Customer Story: Haik from Snibbs

Welcome Haik! You started Snibbs with one shoe - How has that evolved into today?

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Well let’s start with a bit of backstory. I started the brand with one of my high school buddies, Daniel. He's a famous chef. I also run a restaurant in LA and have an entrepreneurial background. So he and I have always connected over that.  
And when we first set out to create a shoe, we were targeting the hospitality and restaurant industry. We wanted to create a versatile work shoe for that market. Having no footwear production experience, we had no idea where to start. It was a long uphill battle, making mistakes along the way but after a couple years - we finally made a really great shoe. 

We’ve continued to revise it: 40+ and counting to be precise. Our process is simple: We listen to feedback and immediately try to implement changes. We set out to make the best work shoe ever so we’ve never cut any corners, and we’re still iterating and have a few new models coming out soon. 

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Tell us more about the acquisition side of the business. How did you get your first customers? 

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Snibbs initially started with a Kickstarter campaign which got us about $60,000 worth of sales. That gave us a nice boost in the beginning and allowed us to connect to an initial fanbase. And as soon as we started to launch, COVID hit. So we've only really been publicly selling the shoes for 2 years. So that launch was in March of 2020, right when governments started to shut restaurants and hotels down. That was really tough because our main prospective customers in hospitality were out of a job. But nurses were still working and they were working harder than they'd ever worked before - and they needed durable and comfortable work shoes. 

So we pivoted and  launched a really cool program called “Sole Support” where we’d donate shoes to nurses and hospitals, as well as free meals. That had a great snowball effect, we got some great coverage, and created some great brand awareness. 
Since then we’ve had to navigate the IOS 14 updates and get back on our feet from a digital ad spend standpoint, and we ended up implementing a lot more organic tactics to our mix (PR, referral and an ambassador program). We now use a healthy mix of the two (paid + organic)

Tell us more about the ambassador program - how does that work? Any cool tech you’re leveraging?

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Influencers have always performed well for us, but we really felt that it should be more personal than simply sending someone a pair of shoes and in return for a post. So we started an ambassador program which is much more personal. It consists of a handful of people who really feel strongly about the product and are excited about it. They get perks and continuously promote us in more evergreen fashion. 

On the tech front - we've been using GRIN for a while on influencer marketing. It's a really simple, one stop shop to manage everything, whether it's commission payouts for influencers, the signup process etc. It’s essentially a CRM for your influencers and your ambassadors. 

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What about web development? How are you solving that and how does Storetasker get involved? 

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I come from a light web development background, and I’ve always found that finding and hiring developers was always such a difficult task. It's a roll of the dice. You put a project out there and 1,000 people immediately message you saying they can execute without any problems. But there's no real way to vet these people out. 

And that's one thing that I was really happy with when I found Storetasker. And I haven't used anything else since I found you!

The first couple projects went really smoothly. It was clear that I was working with a developer who knew what they were doing. They spoke perfect English, were easy to communicate with, were more than willing to work through any issues and I found them fantastic from a customer service standpoint.

The web development skills coupled with the communication really sold me. Mirza’s been a real asset to us and has never steered me wrong, I'm very happy to work with him continuously.

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Thank you for the kind words Haik :) Glad that’s going smoothly. What’s next on your roadmap? 

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Right now we’re working through a tricky (though seems simple) carousel update, and besides that a couple of landing pages and implementing a custom “charity donation” widget. We're really pushing to be impact driven and not just sales driven - so we’ve handpicked a few charities and we're gonna be donating a percentage of all sales to one of those charities that the customer gets to choose. We’re not using an app for that, we’re building it custom. 

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One last question from us: If you could attribute your success to one thing, what would it be?

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People and partners. Of course you need to have the right team in place but you also need to have the right partners. So many agencies promise the same things and rarely deliver - that’s also true for web developers. That’s why Storetasker has been instrumental for us: Not having to worry about quality and availability has been key. 

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Thanks Haik! We’re here whenever you need :)

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