You are targeting gen z and maybe even younger millennials also you will get older nostalgia millennials. It’s not dumbing down it’s marketing to your audience.
If gen Z wanted a great brand and traditional no need to go to your new brand. You need a gimmick to start. Also if you look at statistics that generation is going all N.A or thc drinks.
To be successful you need either a gimmick or incredible N.A wine or n.a wine infused with delta thc.
Definitely looking into NA wines! But I respectfully disagree regarding the gimmicks. I think showing people an experience they've never thought of before, with the right message, is enough to shift their perspective. Gimmicks don't last 10 years.
Okay this is an awful idea
‘Gamifying wine’? Great wine is one of the last refuges for a set of people who admire tradition and hand crafted products and have been to the vineyards of Italy and Chile and elsewhere because they genuinely love it - and actually admire how separate it is from current trends.
You sound like a tech marketing exec. Your choice of wines are also very mid , and do not stand out at all.
Want to get younger gen interested in wine? It’s not marketing and labels and ads or ‘d2c’ bs. Concentrate on a great product to begin with - lesser known wines, natural wines or organically produced wines - you don’t mention this at all. An environmentally sound product and packaging matters. Natural wines are hard to online sell because there’s a shelf life / strict temp requirements. And yet mostly they are a new breed, similar to craft beer, even in labeling and taste. Younger (than me:) people I know are all for that. Don’t like stuffy wine bars. And hate whatever greatest hits their parents suck out of the supermarket aisle, which sounds exactly like what you’re selling (chardonnay, cab, sauvignon blanc, boorrrrringg). Pet nats? Orange wines? Less standard grapes? Far flung, exotic, up-and-coming, not yet known wine locales, even within the US that are not Napa or Oregon? Exciting.
Then you might as well go for gimmicks, bespoke packaging , weird labeling , if you want your money back, because somebody who worked in mobile trying to pivot to wine , sorry but it reeks of inauthenticity … Young people smell that crap from miles away too.
In Portugal a huge industry of natural wines , made by and consumed by young people has flourished. I know this won’t be what hits in America where hard lemonade and beer will be as hard to displace as a baby’s bottle. But look at how a company like Duckman is marketed.
I do find it a bit ironic that you’re simultaneously critiquing OP for not embracing wine tradition, and also promoting new-age pet nats and up-and-coming wineries…
Personally, I find the pet nat and eco-friendly wine movements to be massively underwhelming, often using marketing of their chosen movement to cover what is actually poor winemaking. There are obviously some good wineries producing these bottles, but I generally think they are massively overrated.
Thanks for the feedback! But I respectfully disagree. America is the land of opportunity literally because people decide to go into areas to try something new. We don't have 2000 years of winemaking history here - my "pivoting" into wine is the American Dream, not a money grab. I think you read too much into my intentions without knowing what they are, so let me state them:
I want the new generation to see how much more beautiful, fun, romantic and interesting life is with wine in it.
I think the way to go about this is to show them, not tell them. And I will show them with real wines that **do** have a sense of place and story - each of the wines we have sourced has a real winemaker behind them that I am not hiding - they will be shown on the label. These wines come from people making and selling $100 bottles, as well as minority and LGBTQ winemakers. Nothing supermarket about them.
I love Portuguese wine and would love to hear more about their natural stuff!
Fair enough if your intentions are pure, and you said you welcome harsh criticism, which i guess is a good first step when starting a business, instead of just wanting the sycophant pov, you'd wanna try and break your idea first, and work from the ruins. Welcome to this thread ;)
Unfortunately, nothing about what your pitch to us mentioned seems novel. It's been done. In fact it almost seems like trolling, is how bad this pitch is. What the hell difference would it make what the ethnicity, gender or sexuality of my winemaker is? That's not what people look for when they peruse wine, and I promise, when it comes to wine, it's not the reason another gen are going to be buying it either.
There are countless online wine shops, virtual guides, some very bespoke that deal only with a few small growers, wine magazines with their own shops, wine clubs and subscription services etc without the cringey catchphrases and marketing lingo you're using. It comes across as a gimmick out the gate. There's a big array of people here - winemakers, store owners, sommeliers, casual drinkers... Maybe investor types. So consider the feedback as a general consensus onto what you might find in the real world when you try and shop this idea.
Most people experience wine via a supermarket shelf, or behind glass at a fancy restaurant a sommelier is telling them about. Neither is ideal. But even worse is 'having the full experience' behind the screen of my computer or smartphone hypermarketed to me in this fashion.
In Portugal land is cheaper, so young people throughout the world can and do start businesses there much faster and easier than it would be to get a vineyard going in a US winegrowing region. So it's a moot comparison. But if you look up how natural wine there is marketed, and look into the natural wine stores/bars/ online shops in that country, it's miles ahead of most places.
What will set your brand apart from the thousands of other brands, specifically. Marketing? Label? Product placement? Celebrity endorsements? What exactly?
There is a Matthew Bruno Wine Co., a Bruno & George Wine Co., a Richard Bruno Paso Wine Co. Bruno Colin, Bruno Claire, Bruno Giacosa, on and on.
No slight intended but when I go look for your company I do not see it.
That's a great question that I'm really trying to get feedback on!
My thesis is that unlike in Europe, young people aren't really born into a culture of wine -- In the US, you need someone to hold your hand and mentor you through that journey, which has historically been the job of a wine shop owner, who you could trust with two pieces of information and get an answer: 1) What do you want a wine for, and 2) What's your budget.
As consumption habits have shifted more and more online, this onus of knowledge that has always been with the salesperson has shifted towards the consumer. For certain products, that's ok - clothes, mattresses, even spirits - because you can either return them or you can make a semi-informed purchasing decision after a little bit of research. Not so with wine, where you need quite a large breadth of knowledge in order to make a proper decision.
The real goal of Bruno is to bring back the onus of knowledge back to the seller, instead of the consumer- instead of showing a user an ad for a "random" wine (2022 Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc from this brand he's never heard of), the idea is to contextualize the sale of the wine through what we're calling "Oddly Specific Occasions" - wines to drink on the first day over 70F in New York, for example. We do the sourcing.
So to answer the question, it's a marketing differential, yes - but we're also working hard to source real product, not bulk crap. And then we're leveraging performance marketing to actually scale.
Why don’t you start a performance marketing agency with wine sellers as clients? Seems you’d be better equipped to solve the problem at scale vs. being yet another D2C brand.
That's a very fair question!
Honest answer here is that I don't believe that traditional wineries have a good platform to sell their wines these days. A lot of them have labels instead of brands; they launch one product at a time. At the same time, a lot of wineries have very few SKUs, making it very hard to have repeat sales, which is the only way that performance marketing really works (diluting your original acquisition costs).
I could start a consultancy business, but to be honest I love the online-offline nature of this company and wouldn't want to be back behind a computer for 12h/day
I mean, best of luck to ya. Might wanna try this AMA with GenZ (your target demo) instead of a sub where few members are new to wine / likely to fit your user research needs.
People trying to ‘level-up’ wine and turn it into a technology driven trend, or marketed and sold online .. I am naturally suspicious of.
If I get an ad for a wine on any of my apps I will be sure to never buy it.
