CHICAGO (AP) — It’s a beauty product fan’s dream: a monthly box sent to the door filled with samples of lip glosses, face creams, hair treatments and nail polishes. The trend started a few years ago ...

Sometimes you’re standing in line at the post office and you notice people picking up colorful boxes labeled Birchbox, Ipsy, Loot Crate and Dollar Shave Club. These are just a few of the monthly ...

I’ve always felt that if I had a demonstrably better product than competitors and could only afford to implement one marketing element, it would nearly always be sampling. Sampling breaks through the ...

My love of samples dates back decades. When I was a kid growing up in the Midwest, I would accompany my dad to Sam’s Club on Saturday afternoons, an outing that was mostly about buying bulk packs of ...

Once, businesses would hand out free samples in malls or throw them in with other purchases. Now, several businesses have sprouted up devoted to sending out a box of samples to customers once a month ...

This undated publicity photo provided by Birchbox shows a typical monthly beauty sample shipment. Consumers can subscribe to companies like Birch Box to receive monthly shipments of beauty product ...