0.5 FTE
saved
300+
comments/day
<1h
response time
80 %
time savings
TL;DR: SNOCKS, one of the best-known D2C brands in the DACH region, with EUR 83 million in revenue, automated comment management on Facebook and Instagram with replient.ai. Result: 0.5 FTE saved, response time reduced to under 1 hour, 80% less manual effort. Sister brand OCEANSAPART also runs on the tool.
Why could SNOCKS no longer respond to 300 comments per day manually?
Everyone in D2C knows SNOCKS. Founded in 2016 by Johannes Kliesch and Felix Bauer in Mannheim, the brand grew from socks and underwear into a EUR 83 million company, profitable, with over 120 employees (retail-news.de, 2024). When you scale that aggressively, you also scale the problem.
The problem: comments under ads.
"How does that turn out?" "When will my order arrive?" "I entered a discount code, but…" and that every minute. Especially during sales events like Black Friday, according to Johannes Kliesch, it was "an absolute pain." Someone sat there answering all the comments manually. And eventually you just can't keep up.
We know that ourselves. At our agency Doppel N Marketing we had ten brands, including DJ Ötzi, 700 comments a day, three hours of manual work. Markus ended up building replient.ai, "so I don't have to answer comments on the toilet anymore." Sounds funny, but it was the real pain.
What do 300+ comments per day mean for an e-commerce team?
300 comments a day sounds abstract. Let's calculate it:
- At 60 seconds per reply: 5 hours of pure typing work
- With a community manager salary of 50,557 EUR/year (StepStone, 2026): around 25,000 EUR just for comment work
- On top of that: context switching, internal queries, coordination with the performance team
And that's just SNOCKS. Then there's OCEANSAPART as a second brand, with its own comment volume on separate channels.
Time spent on comment management: Before vs. After
SNOCKS, 300+ comments per day
Manual
~5h / day
≈ 1 FTE just for comments
With replient.ai
~1h / day
Review only
= 0.5 FTE saved
≈ 25,000 EUR / year
Source: SNOCKS / replient.ai | StepStone salary data 2026
How did SNOCKS switch to automated comment management?
SNOCKS came to replient.ai via Felix Kleine from Health Routine. After an onboarding call in January 2025, the setup was live within a few days, covering Facebook and Instagram for both brands.
What SNOCKS uses specifically
- AI reply suggestions: Trained on historical comments and the SNOCKS website. The AI knows sizing guidance, delivery times, and discount promotions.
- Automations: Spam and toxic comments are automatically hidden. During Black Week 2025, SNOCKS automatically hid all Facebook comments, as protection against racist comments that kept getting through despite the block list.
- Sentiment analysis: Detects which ads get a lot of negative comments. During sales events, SNOCKS takes ads with poor sentiment offline.
- Analytics: Reporting on how many comments were handled automatically and which creatives are problematic.
Victoria Hula, community manager at SNOCKS since May 2025, uses the tool daily: "Can we display which and how many comments were handled by our automations? First to see how much volume is covered automatically, but also to see which ads receive a lot of negative comments."
Automate comment moderation: Here's how it works
How did replient.ai perform on Black Friday?
For many e-commerce brands, Black Friday is the acid test. For SNOCKS, it was the moment the automation proved itself.
The challenge: Facebook comments that contained racist content directly on Facebook despite a keyword-based blocklist. The solution: From November 22 to December 1, 2025, all comments containing racist content were classified by replient.ai and automatically hidden, not deleted.
Without automation, that would have meant someone having to read comments every minute and make decisions during the busiest sales week of the year, since SNOCKS as a brand does not want racist content appearing under its ads. With replient.ai it was automated: set it once, done.
Managing negative comments under ads
What results has SNOCKS achieved with replient.ai?
Johannes Kliesch summed it up on LinkedIn like this:
"A few months ago we switched to replient.ai, and honestly, that was an absolute game changer. Since then almost all comments on Facebook and Instagram for SNOCKS and OCEANSAPART have been automated and we easily save 0.5 FTE."
