🍷 ALLISON LUVERA // JULIET WINE CO-FOUNDER & CEO

0:00I'm Sam Rose, and this is Commerce is Chaos, the podcast for consumer brand founders who know that building a business is messier than the highlight reel shows. Your supplier just missed their deadline, your top product is out of stock, and your competitors somehow just launched the same thing at half the price. Sound familiar? Every week, we dive into the real problems that keep founders up at night, from inventory disasters to supply chain nightmares, because surviving the chaos is what separates brands that fail from brands that scale. Allison you built Juliet into a category disrupting wine brand that's completely reimagined box wines I count myself amongst your very earliest customers I know because the second it came on I immediately bought a a box or three for my like then four-year-old and everyone was like what are you doing and I was like it's okay her name is Juliet Mrs.

0:48of Rose. but you've really made like quite a splash uh in the industry and i am such a fan of what you're doing not just for selfish um genetic reasons uh you've raised six million dollars you've achieved can i say that out loud can i celebrate that for you that's so hard to do i'm so stoked for you and i want to hear the story hard uh having powered with that and also So with, I'm sure, an ungodly amount of sweat equity, 150 % year-over-year growth, you're in 700 retail doors. Is that number right?

1:28Allison Luvera:It's growing every day. So it's around there. I mean, we should be surpassing 1 ,000 doors sometime this year. So we're really excited about that. Retail growth. That's amazing. The momentum's huge. Yeah. That is incredible. And including Costco and Whole Foods. So you're going to have triple revenue between 2024 and 2025. And you took this category that has some serious stigma issues as in box wine is the category and the stigma issues are the F word that we won't say out loud. I remember my parents drinking box wine in the 80s. There was just actually they weren't drinking it. They just bought it.

2:11And then it sat in our pantry for forever, for really forever until like the next party. Right. Everybody just had a box just in case.

2:20Allison Luvera:My family always had it at parties as well. Super reliable. And then you get into college and it's the whole slap the bag thing. I mean, it's definitely had a bit of a reputation over the years, which is what we're overturning. You've turned it into a luxury, which is incredible to like turn a category around like that. And the first thing I really want to dig into with you is the approach that you develop. Like, how do you think of this? And then how did you approach repositioning this entire product category? And frankly, like leading the charge of competition is always a good signal. But sometimes it's really annoying, too.

2:58And you've like led this charge into elevated box wine. So tell us the story. Yeah.

3:04Allison Luvera:And we, for the record, we love the competition. We welcome the new entrants. Since we launched, I mean, we are the number one super premium boxed wine in Nielsen. So we definitely are the leader in the category, but we've seen seven, eight, nine new entries into the category kind of like follow us in. And it's so interesting because we get the question a lot from investors, especially like, are you worried about this? Like everyone's trying to copy you and we just don't view it that way at all. We're so excited because, you know, we're trying to create a new category or a subcategory, if you will.

3:41Allison Luvera:And we can't do that alone. And especially if you're thinking about, you know, retail, we don't want to be the outlier, higher price box wine on the shelf. We want to have several different options at our price point of different styles, different varieties, speaking to different people. And so we love that. But to take a step back, though, how we got started. So about three, four years ago, it's funny because speaking of our parents, I was actually at my parents' house during the pandemic and they had some boxed wine in the fridge. And I'm a wine lover. I drink wine on a glass or two on a daily basis, as does my co-founder.

4:23Allison Luvera:And I thought it was such a great experience. It was like having wine on top in the fridge. I loved having one glass a night and not worrying about having to throw out a bottle a couple days later if it went bad. And I really started thinking about the category in general, but whether or not anything existed at the upper tier that could kind of replace the everyday bottles that I was drinking. And doing this research, I realized, number one, there wasn't. It didn't exist. And number two, there were some other really great attributes about boxed wine. From a sustainability perspective, it is the most eco-friendly wine packaging format.

5:04Allison Luvera:So that for me was really interesting. And then, you know, from the perspective of the size of the category, it's a really large category. You know, it's over$2 billion in sales. It's been growing steadily against the backdrop of the rest of the wine industry, sort of, you know, flatlining. And so, you know, I had this aha moment that there's this product out there that people seem to love. And they seem to love it pretty reliably over the years, even against, you know, the cyclical tendencies of the industry. And yet nothing exists that me or my friends, my peers would really touch or be super interested in from the perspective of the type of wine that we're looking to drink or the look and feel of the packaging.

5:51Allison Luvera:And so, yeah, we set out to reinvent the category and create something that would really transcend box wine and bring those affordable luxury cues that I look for in a lot of other products that I buy into the wine experience. So, yeah, so that was about four years ago. We launched a market three years ago and the rest is history. We've gained a lot of momentum and really started a bit of a movement around higher end box wine. yeah well thank you to your parents yeah I know I don't even know if they know the role they played in this per se but it's also funny because like in the pandemic what else are you gonna do I'm like sitting around googling box wine and lo and behold it worked out you know yeah keep yourself busy right I had a similar experience I was like uh well guess we're gonna need to innovate now yeah and we got lucky because everyone was also uh baking sourdough bread all the time and my company was like kitchenware so we innovated and and then and then we got lucky um but you you created your own luck in that you have a background in luxury marketing you spent years at pernone recar um you were working on perry jouet uh the glam live it i hope i said both of those things right.

