The Goal
The Client (a DTC wine brand) had launched a new lower-priced "Sampler Kit" in August 2025 as an entry point to their core boxed-wine catalog. Six months in, the question was whether the Sampler was a winner — and at what cost to the rest of the business.
Specifically:
· Was the Sampler cannibalizing Box sales (substituting demand from the flagship product), or was it incremental (creating new demand the brand wouldn't have captured otherwise)? · If incremental, was it serving as a gateway — converting trial buyers into Box buyers over time? · What's the unit-economics picture — is the Sampler profitable on its own, and does it deliver enough customer lifetime value to justify scaling? · Should the Sampler get more budget? At what expense, and how would the rest of the portfolio respond?
How We Went About It
Pulled fourteen months of data across four sources: Shopify product-level P&L (Jan 2024 → Mar 2026), Northbeam product attribution (Facebook, Google, AppLovin), Northbeam CAC by product, GA4 monthly traffic + behavior, plus a fresh COGS pull from finance for unit-economics.
Built five analyses that stacked into a single read:
· Cannibalization test — Box order trajectory pre vs. post Sampler launch, AOV stability, and ad-spend allocation, to test whether Box performance moved with the Sampler ramp · Unit economics — discount rate, gross margin, CAC, and customer-level LTV minus CAC per product · Customer journey + LTV — what Sampler-first repeaters buy on subsequent orders, Sampler-first vs Box-first cohort comparison · Acquisition efficiency — product-level CAC, blended and by channel · Growth projection simulator — an interactive model where the client could test budget-reallocation scenarios across products and see the LTV and revenue implications live
The whole thing was built as a single self-contained HTML deliverable with hover tooltips, expandable detail sections, and a working budget simulator — so the client could open it, drill into any finding, and run their own scenarios without needing a meeting or a deck revision.
Key Insights
(1) No cannibalization. Box order volume grew from ~20K/month to 24–30K/month after the Sampler launched. AOV held steady at $109–$113. Ad spend wasn't reallocated. The Sampler was creating new demand, not displacing existing Box demand.
(2) Better unit economics on the Sampler. Blended CAC: $53 (Sampler) vs $65 (Box). Same pattern on Facebook specifically: $63 vs $79 — Sampler ~18% cheaper to acquire. And the Sampler sells at near-full price (1.8% discount rate) vs Boxes at 26%, driving ~46% gross margin vs ~3.5% on Boxes.
(3) Gateway behavior is real — but only on repeaters. 24% of Sampler-first customers repeat (vs 34% for Box-first). Of those who do repeat, 78% buy Boxes on their second order; 89% by their fifth. Repeater LTV:CAC came out at 5.1x — identical to Box-first customers, but the Sampler buyers were 18% cheaper to acquire in the first place.
Recommendation: scale the Sampler as the primary acquisition tool. Two levers worth pulling — lift repeat rate (24% → 30%+) via post-purchase email flows and subscription-at-checkout, and lift CAC efficiency ($53 → $40) by raising Sampler budget share from 8% to 15–20% of total paid media.