, Johannes Kliesch, Founder SNOCKS
The numbers in detail:
SNOCKS: Before vs. After
Before (manual)
After (replient.ai)
response time
4 to 6 hours
<1 Stunde
Personnel effort
~1 FTE
~0.5 FTE
Brands covered
Only SNOCKS
SNOCKS + OCEANSAPART
Sales events
Disaster
1 automation
Annual savings
~25,000 EUR
How did Johannes Kliesch's LinkedIn post bring new customers?
Johannes Kliesch published the LinkedIn post about replient.ai on May 21, 2025. The post immediately made waves, Daniel Bidmon from Ecomhouse told us on the EcomSecrets podcast: "My business partner Emanuele sent me this LinkedIn post and then I clicked on it and thought to myself: Hey, that sounds interesting!"
This is the point that is often overlooked: when a founder like Johannes publicly talks about a tool, it is not a marketing campaign. It is earned social proof, exactly the kind of recommendation that counts in the D2C community.
Optimize social proof in ads: the complete guide
Why can't e-commerce brands handle 300+ comments manually anymore?
85% of Facebook users expect a reply within 6 hours (Social Stamina, 2025). At the same time, a study of 96 brands with 1.3 billion dollars in ad spend shows: comment moderation reduces customer acquisition cost by an average of 14.7% (Respondology, 2025).
The math is simple: If you do not reply, you pay more per customer. If you reply too slowly, you lose the customer. If you do it manually, you cannot be fast enough, not with 300 comments a day.
Expected response times on social media
% of consumers who expect a reply within...
30 minutes
14 %
1 hour
40 %
6 hours
85 %
24 hours
96 %
Source: Social Stamina (2025) | Facebook users
What can e-commerce brands learn from SNOCKS?
Key takeaways from the collaboration:
- Comment management is not a nice-to-have. When you scale, comments scale too. Without a system, it becomes a bottleneck.
- Automations are not a loss of control. SNOCKS automatically hid all FB comments during Black Week, and then reviewed everything calmly afterwards. That is control, not a loss.
- The AI must know the brand. SNOCKS connected their website and set up Custom Instructions. The AI knows size charts, shipping times, current promotions. That makes the difference between "bot response" and "brand response".
- Multiple brands, one dashboard. SNOCKS and OCEANSAPART run separately, with separate AI training per brand. No cross-contamination.
AI in Community Management: How to Train Your Brand Voice
Frequently asked questions about the SNOCKS case study
How many comments does SNOCKS handle per day with replient.ai?
Over 300 comments daily on Facebook and Instagram, for both brands SNOCKS and OCEANSAPART. The AI generates reply suggestions that the team can send with one click or adjust.
How much does SNOCKS save through automation?
Johannes Kliesch reports a 0.5 FTE saving. At an average community manager salary in Germany of around 50,000 EUR/year (StepStone, 2026) this corresponds to an annual saving of approximately 25,000 EUR.
Does SNOCKS use only comment replies or other features as well?
SNOCKS uses the full feature set: AI reply suggestions, automations (auto-hide for spam and hate), sentiment analysis, analytics and since 2025 also the inbox feature for DMs. Additionally, SNOCKS has shown interest in the LinkedIn integration for their company pages.
How fast was the onboarding?
A few days passed from the first onboarding call to the live setup. The most important step was connecting the website so the AI can learn from the product data. After that, training on historical comments, and the first reply suggestions come immediately.
Does replient.ai also work for brands with multiple sub-brands?
Yes. SNOCKS runs SNOCKS and OCEANSAPART as separate brands in the same account. Each brand has its own AI training, its own automations and its own analytics, without the AI mixing up responses.
The collaboration continues
SNOCKS was one of the first major D2C brands to bet on replient.ai. The collaboration has been running since early 2025. Since then new features were developed directly from feedback from SNOCKS: the inbox feature, Custom Instructions and the analytics section.
Or as Johannes says: "For us it was the best decision to implement the tool."
Want to see how replient.ai automates your comment management? Start for free now, try it free for 14 days.
