How Did Turning Point Brands Decode the Success Behind Their Fastest-Growing Product?

Turning Point Brands partnered with User Intuition to understand why ALP — their breakout nicotine pouch brand — resonated with consumers, then used those insights to build a repeatable product innovation playbook. Their new Chief Commercial Officer, Eric, compressed what would have been months of traditional consumer research into under 72 hours per study, achieving an estimated 93% cost reduction and giving cross-functional teams direct access to the voice of their consumer for the first time.

The Tension: A Breakout Product Nobody Could Fully Explain

Turning Point Brands — the publicly traded company behind Zig-Zag, Stoker's, and a growing portfolio of modern oral products — had a problem most companies would love to have. Their nicotine pouch brand ALP was winning. Launched in late 2025 through a joint venture, ALP hit $200 per store per week in early retail channels and was tracking toward $60–80M in combined modern oral revenue.

But here's the thing about winning: if you don't know why you're winning, you can't do it again.

The executive team had hypotheses. Strong brand association. The right flavor profiles. Good retail placement. Maybe it was the nicotine strength range. Maybe it was the pouch format itself. But hypotheses aren't insights — and in a nicotine pouch market growing 40% year-over-year with new entrants flooding in monthly, guessing wasn't a strategy.

When Eric joined as Chief Growth Officer, he brought a rare combination of lenses: deep nicotine industry experience from his years as President of JUUL Labs Canada and VP of Export Markets, data infrastructure expertise from his time as COO at RudderStack (a customer data platform), and strategic rigor from his years as an Engagement Manager at McKinsey. He'd seen firsthand what happens when consumer products companies scale without truly understanding their consumer — and he wasn't going to let that happen at TPB.

The Mission

Eric needed to decode what actually made ALP succeed — moving from correlation to causation — and build a repeatable consumer intelligence capability that could inform the entire modern oral portfolio. Research timelines had to compress so product and commercial teams could iterate in weeks, not quarters. Cross-functional teams needed direct access to consumer voice, not insights filtered through a 60-page research deck. And every study had to feed a compounding knowledge base that got smarter over time.

The Roadblocks

Traditional research was built for a different era. The tobacco and oral nicotine industry has historically relied on large quantitative panels, annual brand trackers, and expensive qualitative studies that take 6–8 weeks to field and cost $15K–27K per project. For a category moving at the speed of modern oral, that cadence is a liability.

Surface-level data masked the real drivers. TPB had plenty of sales data. They could see what was selling and where. What they couldn't see was why a consumer chose ALP over ZYN in that specific moment at the convenience store counter — the emotional, functional, and social drivers that quantitative data simply doesn't capture.

Consumer research was siloed. Insights lived in the research team's reports. Product development, brand marketing, sales strategy, and retail partnerships all needed consumer intelligence — but by the time a traditional study made it through the organization, the market had already moved.

New market entrants were compressing decision windows. With the US nicotine pouch market surging and dozens of new brands launching, the window to establish ALP's position was measured in months, not years. The research approach needed to match the speed of the market.

How User Intuition Changed the Game

Eric's first move was running a deep consumer study through User Intuition to understand the ALP success story from the consumer's perspective — not through surveys or focus groups, but through extended AI-moderated conversations that probed 5–7 levels deep into purchase motivation.

Study 1: Decoding ALP's appeal. Within 48 hours, Eric's team had 30+ minute conversations with over 100 nicotine pouch consumers who had tried ALP. The AI moderator — trained on McKinsey's laddering methodology — didn't just ask "what do you like about ALP?" It probed into the emotional and functional layers beneath the surface: what triggered the first purchase, what drove the second, what made them recommend it (or not) to friends, and how ALP fit into their broader relationship with nicotine products.

Study 2: Competitive positioning validation. The same week, a second study explored how consumers perceived ALP relative to competitors in the space. Instead of relying on brand tracking surveys that measure awareness and favorability in isolation, the conversations revealed the actual decision architecture — what consumers were comparing, what mattered in which moments, and where ALP's positioning had gaps.

Study 3: New product concept testing. With the ALP playbook taking shape, the team began using User Intuition to test new flavor concepts, packaging variations, and messaging approaches before committing production resources. What used to require a formal research project became a 48-hour validation cycle.

The compounding effect was the real unlock. Every study fed into User Intuition's Intelligence Hub — creating a searchable, queryable knowledge base of consumer voice that anyone on the commercial team could access. A brand manager could ask "what do consumers say about wintergreen flavor intensity?" and get answers drawn from hundreds of real conversations, not a single data point in a quarterly report.

