“A challenge in the wine industry is that it consists of a small number of large conglomerates,” Saunders says, referring to the likes of Gallo, Constellation and Treasury. If you’ve bought a bottle of wine from a supermarket, liquor store or wine merchant in the U.S., there’s an excellent chance that you’ve bought a bottle created by one of only a handful of wine super-producers. Encouraging the weird and the experimental The sun sets over the vineyard, after another long day of turning air and mud into delicious grapes. The money contributed on a monthly basis accrues as “wine credits” over time and can be exchanged for wine at a steeply discounted price. Naked Wines sells a recurring wine club membership to its members, whom it calls “angels.” By paying $40 per month, a customer unlocks the doors to the Naked Wines cellars. So where does the money come from? That’s the other big innovation on the business model. Makes sense, but making wine isn’t cheap. We buy the full production of wine, so they can just focus on the art of making wine.” “By working with us, winemakers don’t have to worry about whether or not the wine is sold. Unlike root vegetables, where you see a result after a few weeks, for a wine, it can take years to determine whether or not an experiment was a success. She points out that, much like carrots and potatoes, wine is an agricultural product. “For the winemakers, we help de-risk their lives,” Naked Wines’ U.S. You can imagine a Shark Tank kind of situation, except with wine drinking. And once the wine is ready, Naked Wines takes care of the marketing and distribution of the wines. Naked Wines then fronts the winemaker money to buy (or grow) grapes, along with access to winemaking and bottling facilities. If its in-house winemakers like the idea, they pay the winemakers a stipend, not dissimilar to an advance on a book deal. A winemaker pitches an idea for a wine at the company. When I started digging into Naked Wines, it struck me how similar the company’s role is to publishing, from a winemaker’s perspective. For its angels, it’s offering up one of the tastiest “exits” imaginable: wine. What do you get when you mash together half a stalk of grapes, a handful of angel investment principles, a sprinkling of crowdfunding and a well-oiled marketing machine? You end up with Naked Wines, a young winemaking company that’s shaking up the world of wine. I decided to have a closer look at how a 10-year-old company can upend one of the oldest industries in the world. That doesn’t mean you can’t turn the industry inside out by turning the traditional winery business model on its head - and that’s exactly what Naked Wines did. Wine, when all is said and done, is still wine. F you’re a big fan of wine but still want to run a startup, there may not be that much innovation you can get away with on the product side.
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