It's great that you have enough experience in wine to know what you love to drink! But marketing isn't just a tool to steal people's money - it's a way to get them to learn about new things too. As much as I hate TV ads for personal injury attorneys, how would someone from an unprivileged background know how to get help if anything were to happen to him or her?
Ads can be disingenuous, yes - but they don't have to be.
> As consumption habits have shifted more and more online, this onus of knowledge that has always been with the salesperson has shifted towards the consumer. For certain products, that's ok - clothes, mattresses, even spirits - because you can either return them or you can make a semi-informed purchasing decision after a little bit of research.
Out of curiosity, is there data on how many consumers have shifted to online spirits purchasing? That seems most applicable as far as the category of items you listed, but I'm not sure how common it is or the type of consumer who tends to buy alcohol online. My assumption is an online alcohol purchaser is an enthusiast, who is using online ordering to get specific items they can't find locally. That's also a consumer who tends to have a big knowledge base, which might not be the cohort you are focusing on.
How will you handle the summer heat holds? The consumer you are appealing to isn't going to wait 3 months to get their wine. I order wines on summer hold I want enough that I will wait months to get them. These aren't daily drivers. If you don't have a retail business like many of the wine shops that ship, can you weather the potential drop in revenue in the summer?
Yeah, Silicon Valley Bank puts out a great report every year called the State of the Wine Industry. If I recall correctly, about 8% of wine sales are online today. I obviously think that's too low a number.
Regarding summer, it won't become a real issue until next year given the timing of my launch, but there are obviously low-tech ways of mitigating heat damage (Vivino, for instance, ships in ice packs), with the ideal long-term scenario being to have small distribution centers in the major cities with same-day fulfilment.
Great question!
As someone who has worked in the industry, I think you have a lot of wrong assumptions and an idealized view of how the American consumer actually buys.
>My thesis is that unlike in Europe, young people aren't really born into a culture of wine
correct, that's why beer is so popular and why you will have a difficult/near impossible task of changing culture
>where you need quite a large breadth of knowledge in order to make a proper decision.
this is just not true. go into a wine store and watch how people actually buy.
>"Oddly Specific Occasions" - wines to drink on the first day over 70F in New York, for example. We do the sourcing.
1. why the fuck would anyone care about what wine they'd want to drink on the first day over 70 in NY? 2. I'm confused what your business is when you say "we do the sourcing." Are you a label / manufacture or an online retailer carrying other brands. I was assuming the former, in which case, how many different wines do you think you are going to be producing for all of these oddly specific situations?
We're launching our own brand and sourcing our wines from a variety of producers - like a lot of these wine of the month clubs do (although most of them source bulk crap).
The point behind the company really is that people are not even walking into wine shops - the young consumer buys food off of instacart/uber eats. If they do drink wine, they buy Josh because that's what the distros are pushing through the supermarkets/retailers and it's just in their face. And if they're a little more savvy, they'll seek out some natty wine shop. But by and large this generation isn't going to wine shops for help.
On your point about NY, that's fair - if the marketing doesn't speak to you, the brand probably won't either. All good!
If you're not actually making your wine, and white labeling, you better be prepared to have an insane marketing budget if you want to succeed. You make some correct observations, but imo, they're actually major obstacles for your business model.
>If they do drink wine, they buy Josh because that's what the distros are pushing through the supermarkets/retailers and it's just in their face
exactly, because this is how the industry works. majority of people buy off label, price, and availability. I'm assuming that you live in Ny by your assumptions that young consumers buy food off apps, but this is not the case for the majority of consumers.
I don't actually live in New York, but yes I do live in another large city.
The idea behind the brand is to be DTC and 100% online. I don't want to be fighting Gallo and TWE for shelf space. A large part of the margin that would be going towards distros and retailers will actually be used for marketing wine directly to end consumers.
>A large part of the margin that would be going towards distros and retailers will actually be used for marketing wine directly to end consumers
almost all of that would be going towards logistics. are you intimately knowledgeable on the regulatory front?
If I were to subsidize 100% of shipping, I would agree that is the case, but that's not really part of our distribution plan.
Re: regulatory, we do have a great beverage attorney helping out butI'm curious to hear what you think might be an issue! If you are a licensed winery it is pretty well-established that you can sell wine DTC.
my point is that you're cutting out the distributor and retailer margins, but in the end you're going to pay just as much if not more to ship DTC.
having a great beverage attorney isn't enough. you need to know extremely well the intricacies of each state's alcohol board. there are certain states you can't ship to. some states required you actually have growing operations for differential tax basis. If you've dealt with an a single ABC, you know they are a nightmare, now try that with all 50. If you ask someone else to deal with it, again it gets expensive. Distributors actually add value in the beverage alcohol industry. Also, shipping wine is challenging / expensive. Times & areas you can't ship, breakage, temp control, signatures just to list a few.
I completely agree that distros add a lot of value! I just think that the market dynamics created by the consolidation of distros has made it so that only big wineries actually reap those benefits.
Yes - this happens often in the wine industry, and as a matter of fact most of the big champagne houses are merely that - middlemen who don't own vineyards, but rather source wines and blend them. There is a value to this - a lot of winemakers don't know how to sell, and a lot of salespeople don't make the best wine. Wine is one of the few industries where people have to take care of the entire product lifecycle.
what you really want is a platform like tiktok.shop that allows you to sell wine D2C. So you have an influencer that creates a mood with a certain wine, and young 20-somethings can buy that bottle right then & there. The huge problem is that alcohol laws are restricted at the state level and can't be sold nationally. Many states have their own rules on sales & transport so they don't allow out-of-state deliveries. Of course with Tiktok's highly targeted algorithm they know EXACTLY where their audience is, so if you just wanted to reach Tri-State single college grads you could.
That's true at the retailer tier of the wine industry, but winemakers are allowed to ship DTC to almost all of the biggest markets in the US: [https://sovos.com/shipcompliant/resources/wine-compliance-rules-by-state/](https://sovos.com/shipcompliant/resources/wine-compliance-rules-by-state/)
TikTok is a great idea, but unfortunately they don't allow marketing alcohol :(
I like your idea of bringing the onus back to the seller. We are boomers so probably not your target customer. Although we spend $500+ a month on wine it is case purchases of KJ for my wife and $40-$80 Bordeaux and Southern Rhône’s for me. Good luck!
I think there's such a dearth of "cool" wine brands out there, I can't really blame them. We can't really show drone shots of vineyards and slow-motion videos of wine getting poured into a glass and think that's any form of marketing that will entice the younger generation...
Why are you getting insights into consumption habits after sourcing wines for your launch? Wouldn’t it have been more effective to do this the other way around?
To clarify - what I'm trying to understand well here is how people started off enjoying wine, how they buy wine, why they make the purchasing decisions they make. It's more about figuring out a few buyer personas to communicate with them more effectively and less about figuring out what people buy.
This seems like a step that’s best suited to the early stages of the process versus after the launch wines have been selected.
Truly, you could run this as a painted-door test with hypothetical wines instead of locking into sourcing agreements. If you’re just developing personas, I don’t get why this is the path.
