How SURI Tested Demand Before Launch

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A waitlist is easy to join. A preorder asks someone to put money down.

Before launching its electric toothbrush, SURI used both. It tested messages through ads and landing pages, then moved from measuring interest to measuring willingness to pay.

Today:

We trace SURI’s launch test, build an AI creative director for static ads, cover three ecommerce updates and fix one return-causing promise.

Before SURI could sell its electric toothbrush, it had two questions to answer: Would people care about the idea? And would they pay for it?

Its launch moved through three increasingly meaningful asks: join the waitlist, place a preorder, then buy the launched product.

SURI began with a coming-soon page that asked visitors to join an early-access list.

But the waitlist was only one part of the work. Co-founder Gyve Safavi told Shopify that, before launch, SURI tested multiple landing pages and ran ads to see which messages persuaded people to leave their email addresses.

That helped the team refine how it talked about the toothbrush while the product was still being finalized. We don’t have the original ads or test results, so the screenshot illustrates the signup stage, not a winning page.

Interest became a stronger signal when SURI opened preorders. The next page showed the product and offered 40% off for a limited prelaunch order.

An email signup says, “Tell me more.” A preorder asks someone to make a purchase decision. Shopify reports that SURI received an initial 5,000 preorders. That gave the team a stronger indication of demand, along with a real obligation to deliver. When shipping delays followed, its customer-service setup helped it communicate with those buyers.

Once the product was available to buy, the ask changed again. The page moved to “Shop Now,” with product imagery, a launch price and customer proof.

The testing didn’t end at launch. Safavi says the team continued looking at how people responded to ads and which landing pages converted better.

SURI didn’t have to make every launch decision from a survey or a founder’s hunch. Each stage gave the team a stronger customer signal than the last.

Too often, brands open ChatGPT, ask for ad copy, and pick the least generic option. But AI doesn’t know what’s working in your ad account, what customers say in reviews, or which claims they believe. So it fills the gaps with confident guesses.

Flip the order and the ads change. The AI Ad Persuasion Checklist is a free 12-page guide that makes AI do the research before it writes a single word, the way Ogilvy and Claude Hopkins approached their best ads.

Get the free AI Ad Persuasion Checklist →

AI Launch Codes

AI Image generation is possibly the best thing to happen to ecommerce creative in years.

Why?

Because making a new static ad used to take much longer than thinking of one.

You had to brief a designer, find the right photo, wait for a draft, request changes, and repeat.

So brands often tested another headline or color instead of an entirely new idea.

Now the person running the ads can come up with ten rough concepts in seconds, turn the promising ones into visual drafts, and test ideas that might never have justified a photoshoot or design brief.

Just look at how many directions one static ad could take.

You could just take a product image and add some text.

Or make the copy the idea. Ridge’s apparent one-star complaint turns out to be the wallet’s selling point.

Build a colorful, render-style world around the product, like Obvi.

Create a lifestyle moment with a person that makes the outcome feel real, like PetLab.

Illustrate a problem in a way a conventional product photo never could, like Grüns.

Or make the problem and the desired outcome visible through an animated illustration.

These examples show what static creative can be, not how these brands made their ads.

When a new direction no longer has to become a major production project, the person running the ads can make the first draft themselves. They can test different arguments, scenes, and ways of showing the product, not just another headline on last week’s ad.

Making images is easier. But how do you consistently come up with on-brand ideas worth testing?

Today, we’re building an AI Creative Director Agent to solve that recurring problem. It starts with your customer research and brand knowledge, develops distinct concepts, and takes the idea you approve all the way to a finished static creative you can rapidly test.

You can use the system whenever you need fresh ads. And if you already have an ad for inspiration, the agent can use the idea behind it to create something new for your brand without copying it.

Meta, Shopify and Stripe back a protocol for customer AI agents

Meta and Sierra are developing a standard for agents to identify whom they represent and what a customer has permitted them to do on a business site. The specification is not out yet. For merchants, the important question is how an agent will check availability, returns or an order without getting unrestricted account access.

Shopify Balance adds international supplier payments

Eligible US merchants can now pay overseas suppliers from the Balance mobile app. If you pay suppliers abroad, compare the quoted exchange rate and total cost with your current payment method before moving the next invoice.

Kaufland opens its marketplace in Spain

It launched with more than 3,100 sellers and 10 million products, giving European merchants another route into Spain. The opportunity is worth assessing by category, but marketplace reach alone says nothing about your margin after fees, shipping and returns.

Before writing your next email or ad, name the one customer and the moment it is for. “Everyone on our list” is not a useful brief.

Read the recent returns for one of your best-selling products and look for a repeated expectation gap.

Why this works:

Your rep:

Report: “One return cause addressed.”

Fix the cause before paying to acquire the next disappointed buyer.

Imagine a Saturday where you're not catching up on the CRM you didn't touch all week. 

HubSpot's new self-updating CRM doesn't wait for you to log back in. Friday's calls are already logged. The deal that needs a nudge Monday morning is already flagged. The automation you set up once keeps running without you thinking about it. None of it needed you over the weekend. 

Customers are already seeing it pay off: 45% more deals closed. Finally, you start Monday caught up, not behind.

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