7:14My friend just rusty. So is my friend. You did great.

7:17Allison Luvera:Perfect.

7:21And what, from that background, which of your, like, what are the principles of luxury marketing and which of those did you sort of like home in on and key into as you were trying to basically create like an operating structure for this brand new format and price point that you were kind of trying to move the needle on?

7:44Allison Luvera:Yeah, it's a great question. And to your point, having this background, luxury marketing or premium marketing, it's really all I've ever known. So it's very ingrained in everything that I do from a marketing perspective. And so it was really natural to operationalize this. I think for me, when I think about luxury, a really important thing to note, especially in this moment in time, is that luxury isn't necessarily about price point or price point alone, right? It's not necessarily about expensive marketing campaigns or having a celebrity attached to you. It's more about some sort of magic combination of perception and curation and an experience that your product is bringing or an emotion that it's making a customer feel that really transcends the product.

8:39Allison Luvera:And so, you know, I think about all these things, like in the context of Juliet, that, that knowledge was really core in the decision making process, for example, with our packaging. So we knew that perception was going to be a really big hurdle we had to get over. And so we thought deeply about how do we, you know, visually change the perception of boxed wine in a split second. Somebody sees our product and they immediately know this is something different. This is something apart. And so that's why, you know, we actually invented our own form factor. It's called the Ecomagnum. So it's our cylindrical, very chic version of a boxed wine.

9:23Allison Luvera:But the, you know, the training I've had in luxury marketing and an understanding of what that means to a consumer was really front and center in that decision because we knew that perception, We had to be perceived as something different and perceived as something more high end, just intrinsically when you see our product. And it also, you know, the same sort of principles or kind of, you know, foundation I have really flow through a lot to marketing as well. You know, we are very disciplined about our brand world, about what we've created, both from a design and aesthetic perspective, but also from an experience perspective.

10:05Allison Luvera:we're very disciplined about about what that is what that looks like why it is the way it is and then really trying to get everybody in the juliet world an ecosystem whether that's a micro influencer that we work with or a distributor partner who has a sales manager selling us out in the market really try to instill in them that you know the foundation that we're built on so that they can communicate that as well. So it's a lot of little things like that, just kind of understanding, you know, what luxury means to consumers, and how you can bring that to life in different ways. And I think we're living in a really awesome time right now that you can also do this in a fairly low cost way.

10:51Allison Luvera:The marketing mix has changed a lot. New media has created a whole host of other touch points you can have with consumers that you don't need to, you know, have a massive ad spend to take advantage of. And so there's a lot happening from a community perspective and a social media perspective and an experiential perspective that opens up so much opportunity for brands like ours to show up in a low cost way and just really kind of bring that brand world to life for people. And I can think of thinking to your packaging, I can think of a couple of really salient cues of, of like signaling, Hey, this is, this is different.

11:32This is luxury. The shape itself, of course. And, and, and the paper, the cardboard that you're using is like, it's solid, it's high quality. It's got a sheen to it that, that signals something that's a little bit more like satin and not so much like a, you know, this protective, like shiny, glossy UV layer. You added a velvet rope to it. And I'm just, I don't even have notes. I'm working from memory. And these are the things that sort of said to me, aside from the fact that it was, of course, named after my daughter. I'm like, OK, you know, I'm I'm I'm being spoken to as a customer here in this very specific way.

12:08What are some other elements of packaging? And I want to get into your process, because I assume that this took a significant amount of kind of like pre-market time and energy for you to do. So drop us in here with a couple of other of those cues that are very, whether or not we would consciously or subconsciously receive them as a customer are elements that you thought about and then intentionally integrated into the packaging. And then, yeah, like how do you how do you pull it off? How long did it take? What phone calls do you have to make? Like what's the kind of ABCs of that?

12:42Allison Luvera:It was quite a feat. It took, I think, end to end our planning process or sort of pre-launch process, I should say, which was all the ideation strategy, you know, getting the MVP of the product done, getting the wine made, all of that good stuff. End to end, it was almost 18 months. So we spent quite a lot of time, you know, really preparing for our launch, which ended up it was about three years ago we launched in market. And it definitely was a process. I will say, you know, we were extremely thoughtful about the design. There's kind of two pieces to our packaging, right? There's the form factor, which the cylindrical shape was its own beast that we had to work on with product engineers.

13:33Allison Luvera:And, you know, from a functional perspective, there was a lot of iterations that had to happen that we're actually still improving on today. But then the design piece was sort of the other big bucket that we thought a lot about. And, you know, you mentioned a few of the premium keys there. Other ones, you know, for example, we have gold accents on our packaging, which costs a little bit more. But it really goes a long way to evoking that premiumness. We thought a lot about our color palette. This is something that my co-founder Lauren was really a driving force in. She's got a design background.