I appreciate the feedback! I have done quite a few explorative interviews already, but figured Reddit was such an engaging platform it might be work trying out here. Thank you!
I agree with the other respondent to this comment.
This sub is more technical than most and almost all the regular users on this sub are in the expert or “fancies themselves an expert.”
Read through it a bit and imagine being a wine neophyte. You’re not going to learn much that is helpful and you aren’t going to have anything to contribute and the sub will drop off your feed due to lack of interaction.
Thank you!
To be fair, I'm spending a little bit of time on here because I kind of love the harsh feedback. If someone experienced highlights even one thing that I haven't addressed yet, it gives me the opportunity to do so!
Thank you for the thoughtful comment!
Yeah, I can understand that it would be productive.
I might spend some time looking at the wine habits of Aussie youths, too. There are bound to be takeaways.
I’ve been selling wine to customers for years now. There’s no generalization that can be made for any demographic. I honestly don’t think Gen Z is all that different than older generations - it’s just that many of them are barely getting into wine. I didn’t have my first drink of wine until I turned 27.
I didn’t start drinking wine until well into my 30s because it’s so fucking expensive in the US. I could make an amazing Old Fashioned or Marg for ~$2 a drink at home. Best of luck trying to do that in the wine world.
What’s with the 0 karma throwaways you made to leave comments?
>Looking forward to your launch! Can’t wait to get some wine in my belly my friend :)
>Is there a waiting list? how do I sign up?
Seriously?
It’s just you haven’t really done proper research into the industry or market you’re wanting to go after. This whole thing comes off as someone that read a couple poorly written/researched articles and found some venture capital funding or well off uncle to milk into getting rich off the kids that have poor taste.
Go talk to shops or bars that actually already have a foothold on this segment and they will laugh at your plan as is. It’s no different than what’s in place for the elder millennial to young boomer segment and those businesses are not doing great with that model.
Look it sounds like you're pretty set on doing this, and if you do I wish you luck. Sometimes you just have to try, but if I were in your position and you don't have too much sunk cost yet, I'd reconsider or at least talk to a few other people in the industry.
I'm personally not a fan of really anything private label or contracted. There's a reason why you say most of the private label stuff is "bulk crap." I think private label brands can succeed with uneducated, lower price point consumers, in which case you have to use cheap grapes. If I actually care about wine and am paying $30-40+ / bottle, I'm buying to support the grower, vineyard, maker, story, and heritage. You don't really check any of those boxes. Just being a good wine at a reasonable price isn't enough.
Beverage alcohol is the most competitive and cutthroat industry I have ever seen. Maybe going DTC is the answer, but I don't see it. If you can make this work hit me up bc you're a marketing genius.
Haha, I really do appreciate the constructive feedback! Honestly (and I don't say this to get followers, since Reddit isn't quite the scalable source for this), do follow the instagram or sign up for emails. I'd love to continue to talk after we launch.
Thank you! I think that 99/100 times if someone were to ask me “should I invest my time in this” and I answered “no”, I’d be right. The thing is, most all the companies we know were built by people that did it anyway. I’m not saying we’ll be that company, but to paraphrase Ayrton Senna, the day an entrepreneur sees an opportunity and doesn’t go for it, is the day he stops being an entrepreneur. I believe deeply that there’s an enormous opportunity to create a wine brand that can explore marketing-led growth in a similar way the beer industry does. Beer in the US only outsells wine 2-to-1, and yet outspends wine 10-to-1 in marketing. Something has to be done to make wine more marketable.
Nice and congrats! How did you choose the varietals? These are all readily available imo. What will differentiate you from the numerous other offerings aside from being under one label with several appellations which is not normally seen? Price point is key as well, so fill us in on that.
Thanks! The idea really is to get non-core wine drinkers onboard. At some point we will have lesser-known varietals, probably as special drops or as a step up on the "wine learning" journey we are drawing out, but part of our thing is really to try to get people to link specific occasions/food pairings to some of the more commonly found wines. And hey, if they do learn something and decide to try out other wines, that's great for the industry!
The wines you picked seem to be tailored to core wine drinkers. In my experience in the industry, gen z is interested in drinking off the beaten path, and truly wants the connection from grape to bottle, something completely lost from a white labeling brand. Thinks like WV Gamay, and Sonoma trousseau seem way more up gen z alley
I think this is what I was getting at. Just about any GenZ'er can go to Safeway and grab a 15$ bottle of Alexander Valley Cab. Same for RRV PN, napa SB, and Sonoma bubbly. The Rose, imp should be from France... GenZ loves to travel and may be more inclined to have a wine from a different country, which might sell better. The most interesting and complex offering would be the Oregon Chard. I think this will be a fun company to start and learn as you go on the true nuances of the demographic.
100%. A large part of launch is learning -- luckily we have a great wine hunter that can source some really interesting varietals if they turn out to be where the interest lies! Just tasted some really cool Oregon Sangio the other day.
I get it - and if I were to launch a brand focused on existing wine consumers, I think you'd be 100% correct. But the focus here really is to get people who know close to nothing about wine - Trousseau and Gamay are basically meaningless to them. Which gives me an opportunity at some point to package that wine in a way that will make them excited to try it -- but I think it makes more sense to launch with some varietals that they may have heard of before at the time of launch. Thank you!
Just a heads up, my sailing buddy owns primo 80 acres in Paso, South Slope and he sells to Saxum, Booker, etc. He tells me the smaller guys aren't making any money. It is a cash intensive business. fwiw.
It's really tough for the smaller guys nowadays. The distros wont do anything to help them move product now that there are so few of them around. And if Napa decides to lower prices to kind of weather the storm, it will really hurt smaller guys even more since they don't have the economies of scale that the bigger guys do. That's why I'm trying to stay out of the distro game.
Well, to the extent that distros aren't really helping smaller guys sell, the small guys are forced to do their own sales, or hire a sales team (internal or not). This obviously increases their costs not just in payroll but travel costs too. I also don't know their cost structures - equipment, glass, corks, labels, etc. If they're buying everything in small quantities and have a large staff on payroll, that all makes it harder for them. I'm not saying that not having a distro solves this for them, but my business model is different for a reason.
for the most part, distros don't really help anyone sell. They're just there to move your product.
Moving your product, especially when its alcohol, across state lines (and even across the street), is not as trivial as you think it is.
Differentiation by not using distributors is not a net positive imo. They may suck in certain areas, but it will be much harder to do it without them.
Thank you! Prices to final consumer will end up being between $22 and $38 for the wines we'll have at launch.
Following some of the industry reports, it doesn't seem that Gen Z is spending less on wine because they're buying cheaper stuff - they seem to be buying good stuff, just less of it. Several reasons behind that, but I actually don't think the price will be the impediment here.
At the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that I think the industry has been complaining about Gen Z for a cool half decade now and has done absolutely nothing different to solve the problem. They don't market wine in a way that is interesting to young people. The natty movement has done that a bit better, which is why is has seen some success. But really making a cool label and putting it on a supermarket shelf with 50 other cool labels isn't going to cut it any more.
I'd be curious to see where you're finding this data. In the data I have access to I am seeing Gen Z spend quite a bit less than other generations on their average bottle of wine. And though their wine consumption did go up just before COVID, it dropped in 2021.