The Results That Matter

Research cycles dropped from 6–8 weeks per study to under 72 hours — roughly 95% faster. Cost per study fell from $15K–27K to approximately $1,000 for 20 deep interviews, a 93% savings that turned qualitative research from a quarterly budget event into a continuous capability.

Interview depth tripled. 10–15 minute panel surveys gave way to 30+ minute moderated conversations with 5–7 levels of probing — the kind of depth that reveals why consumers behave the way they do, not just what they do. Consumer voices per quarter jumped from 50–100 via annual trackers to 200–300+ through continuous studies, delivering 3–4x more signal into every product and positioning decision.

Access to insights shifted from research-team-only reports to the entire commercial organization via the Intelligence Hub — fully democratized. And the time from insight to product decision compressed from weeks or months to days, giving Turning Point Brands the ability to move at the speed of the market it's competing in.

What Eric Says

"I've spent my career at the intersection of consumer products and data — from JUUL to RudderStack to now Turning Point Brands. The pattern is always the same: the companies that win are the ones that actually understand their consumer, not the ones with the biggest ad budget. User Intuition gave us something we'd never had before — the ability to have hundreds of deep conversations with our consumers in days, not months, and actually use those insights to make decisions in real time. That's not incremental improvement. That's a fundamentally different way of building brands."

— Eric O., Chief Commercial Officer, Turning Point Brands (Joined as Chief Growth Officer; promoted to CCO)

The Bottom Line

Under 72 hours to answers that used to take two months. 93% cost savings per study. A growing intelligence hub that compounds with every conversation. And a commercial organization that now moves at the speed of the market it's competing in.

Eric didn't just bring a new research tool to Turning Point Brands. He brought a new operating model for consumer intelligence — one where deep qualitative understanding is continuous, democratized, and directly connected to product decisions. In a nicotine pouch market projected to reach $25B by 2030, that's not a nice-to-have. It's the difference between leading and reacting.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Turning Point Brands use User Intuition for product innovation?

Turning Point Brands uses User Intuition to run deep consumer research studies — extended AI-moderated conversations with 100+ consumers per study — to decode purchase motivation, validate product concepts, and test positioning before committing resources. Studies complete in under 72 hours at roughly 93% less cost than traditional qualitative research methods.

What made ALP successful according to consumer research?

User Intuition's AI-moderated interviews probed 5–7 levels deep into consumer purchase decisions, revealing the emotional, functional, and social drivers behind ALP's rapid adoption. These insights — gathered from hundreds of real conversations — gave Turning Point Brands a data-backed understanding of their product's appeal rather than relying on hypotheses or sales data alone.

How does User Intuition compare to traditional consumer research in tobacco/nicotine?

Traditional nicotine industry research relies on quantitative panels and annual brand trackers that take 6–8 weeks and cost $15K–27K per study. User Intuition delivers deeper qualitative insights — 30+ minute AI-moderated conversations with McKinsey-trained methodology — in under 72 hours at approximately $1,000 per 20-interview study. The depth and speed combination enables continuous iteration rather than periodic snapshots.

What is User Intuition's Intelligence Hub and how does it help CPG brands?

The Intelligence Hub is a compounding knowledge base that stores and organizes insights from every research study. Teams across the organization can search and query consumer voice data — asking questions like "what do consumers say about [product attribute]?" — and get synthesized answers from hundreds of real conversations. The hub appreciates in value with every study, turning isolated projects into a persistent consumer intelligence asset.

Can non-researchers at Turning Point Brands run their own studies?

Yes. User Intuition is designed so that product managers, brand marketers, and commercial leaders can launch studies independently — without research team involvement. Setup takes as little as 5 minutes, and the AI moderator handles interview facilitation and synthesis. This democratization means the entire organization has direct access to consumer voice, not just the insights function.

How fast can Turning Point Brands get consumer feedback on a new product concept?

Using User Intuition, Turning Point Brands can go from concept to consumer feedback in under 48–72 hours. The platform's integrated panel of 4M+ vetted US consumers handles recruitment automatically, and AI-moderated conversations begin within hours of study launch. Results include quantified qualitative data, full transcripts, and automated reports.

Last Updated: February 10, 2026 · Reading Time: 6 minutes

Categories: Consumer Products · Product Innovation · Brand Building · Nicotine & Oral Products · Qualitative Research