Swish Secures Seed Funding to Advance AI-Powered Product Sampling
Swish Brand Experiences, a Detroit-based programmatic product trials platform, has closed a seed funding round led by BD Ventures with participation from several retail technology and shopper marketing investors.
Founded to reimagine CPG sampling, Swish delivers full-size products directly into shoppers’ online grocery orders for pickup or delivery. The platform uses artificial intelligence and real transactional data to identify relevant households and personalize the shopper experience, with the goal of driving trial and tracking repeat purchase behavior.
“Ultimately, brands want customers to try and then buy their products,” Adam Stave, co-founder and CEO of Swish, said in a media release. “Demos and mailers are expensive and hard to measure, while digital media continues to fall short. Swish treats the product itself as media — placed directly into baskets, at the right time, for the right people.”
Related: Swish, Upshop Partner on Targeted Sampling Solution
Swish said it plans to use the funding to expand its retailer partnerships and scale its platform as a growth engine for both brands and retailers.
The company said its approach helps brands measure the impact of trial campaigns while providing retailers with larger baskets, stronger loyalty and incremental sales. Unlike traditional sampling, every trial through Swish registers as a sale for retailers and feeds back into shopper history and retail media algorithms.
Early pilots with retailers, including Stater Bros. Markets, have shown improvements in penetration, velocity and customer lifetime value, according to the company.
The investment round was led by BD Ventures, the venture capital arm of Brand:Detroit, founded by Jonathan Opdyke and Roger Ehrenberg. Both have longstanding ties to the retail media and ad tech industries. Opdyke recently led the seed round and closely advised retail media platform Symbiosys, acquired by DoorDash.