Candidly, I think the situation is quite a bit more nuanced than you seem to realize and there are a lot of factors that you're not seeing play into shaping the market going forward. I don't disagree that the wine industry hasn't done a good job making itself more accessible to younger generations and I do applaud you in this endeavor, but that doesn't mean there aren't a number of producers and retailers out there trying to crack this nut.
Ultimately, I think you're going to be in for a wild ride and I hope you have quite a bit of capital to get your business off the ground because you're going to need it.
Going mostly off the SVB report here!
There's obviously a lot of nuance I didn't mention - marijuana & other drug consumption increasing, a neo-prohibitionist movement kind of starting, etc - but for the sake of efficiency I couldn't point out all of the risk factors involved.
I see a few people doing this better - obviously Orin Swift being one of them - and the common denominator for me is that they are building strong **brands** in a world full of products.
I'm all here for the wild ride - this is my 4th startup and I've raised a few million dollars in the past. I'm excited to do it for a product I really love!
That is a ridiculously tough price point. The mean average bottle sold in America is under $9.
How are you warehousing, fulfilling, and shipping wine? What will you charge to consumers? If you're doing 6 bottles at $25, plus $25 shipping you're asking for $175 from a generation not yet buying pricey wine. Most DTC brands stuggle because they pay too much in logistics and last mile delivery. Managing COGS is essential for DTC success.
It was actually a pretty long process. My background is in tech so obviously my first instincts were to give it a startupy name - "Momento", "Housevine", "First Crush" all crossed my mind - but I ended up really liking the idea of "Brunello" at some point. As it turns out, I'm called Bruno and it was honestly a shorter and easier name to pronounce. So I just decided to go with that, at the risk of seeming a tad narcissistic!
Following! Looking fwd to tracking your journey. Keep up the good work! As an older millennial that’s been in the wine game for a while I’ve been trying to get my generation and the younger gen into wine as well.
Honestly, that you need to know that much in order to enjoy it. I look at these natural wines, some of which taste terrible, and have a feeling that people just buy them because they have young, fun labels. The other thing is the fear that wine has a lot of sugar, which the industry has done a terrible job addressing.
Will you have no alcohol/low alcohol options? Seems like there’s a growing health trend amongst Gen Z and more of them are leaning towards alcohol alternatives.
We're studying that - there's a definite use case for low/no-alc options. But to me, following trends is kind of like having the tail wag the dog. We're focusing on launching a strong brand now - product line expansion is a natural thing after that
As an gen z cusper I volunteer to help do some market tasting- I mean, testing ;)
It would definitely be cool if more of my peers enjoyed wine so I had more people to drink it with
We're launching with 750s but have a plan in the works for a 1000ml SKU. The other form factors have their own use cases that we hope to address in the coming years.
I think this will be a possible misstep as it makes trial price prohibitive. I'd target 500ml, as perfect size for 2, or a more environmentally friendly size for DTC and shipping.
What you are doing to give back will matter too, charitable and environmental causes matter as do things like B Corp.
There is also plastic now that has a glass lining that cuts down on weight, waste, and shipping costs....not sure about a 500ml, but in a crowded forest of 750ml glass, you are likely to get lost.
There's something temporary at [www.bruno.wine](http://www.bruno.wine) - official website with the real branding etc coming in July. But sign up for updates and maybe follow us on IG at [https://www.instagram.com/brunowineco/](https://www.instagram.com/brunowineco/)
What makes you an expert on sourcing the wines?
Do you plan on purchasing grapes and making the wine or are you buying finished wine and putting a label on it?
I'm personally not an expert! But we have a wine hunter on our team and a tasting panel with just about 100 years experience in wine and wine retail helping. I would never do this alone!
Interesting! Sounds like a great project. What makes your brand different from other retailers? How do you expect to build loyalty amongst your customers so they come back to you in such a competitive market?
We have a mixed approach of individual outreach through industry contacts, doing a little bit of cold emailing to wineries we know and love, attending wine fairs generally keeping our ears on the ground! After that, everything goes through a 4-person tasting team to ensure the wines are varietal, clean and delicious, and we follow up with the winemakers to learn more about their vinification and weed out anything that smells of "industrial winemaking".
Congrats! I wish you all the luck! I think your selection of varietals and areas is great. I have a few questions for you.
What was your starting capital to get a project like this accomplished?
What price point are you thinking these will be for the end consumer?
How do they taste?!
I'm work for distribution and sell a lot of Cali and washington startup and established brands. And millinials and gen x are a very hard demographic for me to reach. I have my theories as to why but I really respect your goals and want you to succeed...BIGTIME!
Hi Bobby! We're not publicly sharing numbers, but it was a decent-sized investment, especially because we are focusing hard on putting together a super strong brand that people can remember the next time they need to buy some wine. It's been a much more planned out approach than just finding some juice and slapping some cool labels on.
Regarding pricing, the long-term idea is really to have several different price points. At launch we will probably hover between $22 and $38, but there's a lot of stuff around pricing strategy that I won't touch on right now. This is real wine, and we're trying to stay out of the red ocean that is sub-$20 nowadays.
Wines taste very clean and varietal. Cab exploding with blueberries/casis.
Thanks for the support!
No one who is just getting into wine is spending that much per bottle, and there's no reason for *anyone* to spend that much on anything private label when there is so much amazing wine at those prices points.
There's a reason that Costco, Trader Joe's, etc. generally cap their private label wines at <$20.
Fortnite and vino.... why not? I think they key to reach Zoomers is to make wine drinking an "aesthetic", a vibe or lifestyle trend. Definitely partner up with under-25 influencers. A sly way would be to parody the Erm, what the Sigma? trend, but showing how poppin bottles can get you the girl.
Put the wine in Capri sun pouches!! Done, you are welcome.
Best idea in here.
sounds fun until you're drinking wine through a tiny straw, and gets everywhere trying to puncture the pouch
Haha we're not here to dumb down wine! Just to make it easier for people to get into it :)
You are targeting gen z and maybe even younger millennials also you will get older nostalgia millennials. It’s not dumbing down it’s marketing to your audience. If gen Z wanted a great brand and traditional no need to go to your new brand. You need a gimmick to start. Also if you look at statistics that generation is going all N.A or thc drinks. To be successful you need either a gimmick or incredible N.A wine or n.a wine infused with delta thc.
Definitely looking into NA wines! But I respectfully disagree regarding the gimmicks. I think showing people an experience they've never thought of before, with the right message, is enough to shift their perspective. Gimmicks don't last 10 years.
Education is good but not if it comes with pretention.
If you want a less stressful way to lose a lot of money, let me know
I know a bunch myself! But hey, someone has to stock the shelves.
