Summary: 88 Acres brought retailer visits, store contacts, routes and field photos into one place with SimplyDepo. Its 15-person sales team could coordinate store activity with less manual work, while Darien Brown gained a clearer view of retail execution. The company reported 10 hours saved weekly per sales rep, a 30% increase in reordering volume and 15% new-customer growth.
Company Overview
88 Acres makes seed-based products, including seed bars, butters, granola and protein bars. Its sales team includes 15 salespeople. Darien Brown, National Retail Activations Manager, supports the brand’s retail presence by facilitating endcaps and overseeing promotional planners and demo programs across retail channels.
The Challenge
Strong in-store demos did not always translate into the sales they could have generated. Janice, a salesperson from San Diego, often sold more than 200 seed bars during her demos. But when a store had only four boxes available, limited stock wasted her time and left potential sales unrealized. The mismatch was a recurring problem.
Before a scheduled demo, the team would email a retailer, who would then manually call stores to check product availability. That process did not work reliably enough. 88 Acres needed to align bulk purchasing with Whole Foods and other retailers so stock would be available when reps arrived.
Darien tried organizing stores into red and green groups: stores that did not reorder well, and stores that did after successful demos. He put retailer schedules into one Google Sheet so the sales team would know whom to email or call and when. The manual sheet still could not give the team the stock control it needed.
Operational Insight
A successful demo needed more than a strong salesperson: store stock, follow-up contacts and scheduled visits had to work together. Manual calls and spreadsheets made that coordination difficult.
Doesn’t matter how great your salesperson or merchandiser is if your inventory optimization is bad.
Darien BrownNational Retail Activations Manager
The Solution
SimplyDepo became a shared place for 88 Acres’ retailer visits and contacts. Darien has used the platform since February 2024 to track routes and team activity, while reps keep a contact list for each store. When product runs low, they can email wholesale suppliers directly from SimplyDepo to ask for replacements.
- Field visibility: Darien can track what sales reps are doing in the field, including their trips and store photos in real time.
- Rep-owned routes: salespeople create their own routes in the mobile app, reducing the route-planning work that previously sat with Darien.
- Shared store execution: Darien leaves notes for the merchandising team, and reps reply with photos from customer sections in stores.
- Searchable field photos: the gallery’s filters and tags let other teams find and use the results of retail activity.
SimplyDepo’s automated wholesale tools bring together simple reporting and real-time market insights, distribution-route management, analytics for inventory levels and pricing, and delivery coordination. The platform also supports sales optimization and bulk discounts as brands manage their wholesale operations.
My social media team can go to the SimplyDepo gallery, hit Filter, go to tags, choose ‘June Secondary’, and see the huge B2B trade show that we won.
Darien BrownNational Retail Activations Manager
The Results
88 Acres reported 10 hours saved weekly per sales rep, a 30% increase in reordering volume and 15% new-customer growth. The changes also gave Darien and the field team a more practical way to manage daily retail activity.
More time to focus on wholesale growth
Reps now create their own routes in the SimplyDepo mobile app. Darien can spend more time on business analytics, store visits and merchandising instead of handling every route himself.
Less manual route and mileage work
Reps no longer need to plan with Google Maps and calculate mileage for payments manually. SimplyDepo handles that work automatically.
Real-time visibility into retail execution
Notes and store photos keep merchandising activity in one place. Darien can see his team’s wins, identify weaker areas and follow the work across more stores. The team also has tools to automate task assignment and improve performance.
Summary Metrics
| KPI | Outcome with SimplyDepo |
|---|---|
| Time saved per sales rep | 10 hours weekly |
| Reordering volume | 30% increase |
| New customers | 15% growth |
Why It Works
Darien’s reasons for choosing SimplyDepo reflect how the team works in stores:
- Flexibility to track sales reps’ activity in the field.
- Real-time insight into trips and store photos.
- An easy platform for collecting online wholesale data.
- Affordability, including the special two-month trial offer Darien valued.
”SimplyDepo gives me an extra pair of eyes in the field”
Darien BrownNational Retail Activations Manager
What’s Next
88 Acres plans to use SimplyDepo’s full sales and order feature set as it continues to support brand growth. With route planning shared across the team and a clearer view of retailer activity, Darien can keep his attention on analytics, merchandising and store visits.
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