it comes to skincare or makeup, I’m definitely going to look for reviews from people who have experienced it. I’d ideally even like to know if this product is for MY skin, but we’ll come to that later. So, Smytten needs users to give ratings and reviews to the products and also probably use that as an input in their algorithm. Although you get an option to leave a review for the product if you come across the same product screen while browsing, you are not explicitly nudged or incentivized to leave a review.

I am not sure if this is by design, but I cannot imagine why they wouldn’t want to tap into the high intent community that the Smytten userbase is and take honest feedback from them. I would instead make the whole thing like a game and incentivize users to leave a review by offering them a limited-time deal or extra trial points. With additional incentives for users, brands can get Smytten to take more objective feedback for products based on known parameters for each category (for example, lipstick needs to be judged on pigmentation, staying power, moisturizing capability, etc.). This data could be a gold mine for brands who are looking for feedback for future product development and they might even be ready to pay for it.

Once you’ve tried the products and say you want to purchase a full-sized version of it, there is no clear flow in the app for you to do that right now. As you can see above, you are given an option to review the product but if you want to buy it, you have to either go search for it on the app or check all products from the brand through the review page. I am not sure if this is by design, but I’d expect a seamless transition from sample to sample review and to purchase. Although Smytten is not focused on purchases by its own admission, brands are eventually looking for ROI and this is a missed opportunity by Smytten to showcase their superior conversion rate.

Skincare is such an interesting category — if you have a sizeable disposable income (which is the current target market of Smytten), there is no price elasticity for the right product. Good skincare products are rare and expensive. Most importantly, you need to find the right product for your skin based on your skin type, issues with skin, history with other skincare products, etc. Given that all skincare products will never be right for me, Smytten should make my discovery more meaningful with better filters — like searching for products by skin type, or product constituents. Currently, there are no such filters and the only available ones are as below:

(EDIT: They have added a filter for ‘Concern’ just today!)

Even if they deliberately want to exclude such filters for trial products (to cast a wider net for discovery), they should enable them for the shopping section. The product details page in the shopping section also feels inadequate and doesn’t have enough information for me to make that final purchase choice.

Women often want to get beauty advice from other women. Or really, any advice. I am part of quite a few Facebook girl gangs, and we constantly seek beauty and skin advice from other women. Knowing that other women are also going through similar problems and listening to their experience is immensely powerful and connects us to the platform (in this case, the Facebook group) for a long time. Smytten could focus on simple community features — like, encouraging users to post images in reviews and like/upvote feature for product reviews. A lot of women now discover products through influencers — Smytten could use this channel as a medium of acquisition and engagement through community building. Influencers with their unique skin/concerns/style and personalities can be brought onboard to post byte sized video reviews of trial products. Brands will see this as a perfect medium to get their products reviewed from influencers and will pay for it too. Users can discover products, new brands, and tips through this platform. Smytten can also introduce a recommendation feature that can help users discover new trial products or full-sized products based on their previous purchases and ratings/reviews.

The beauty industry is seeing a lot of growth in India today. Disposable incomes have increased, and long-tail products have been made super accessible with these platforms. Smytten is uniquely placed in a growing segment and can capture new brand ad dollars while giving superior experience to its users.