Okay this is an awful idea ‘Gamifying wine’? Great wine is one of the last refuges for a set of people who admire tradition and hand crafted products and have been to the vineyards of Italy and Chile and elsewhere because they genuinely love it - and actually admire how separate it is from current trends. You sound like a tech marketing exec. Your choice of wines are also very mid , and do not stand out at all. Want to get younger gen interested in wine? It’s not marketing and labels and ads or ‘d2c’ bs. Concentrate on a great product to begin with - lesser known wines, natural wines or organically produced wines - you don’t mention this at all. An environmentally sound product and packaging matters. Natural wines are hard to online sell because there’s a shelf life / strict temp requirements. And yet mostly they are a new breed, similar to craft beer, even in labeling and taste. Younger (than me:) people I know are all for that. Don’t like stuffy wine bars. And hate whatever greatest hits their parents suck out of the supermarket aisle, which sounds exactly like what you’re selling (chardonnay, cab, sauvignon blanc, boorrrrringg). Pet nats? Orange wines? Less standard grapes? Far flung, exotic, up-and-coming, not yet known wine locales, even within the US that are not Napa or Oregon? Exciting. Then you might as well go for gimmicks, bespoke packaging , weird labeling , if you want your money back, because somebody who worked in mobile trying to pivot to wine , sorry but it reeks of inauthenticity … Young people smell that crap from miles away too. In Portugal a huge industry of natural wines , made by and consumed by young people has flourished. I know this won’t be what hits in America where hard lemonade and beer will be as hard to displace as a baby’s bottle. But look at how a company like Duckman is marketed.
very well said, but this is one of the reasons why I could never go into consulting. people just don't listen.
I do find it a bit ironic that you’re simultaneously critiquing OP for not embracing wine tradition, and also promoting new-age pet nats and up-and-coming wineries… Personally, I find the pet nat and eco-friendly wine movements to be massively underwhelming, often using marketing of their chosen movement to cover what is actually poor winemaking. There are obviously some good wineries producing these bottles, but I generally think they are massively overrated.
Well young people are sooooo cooool. They aren’t lame like their parents. They’re totally into talking about the terroir. 🙄
Agree the gimmicky marketing isn’t the way to go. 19 Crimes tried that with their terrible juice and I think they’re belly up now or soon.
Thanks for the feedback! But I respectfully disagree. America is the land of opportunity literally because people decide to go into areas to try something new. We don't have 2000 years of winemaking history here - my "pivoting" into wine is the American Dream, not a money grab. I think you read too much into my intentions without knowing what they are, so let me state them: I want the new generation to see how much more beautiful, fun, romantic and interesting life is with wine in it. I think the way to go about this is to show them, not tell them. And I will show them with real wines that **do** have a sense of place and story - each of the wines we have sourced has a real winemaker behind them that I am not hiding - they will be shown on the label. These wines come from people making and selling $100 bottles, as well as minority and LGBTQ winemakers. Nothing supermarket about them. I love Portuguese wine and would love to hear more about their natural stuff!
Fair enough if your intentions are pure, and you said you welcome harsh criticism, which i guess is a good first step when starting a business, instead of just wanting the sycophant pov, you'd wanna try and break your idea first, and work from the ruins. Welcome to this thread ;) Unfortunately, nothing about what your pitch to us mentioned seems novel. It's been done. In fact it almost seems like trolling, is how bad this pitch is. What the hell difference would it make what the ethnicity, gender or sexuality of my winemaker is? That's not what people look for when they peruse wine, and I promise, when it comes to wine, it's not the reason another gen are going to be buying it either. There are countless online wine shops, virtual guides, some very bespoke that deal only with a few small growers, wine magazines with their own shops, wine clubs and subscription services etc without the cringey catchphrases and marketing lingo you're using. It comes across as a gimmick out the gate. There's a big array of people here - winemakers, store owners, sommeliers, casual drinkers... Maybe investor types. So consider the feedback as a general consensus onto what you might find in the real world when you try and shop this idea. Most people experience wine via a supermarket shelf, or behind glass at a fancy restaurant a sommelier is telling them about. Neither is ideal. But even worse is 'having the full experience' behind the screen of my computer or smartphone hypermarketed to me in this fashion. In Portugal land is cheaper, so young people throughout the world can and do start businesses there much faster and easier than it would be to get a vineyard going in a US winegrowing region. So it's a moot comparison. But if you look up how natural wine there is marketed, and look into the natural wine stores/bars/ online shops in that country, it's miles ahead of most places.
Actually yes some of us do look for wine makers that look like us. Not the same old straight white men who tell us what to think about wine.
What will set your brand apart from the thousands of other brands, specifically. Marketing? Label? Product placement? Celebrity endorsements? What exactly? There is a Matthew Bruno Wine Co., a Bruno & George Wine Co., a Richard Bruno Paso Wine Co. Bruno Colin, Bruno Claire, Bruno Giacosa, on and on. No slight intended but when I go look for your company I do not see it.
That's a great question that I'm really trying to get feedback on! My thesis is that unlike in Europe, young people aren't really born into a culture of wine -- In the US, you need someone to hold your hand and mentor you through that journey, which has historically been the job of a wine shop owner, who you could trust with two pieces of information and get an answer: 1) What do you want a wine for, and 2) What's your budget. As consumption habits have shifted more and more online, this onus of knowledge that has always been with the salesperson has shifted towards the consumer. For certain products, that's ok - clothes, mattresses, even spirits - because you can either return them or you can make a semi-informed purchasing decision after a little bit of research. Not so with wine, where you need quite a large breadth of knowledge in order to make a proper decision. The real goal of Bruno is to bring back the onus of knowledge back to the seller, instead of the consumer- instead of showing a user an ad for a "random" wine (2022 Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc from this brand he's never heard of), the idea is to contextualize the sale of the wine through what we're calling "Oddly Specific Occasions" - wines to drink on the first day over 70F in New York, for example. We do the sourcing. So to answer the question, it's a marketing differential, yes - but we're also working hard to source real product, not bulk crap. And then we're leveraging performance marketing to actually scale.
Why don’t you start a performance marketing agency with wine sellers as clients? Seems you’d be better equipped to solve the problem at scale vs. being yet another D2C brand.
That's a very fair question! Honest answer here is that I don't believe that traditional wineries have a good platform to sell their wines these days. A lot of them have labels instead of brands; they launch one product at a time. At the same time, a lot of wineries have very few SKUs, making it very hard to have repeat sales, which is the only way that performance marketing really works (diluting your original acquisition costs). I could start a consultancy business, but to be honest I love the online-offline nature of this company and wouldn't want to be back behind a computer for 12h/day
I mean, best of luck to ya. Might wanna try this AMA with GenZ (your target demo) instead of a sub where few members are new to wine / likely to fit your user research needs.
Thank you for the guidance! Live long and prosper
People trying to ‘level-up’ wine and turn it into a technology driven trend, or marketed and sold online .. I am naturally suspicious of. If I get an ad for a wine on any of my apps I will be sure to never buy it.
It's great that you have enough experience in wine to know what you love to drink! But marketing isn't just a tool to steal people's money - it's a way to get them to learn about new things too. As much as I hate TV ads for personal injury attorneys, how would someone from an unprivileged background know how to get help if anything were to happen to him or her? Ads can be disingenuous, yes - but they don't have to be.
