Wild Blood Manages Field Sales and Distribution Across Two Channels with SimplyDepo

Company Overview

Wild Blood is a premium coconut water brand founded in Austin, Texas, built around a simple idea: natural hydration should fit the environments where people actually need it. Instead of chasing grocery store health aisles, Wild Blood targets concert venues, bars, festivals, gyms, and outdoor sports communities — places where people want a clean, refreshing alternative to alcohol that doesn’t feel out of place.

The brand sells two products, a Still and a Sparkling coconut water, in bold, large-format cans with hand-drawn artwork designed to hold their own on a bar shelf. Within a short time of launching, Wild Blood secured over 200 retail accounts in Austin and established partnerships with two distribution partners to support continued growth.

Wild Blood runs a hybrid go-to-market model: a direct field sales software-powered rep who personally visits and manages accounts, alongside distributors who handle their own retail relationships. As the brand scaled, leadership needed a system that could give them clear visibility across both channels at once.

The Challenge

Wild Blood’s core challenge wasn’t finding retail interest — it was keeping full visibility across two different sales channels while managing the transition of accounts from direct coverage to distributor coverage.

Before SimplyDepo, the team relied on HubSpot, a general-purpose CRM built for long sales cycles and large deals. It worked well for the months-long process of signing a new distributor, but it wasn’t built for the pace or granularity of daily field sales.

Before SimplyDepo:

• No Granular Visit Tracking – There was no way to see when an account was last visited, what was discussed, or what was ordered each time.
• No Order Management – HubSpot had no order function, so orders had to be handled entirely outside the system.
• Cumbersome Contact Creation – Adding a contact required an email address a rep couldn’t always get on a first store visit.
• Invisible Merchandising Compliance – Whether a rep added a cooler cling, checked shelf positioning, or placed a display wasn’t tracked anywhere.
• No Commission Data Source – Commission calculations had no reliable, verified activity data behind them.
• Limited Distributor Visibility – Distributor activity was only visible through reports received at the end of the month.

The Solution

Wild Blood’s CFO first came across SimplyDepo through a recommendation online while searching for a way to fill the field sales gap HubSpot couldn’t cover. The team ran a demo and saw that it checked the boxes a general-purpose CRM built for field sales was missing — order management, visit-level tracking, and flexibility to grow alongside an early-stage brand.

“We just have this in conjunction with HubSpot. It’s great for large-scale deals, but once we started getting more into field sales, we saw it wasn’t meeting our needs at all.”

— Andrea Ellison, VP of Sales & Revenue, Wild Blood

Visit-Level Account Management

SimplyDepo replaced the static account view of a traditional CRM with a visit-by-visit record of every customer interaction, supporting consistent retail execution across every stop. Wild Blood’s field rep checks the customer list each morning to see which accounts haven’t been visited recently — if it’s been over a month, they move to the top of the priority list. Before entering a store, he can review the last visit notes, check what was previously ordered, and look up the contact name to greet the person directly.

In-Store Ordering and Invoicing

When a store owner wants to place an order on the spot, the rep creates it directly in SimplyDepo during the visit using B2B order management and fulfills it from product on hand. If payment is needed, an invoice goes out through the app’s built-in email system before he leaves the store — work that previously required coming home and entering everything into a separate system.

Flexible Contact Capture

HubSpot required an email address or phone number to create a contact, which a rep doesn’t always have on a first visit. SimplyDepo removes that friction: a contact can be logged with just a name, with details added later as they’re gathered.

Merchandising Compliance via Custom Forms

Wild Blood uses SimplyDepo’s custom forms, part of its merchandising software, to track in-store execution on every visit — whether the rep added a cooler cling, verified shelf positioning, or placed a secondary display. Because these are tied to each visit record, management can report on execution quality across the full account base.

Route Planning and Map View

The field rep uses SimplyDepo’s map feature and route planning tools to see where accounts are located and plan an efficient path through the day, sequencing fixed stops automatically or using the map view for flexible, on-the-fly decisions.

Reporting for Commission and Performance Tracking

Wild Blood’s leadership uses SimplyDepo’s sales analytics dashboards to monitor revenue, number of visits, and cases delivered, exporting custom form data to Excel for deeper analysis. Commission payments to the field rep are calculated directly from SimplyDepo activity, making the process transparent and verifiable.

“We want to track how often our reps are going, making sure the transition and handoff is going smoothly, and then the ad hoc items — like is our rep adding merchandising when he goes, what is the status, what positioning is our product. It’s just been a really useful tool for us.”

— Andrea Ellison, VP of Sales & Revenue, Wild Blood

B2B Online Ordering

Wild Blood has activated SimplyDepo’s Order Direct feature for select retail accounts, letting store buyers place orders independently through an online storefront instead of waiting for a rep visit or sending a text or email.

Summary Metrics

Here’s how Wild Blood’s field sales operations changed after adopting SimplyDepo:

“I just can’t imagine doing what we’re doing without a tool like this.”

Why It Works

SimplyDepo works for Wild Blood because it was built for teams managing physical account coverage, not email-based CRM workflows. The platform matches how a lean field sales team actually operates: visiting stores, capturing orders on the spot, and tracking merchandising execution without a separate admin session at the end of the day.

By connecting visit-level account management, in-store ordering, and commission reporting into one distribution management software platform, SimplyDepo gives Wild Blood a single source of truth across both its direct sales and distributor channels — something a general-purpose CRM like HubSpot couldn’t provide.

What’s Next

Wild Blood is focused on deepening its Austin presence and continuing to add retail accounts across the city. As the distributor relationship matures, SimplyDepo will remain the operational layer keeping both direct and distributor channels visible from one place.

The team is also working toward making Order Direct onboarding more accessible for the field rep — enabling him to invite store owners to set up their own ordering accounts directly during a visit, without routing the request through the admin. This is expected to reduce friction in activating new self-service accounts and further increase order volume.

What Wild Blood Says

Andrea Ellison, VP of Sales & Revenue, Wild Blood

“We basically pay commission to our field sales rep based on what’s available there. We can track revenue, number of visits, and cases delivered — everything, so it’s just a lot more granular.”

— Andrea Ellison, VP of Sales & Revenue, Wild Blood

Andrew Eberhart, Field Sales Rep, Wild Blood

“I’m able to make more orders in a day and fulfill more because I know what people have ordered. It’s definitely increased our orders and helped that process.”

— Andrew Eberhart, Field Sales Rep, Wild Blood

See how other brands use SimplyDepo: Read the Milonga case study