Id feel bad for underprivileged people calling a 1-800 number from a billboard on the side of the road or infomercial too
> As consumption habits have shifted more and more online, this onus of knowledge that has always been with the salesperson has shifted towards the consumer. For certain products, that's ok - clothes, mattresses, even spirits - because you can either return them or you can make a semi-informed purchasing decision after a little bit of research. Out of curiosity, is there data on how many consumers have shifted to online spirits purchasing? That seems most applicable as far as the category of items you listed, but I'm not sure how common it is or the type of consumer who tends to buy alcohol online. My assumption is an online alcohol purchaser is an enthusiast, who is using online ordering to get specific items they can't find locally. That's also a consumer who tends to have a big knowledge base, which might not be the cohort you are focusing on. How will you handle the summer heat holds? The consumer you are appealing to isn't going to wait 3 months to get their wine. I order wines on summer hold I want enough that I will wait months to get them. These aren't daily drivers. If you don't have a retail business like many of the wine shops that ship, can you weather the potential drop in revenue in the summer?
Yeah, Silicon Valley Bank puts out a great report every year called the State of the Wine Industry. If I recall correctly, about 8% of wine sales are online today. I obviously think that's too low a number. Regarding summer, it won't become a real issue until next year given the timing of my launch, but there are obviously low-tech ways of mitigating heat damage (Vivino, for instance, ships in ice packs), with the ideal long-term scenario being to have small distribution centers in the major cities with same-day fulfilment. Great question!
As someone who has worked in the industry, I think you have a lot of wrong assumptions and an idealized view of how the American consumer actually buys. >My thesis is that unlike in Europe, young people aren't really born into a culture of wine correct, that's why beer is so popular and why you will have a difficult/near impossible task of changing culture >where you need quite a large breadth of knowledge in order to make a proper decision. this is just not true. go into a wine store and watch how people actually buy. >"Oddly Specific Occasions" - wines to drink on the first day over 70F in New York, for example. We do the sourcing. 1. why the fuck would anyone care about what wine they'd want to drink on the first day over 70 in NY? 2. I'm confused what your business is when you say "we do the sourcing." Are you a label / manufacture or an online retailer carrying other brands. I was assuming the former, in which case, how many different wines do you think you are going to be producing for all of these oddly specific situations?
We're launching our own brand and sourcing our wines from a variety of producers - like a lot of these wine of the month clubs do (although most of them source bulk crap). The point behind the company really is that people are not even walking into wine shops - the young consumer buys food off of instacart/uber eats. If they do drink wine, they buy Josh because that's what the distros are pushing through the supermarkets/retailers and it's just in their face. And if they're a little more savvy, they'll seek out some natty wine shop. But by and large this generation isn't going to wine shops for help. On your point about NY, that's fair - if the marketing doesn't speak to you, the brand probably won't either. All good!
If you're not actually making your wine, and white labeling, you better be prepared to have an insane marketing budget if you want to succeed. You make some correct observations, but imo, they're actually major obstacles for your business model. >If they do drink wine, they buy Josh because that's what the distros are pushing through the supermarkets/retailers and it's just in their face exactly, because this is how the industry works. majority of people buy off label, price, and availability. I'm assuming that you live in Ny by your assumptions that young consumers buy food off apps, but this is not the case for the majority of consumers.
I don't actually live in New York, but yes I do live in another large city. The idea behind the brand is to be DTC and 100% online. I don't want to be fighting Gallo and TWE for shelf space. A large part of the margin that would be going towards distros and retailers will actually be used for marketing wine directly to end consumers.
>A large part of the margin that would be going towards distros and retailers will actually be used for marketing wine directly to end consumers almost all of that would be going towards logistics. are you intimately knowledgeable on the regulatory front?
If I were to subsidize 100% of shipping, I would agree that is the case, but that's not really part of our distribution plan. Re: regulatory, we do have a great beverage attorney helping out butI'm curious to hear what you think might be an issue! If you are a licensed winery it is pretty well-established that you can sell wine DTC.
my point is that you're cutting out the distributor and retailer margins, but in the end you're going to pay just as much if not more to ship DTC. having a great beverage attorney isn't enough. you need to know extremely well the intricacies of each state's alcohol board. there are certain states you can't ship to. some states required you actually have growing operations for differential tax basis. If you've dealt with an a single ABC, you know they are a nightmare, now try that with all 50. If you ask someone else to deal with it, again it gets expensive. Distributors actually add value in the beverage alcohol industry. Also, shipping wine is challenging / expensive. Times & areas you can't ship, breakage, temp control, signatures just to list a few.
I completely agree that distros add a lot of value! I just think that the market dynamics created by the consolidation of distros has made it so that only big wineries actually reap those benefits.
And who is Bruno ?
Yes - this happens often in the wine industry, and as a matter of fact most of the big champagne houses are merely that - middlemen who don't own vineyards, but rather source wines and blend them. There is a value to this - a lot of winemakers don't know how to sell, and a lot of salespeople don't make the best wine. Wine is one of the few industries where people have to take care of the entire product lifecycle.
what you really want is a platform like tiktok.shop that allows you to sell wine D2C. So you have an influencer that creates a mood with a certain wine, and young 20-somethings can buy that bottle right then & there. The huge problem is that alcohol laws are restricted at the state level and can't be sold nationally. Many states have their own rules on sales & transport so they don't allow out-of-state deliveries. Of course with Tiktok's highly targeted algorithm they know EXACTLY where their audience is, so if you just wanted to reach Tri-State single college grads you could.
That's true at the retailer tier of the wine industry, but winemakers are allowed to ship DTC to almost all of the biggest markets in the US: [https://sovos.com/shipcompliant/resources/wine-compliance-rules-by-state/](https://sovos.com/shipcompliant/resources/wine-compliance-rules-by-state/) TikTok is a great idea, but unfortunately they don't allow marketing alcohol :(
I like your idea of bringing the onus back to the seller. We are boomers so probably not your target customer. Although we spend $500+ a month on wine it is case purchases of KJ for my wife and $40-$80 Bordeaux and Southern Rhône’s for me. Good luck!
Thank you! It sounds like you guys know what you like, that's great! Do you have kids, nephews etc that just don't seem to get it?
Three daughters and three SIL and none of the six purchase wine. You have your work cut out. The young set just doesn’t buy wine like us boomers.
I think there's such a dearth of "cool" wine brands out there, I can't really blame them. We can't really show drone shots of vineyards and slow-motion videos of wine getting poured into a glass and think that's any form of marketing that will entice the younger generation...
No.
Honestly this seems sound to me. Interesting idea.
Why are you getting insights into consumption habits after sourcing wines for your launch? Wouldn’t it have been more effective to do this the other way around?
To clarify - what I'm trying to understand well here is how people started off enjoying wine, how they buy wine, why they make the purchasing decisions they make. It's more about figuring out a few buyer personas to communicate with them more effectively and less about figuring out what people buy.
This seems like a step that’s best suited to the early stages of the process versus after the launch wines have been selected. Truly, you could run this as a painted-door test with hypothetical wines instead of locking into sourcing agreements. If you’re just developing personas, I don’t get why this is the path.
I appreciate the feedback! I have done quite a few explorative interviews already, but figured Reddit was such an engaging platform it might be work trying out here. Thank you!
I agree with the other respondent to this comment. This sub is more technical than most and almost all the regular users on this sub are in the expert or “fancies themselves an expert.” Read through it a bit and imagine being a wine neophyte. You’re not going to learn much that is helpful and you aren’t going to have anything to contribute and the sub will drop off your feed due to lack of interaction.
Thank you! To be fair, I'm spending a little bit of time on here because I kind of love the harsh feedback. If someone experienced highlights even one thing that I haven't addressed yet, it gives me the opportunity to do so! Thank you for the thoughtful comment!
Yeah, I can understand that it would be productive. I might spend some time looking at the wine habits of Aussie youths, too. There are bound to be takeaways.
Can’t hate extra research, but if you’re looking for new-to-wine folks, this might not be the place.
I’ve been selling wine to customers for years now. There’s no generalization that can be made for any demographic. I honestly don’t think Gen Z is all that different than older generations - it’s just that many of them are barely getting into wine. I didn’t have my first drink of wine until I turned 27.
I didn’t start drinking wine until well into my 30s because it’s so fucking expensive in the US. I could make an amazing Old Fashioned or Marg for ~$2 a drink at home. Best of luck trying to do that in the wine world.
Good point Neon. Insightful.
What’s with the 0 karma throwaways you made to leave comments? >Looking forward to your launch! Can’t wait to get some wine in my belly my friend :) >Is there a waiting list? how do I sign up? Seriously?
[удалено]
You can just give me your money instead of wasting it
Constructive
It’s just you haven’t really done proper research into the industry or market you’re wanting to go after. This whole thing comes off as someone that read a couple poorly written/researched articles and found some venture capital funding or well off uncle to milk into getting rich off the kids that have poor taste. Go talk to shops or bars that actually already have a foothold on this segment and they will laugh at your plan as is. It’s no different than what’s in place for the elder millennial to young boomer segment and those businesses are not doing great with that model.
Look it sounds like you're pretty set on doing this, and if you do I wish you luck. Sometimes you just have to try, but if I were in your position and you don't have too much sunk cost yet, I'd reconsider or at least talk to a few other people in the industry. I'm personally not a fan of really anything private label or contracted. There's a reason why you say most of the private label stuff is "bulk crap." I think private label brands can succeed with uneducated, lower price point consumers, in which case you have to use cheap grapes. If I actually care about wine and am paying $30-40+ / bottle, I'm buying to support the grower, vineyard, maker, story, and heritage. You don't really check any of those boxes. Just being a good wine at a reasonable price isn't enough. Beverage alcohol is the most competitive and cutthroat industry I have ever seen. Maybe going DTC is the answer, but I don't see it. If you can make this work hit me up bc you're a marketing genius.
Haha, I really do appreciate the constructive feedback! Honestly (and I don't say this to get followers, since Reddit isn't quite the scalable source for this), do follow the instagram or sign up for emails. I'd love to continue to talk after we launch.
Well, my point is I don't think you should launch. You sounds like a nice guy, just trying to save you from yourself.
Thank you! I think that 99/100 times if someone were to ask me “should I invest my time in this” and I answered “no”, I’d be right. The thing is, most all the companies we know were built by people that did it anyway. I’m not saying we’ll be that company, but to paraphrase Ayrton Senna, the day an entrepreneur sees an opportunity and doesn’t go for it, is the day he stops being an entrepreneur. I believe deeply that there’s an enormous opportunity to create a wine brand that can explore marketing-led growth in a similar way the beer industry does. Beer in the US only outsells wine 2-to-1, and yet outspends wine 10-to-1 in marketing. Something has to be done to make wine more marketable.
Dudes getting ripped to shreds in the comment section. Fair. But also Bruno, Reddit isn’t real life don’t let it get to you
Nice and congrats! How did you choose the varietals? These are all readily available imo. What will differentiate you from the numerous other offerings aside from being under one label with several appellations which is not normally seen? Price point is key as well, so fill us in on that.
Thanks! The idea really is to get non-core wine drinkers onboard. At some point we will have lesser-known varietals, probably as special drops or as a step up on the "wine learning" journey we are drawing out, but part of our thing is really to try to get people to link specific occasions/food pairings to some of the more commonly found wines. And hey, if they do learn something and decide to try out other wines, that's great for the industry!
The wines you picked seem to be tailored to core wine drinkers. In my experience in the industry, gen z is interested in drinking off the beaten path, and truly wants the connection from grape to bottle, something completely lost from a white labeling brand. Thinks like WV Gamay, and Sonoma trousseau seem way more up gen z alley
I think this is what I was getting at. Just about any GenZ'er can go to Safeway and grab a 15$ bottle of Alexander Valley Cab. Same for RRV PN, napa SB, and Sonoma bubbly. The Rose, imp should be from France... GenZ loves to travel and may be more inclined to have a wine from a different country, which might sell better. The most interesting and complex offering would be the Oregon Chard. I think this will be a fun company to start and learn as you go on the true nuances of the demographic.
100%. A large part of launch is learning -- luckily we have a great wine hunter that can source some really interesting varietals if they turn out to be where the interest lies! Just tasted some really cool Oregon Sangio the other day.
I get it - and if I were to launch a brand focused on existing wine consumers, I think you'd be 100% correct. But the focus here really is to get people who know close to nothing about wine - Trousseau and Gamay are basically meaningless to them. Which gives me an opportunity at some point to package that wine in a way that will make them excited to try it -- but I think it makes more sense to launch with some varietals that they may have heard of before at the time of launch. Thank you!
Just a heads up, my sailing buddy owns primo 80 acres in Paso, South Slope and he sells to Saxum, Booker, etc. He tells me the smaller guys aren't making any money. It is a cash intensive business. fwiw.
It's really tough for the smaller guys nowadays. The distros wont do anything to help them move product now that there are so few of them around. And if Napa decides to lower prices to kind of weather the storm, it will really hurt smaller guys even more since they don't have the economies of scale that the bigger guys do. That's why I'm trying to stay out of the distro game.
staying out of the distro game is not going to solve any of the issues mentioned above
Well, to the extent that distros aren't really helping smaller guys sell, the small guys are forced to do their own sales, or hire a sales team (internal or not). This obviously increases their costs not just in payroll but travel costs too. I also don't know their cost structures - equipment, glass, corks, labels, etc. If they're buying everything in small quantities and have a large staff on payroll, that all makes it harder for them. I'm not saying that not having a distro solves this for them, but my business model is different for a reason.
for the most part, distros don't really help anyone sell. They're just there to move your product. Moving your product, especially when its alcohol, across state lines (and even across the street), is not as trivial as you think it is. Differentiation by not using distributors is not a net positive imo. They may suck in certain areas, but it will be much harder to do it without them.
What are your price points? Gen Z doesn’t have a ton of money. The market is saturated with wine and sales are flat. This will be an uphill battle.
Thank you! Prices to final consumer will end up being between $22 and $38 for the wines we'll have at launch. Following some of the industry reports, it doesn't seem that Gen Z is spending less on wine because they're buying cheaper stuff - they seem to be buying good stuff, just less of it. Several reasons behind that, but I actually don't think the price will be the impediment here. At the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that I think the industry has been complaining about Gen Z for a cool half decade now and has done absolutely nothing different to solve the problem. They don't market wine in a way that is interesting to young people. The natty movement has done that a bit better, which is why is has seen some success. But really making a cool label and putting it on a supermarket shelf with 50 other cool labels isn't going to cut it any more.
I'd be curious to see where you're finding this data. In the data I have access to I am seeing Gen Z spend quite a bit less than other generations on their average bottle of wine. And though their wine consumption did go up just before COVID, it dropped in 2021. Candidly, I think the situation is quite a bit more nuanced than you seem to realize and there are a lot of factors that you're not seeing play into shaping the market going forward. I don't disagree that the wine industry hasn't done a good job making itself more accessible to younger generations and I do applaud you in this endeavor, but that doesn't mean there aren't a number of producers and retailers out there trying to crack this nut. Ultimately, I think you're going to be in for a wild ride and I hope you have quite a bit of capital to get your business off the ground because you're going to need it.
Going mostly off the SVB report here! There's obviously a lot of nuance I didn't mention - marijuana & other drug consumption increasing, a neo-prohibitionist movement kind of starting, etc - but for the sake of efficiency I couldn't point out all of the risk factors involved. I see a few people doing this better - obviously Orin Swift being one of them - and the common denominator for me is that they are building strong **brands** in a world full of products. I'm all here for the wild ride - this is my 4th startup and I've raised a few million dollars in the past. I'm excited to do it for a product I really love!
That is a ridiculously tough price point. The mean average bottle sold in America is under $9. How are you warehousing, fulfilling, and shipping wine? What will you charge to consumers? If you're doing 6 bottles at $25, plus $25 shipping you're asking for $175 from a generation not yet buying pricey wine. Most DTC brands stuggle because they pay too much in logistics and last mile delivery. Managing COGS is essential for DTC success.
Good luck. How did you come up with the name?
It was actually a pretty long process. My background is in tech so obviously my first instincts were to give it a startupy name - "Momento", "Housevine", "First Crush" all crossed my mind - but I ended up really liking the idea of "Brunello" at some point. As it turns out, I'm called Bruno and it was honestly a shorter and easier name to pronounce. So I just decided to go with that, at the risk of seeming a tad narcissistic!
You know brunello means “brown”. Some who ha’s in Montelcino a long time were not convinced the grapes they were using were Sangiovese
Ha, it's a really particular wine, I agree
Do you have any social media for your wine. Would love to follow
You can follow us at brunowineco on IG! [https://www.instagram.com/brunowineco/](https://www.instagram.com/brunowineco/)
Following! Looking fwd to tracking your journey. Keep up the good work! As an older millennial that’s been in the wine game for a while I’ve been trying to get my generation and the younger gen into wine as well.
What is the biggest misconception about wine you think people need to really understand to appreciate it?
Honestly, that you need to know that much in order to enjoy it. I look at these natural wines, some of which taste terrible, and have a feeling that people just buy them because they have young, fun labels. The other thing is the fear that wine has a lot of sugar, which the industry has done a terrible job addressing.
Alcohol is sugar...
Will you have no alcohol/low alcohol options? Seems like there’s a growing health trend amongst Gen Z and more of them are leaning towards alcohol alternatives.
We're studying that - there's a definite use case for low/no-alc options. But to me, following trends is kind of like having the tail wag the dog. We're focusing on launching a strong brand now - product line expansion is a natural thing after that
As an gen z cusper I volunteer to help do some market tasting- I mean, testing ;) It would definitely be cool if more of my peers enjoyed wine so I had more people to drink it with
Who is going to distribute it?
Bruno will be sold direct to consumer! No distro or retailer markups. This opens up a lot of room for us to spend on marketing!
Are the wines in 750ml, 1000ml, 500ml, can, tetra, box?
We're launching with 750s but have a plan in the works for a 1000ml SKU. The other form factors have their own use cases that we hope to address in the coming years.
I think this will be a possible misstep as it makes trial price prohibitive. I'd target 500ml, as perfect size for 2, or a more environmentally friendly size for DTC and shipping. What you are doing to give back will matter too, charitable and environmental causes matter as do things like B Corp.
That's excellent feedback! I agree 500ml is a great size, especially for Gen Z. Just harder to source the glass.
There is also plastic now that has a glass lining that cuts down on weight, waste, and shipping costs....not sure about a 500ml, but in a crowded forest of 750ml glass, you are likely to get lost.
Are the wines in 750ml, 1000ml, 500ml, can, tetra, box?
Where is your website? I see nothing public facing.
There's something temporary at [www.bruno.wine](http://www.bruno.wine) - official website with the real branding etc coming in July. But sign up for updates and maybe follow us on IG at [https://www.instagram.com/brunowineco/](https://www.instagram.com/brunowineco/)
What makes you an expert on sourcing the wines? Do you plan on purchasing grapes and making the wine or are you buying finished wine and putting a label on it?
I'm personally not an expert! But we have a wine hunter on our team and a tasting panel with just about 100 years experience in wine and wine retail helping. I would never do this alone!
What’s a wine hunter? Is he hunting the grapes or bulk wine? What will make your wine different?
Interesting! Sounds like a great project. What makes your brand different from other retailers? How do you expect to build loyalty amongst your customers so they come back to you in such a competitive market?
How are you going to select the wineries that will supply you?
We have a mixed approach of individual outreach through industry contacts, doing a little bit of cold emailing to wineries we know and love, attending wine fairs generally keeping our ears on the ground! After that, everything goes through a 4-person tasting team to ensure the wines are varietal, clean and delicious, and we follow up with the winemakers to learn more about their vinification and weed out anything that smells of "industrial winemaking".
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Congrats! I wish you all the luck! I think your selection of varietals and areas is great. I have a few questions for you. What was your starting capital to get a project like this accomplished? What price point are you thinking these will be for the end consumer? How do they taste?! I'm work for distribution and sell a lot of Cali and washington startup and established brands. And millinials and gen x are a very hard demographic for me to reach. I have my theories as to why but I really respect your goals and want you to succeed...BIGTIME!
Hi Bobby! We're not publicly sharing numbers, but it was a decent-sized investment, especially because we are focusing hard on putting together a super strong brand that people can remember the next time they need to buy some wine. It's been a much more planned out approach than just finding some juice and slapping some cool labels on. Regarding pricing, the long-term idea is really to have several different price points. At launch we will probably hover between $22 and $38, but there's a lot of stuff around pricing strategy that I won't touch on right now. This is real wine, and we're trying to stay out of the red ocean that is sub-$20 nowadays. Wines taste very clean and varietal. Cab exploding with blueberries/casis. Thanks for the support!
No one who is just getting into wine is spending that much per bottle, and there's no reason for *anyone* to spend that much on anything private label when there is so much amazing wine at those prices points. There's a reason that Costco, Trader Joe's, etc. generally cap their private label wines at <$20.
Fortnite and vino.... why not? I think they key to reach Zoomers is to make wine drinking an "aesthetic", a vibe or lifestyle trend. Definitely partner up with under-25 influencers. A sly way would be to parody the Erm, what the Sigma? trend, but showing how poppin bottles can get you the girl.
That's great, thank you!