14:11Allison Luvera:And so, you know, she was, we really wanted the product and the experience of the product to evoke a bit of an escape, right? We wanted it to be a little moment of indulgence, and it was sort of a little moment of escapism. And so we were thinking a lot about the Mediterranean color palettes that you see at these gorgeous, iconic resorts in the coast of Italy or the south of France. And so our color palette is very Mediterranean. And with our design, we actually commissioned an independent designer to work with us on custom illustrations for each varietal that really were inspired by either the microclimate that the varietal is grown in or the flavors and the aromas of the varietal.

15:00Allison Luvera:And so every little piece of the design had a lot of thought put into it. And I think that that, you know, I've had other experiences where you're creating a new product or a new brand or a line extension and you really just you give a brief to some creative agency of very talented people and they come back to you with 10 options and you sort of react to the different options and that's the process. And for us, we wanted every little detail to be thought through so that even if, you know, it's not experienced as luxury by someone, there's a story behind it. And the story connects to our brand and what we're trying to create in our brand world.

15:43Allison Luvera:And to us, that was really important to think about. You know, and I think one of the differentiated things about your product and category specifically is that the packaging is the product. You know, I mean, the wine has to be good, right, for the customer to come back. But for the customer to come for the first time, the packaging is the product. And I think that's a good, you know, if sort of part of my ambition with this podcast and with conversations like these is to kind of help give other founders just the tools that they need to go either help themselves in or help themselves out or through their kind of like founder and operating journey.

16:24And sometimes I talk about like, don't overinvest on packaging, just like iterate, start small, because you can always come back. And then I think about a category like this. And I was speaking to another founder friend of mine who's working on a very, very high tech piece of kitchen equipment. And I think I touched his soul a little bit last week when I was saying, like, don't overinvest in packaging. And he's like, wait, I feel like I did that. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. If you've got like a really high end product, then the packaging is part of that experience. And you actually would be mistaken to under invest in it.

17:01Of course, I think that's, you know, really on point and true for the category that you've tried to create, because what you recognize was effectively a packaging. There's plenty of winemakers out there, but you recognize a packaging opportunity.

17:14Allison Luvera:Absolutely. And I think it's a great point that you make. And I think it's important to clarify that investing a lot in packaging doesn't have to mean investing a lot of money. And we didn't have a lot of capital right up front. And so that, you know, we couldn't hire a hundred thousand dollar six figure agency or anything like this to bring this to life for us. But what we did invest was, you know, our time and our energy and our thinking and our research. You know, we were really in the weeds living and breathing this like very passionate about bringing something to life that we had a vision for.

17:52Allison Luvera:And so I think investing a lot in your packaging can mean a lot of different things. And to your point, when you have a higher end product or it's like higher stakes in some way, you've got to make sure that you're making an impact, right? It doesn't have to be perfect, but you've got to make sure that you're showing up in it in the right way. But that can be accomplished without a ton of capital up front. I mean, I think that's the single greatest thing I've ever heard. Investing a lot does not have to mean investing a lot of money. Like I'm going to put that on the wall. It could just be your blood, sweat, and tears.

18:24Allison Luvera:That's all. Yeah, it's cheap. Just not a big deal. Free. Totally free. And, you know, and the beautiful thing about time is it's just an utterly renewable resource. Yeah. Especially during, let's say, a global pandemic. Yeah. When you have nothing else to do but pour over, like, pictures of Il Pelicano and, like, the tiles in their hotel. Like, I mean, it was, yeah. I know that hotel. You started direct-to-consumer. Speaking of sort of like choosing a path and investing wisely and building on success in order to sort of like, you know, give yourself the best chance of profitability and survival.

19:10But you moved into retail aggressively. And as you share, you're in 700 doors. You're targeting a thousand by your end. I think you're going to crush that goal once over. And that's a big operational transition. I think about that a lot because my businesses went through the same sort of overhaul of like, okay, I've sort of developed everything with one point of view. And all of a sudden I've got like new requirements and whether or not it's actually properly under the category of compliance, like new things that someone wants me to do in order to want to do business with me. and you kind of, you know, when you shift from direct to consumer to wholesale, you shift from controlling your customer experience from start to finish to working with someone who's going to control the second half of it, arguably the most important half of it, which is to get them to buy and then come back.

20:05So how did you guys work that transition and how did it feel as you were going through it?

20:10Allison Luvera:It's, it's a really great question. I mean, and it's to your point that you just made. It is one thing to have this strategy that's, you know, very simple. We're going to test the waters and direct to consumer, and then we're going to pivot and become a retail brand. And we're still going to be omni-channel for the marketing of it all, but this is our strategy. And I do think today, looking back, that was the right strategy. Like this was the right approach for us in our category and the time we're in, but it was a lot more challenging than we anticipated. And this is coming from, you know, myself having experience in the industry.

20:50Allison Luvera:We have a fantastic seasoned head of sales who has deep, deep experience in the industry. So we knew what we were up against. And it was, it even surprised us how challenging it was to make that shift. You know, we, I've said this publicly before, we set out to transition into retail, and it didn't actually happen until 10 to 12 months later because we had a lot of trouble getting distributors to take us on board. There's been a lot of consolidation in the distributor tier in alcohol. And so we were caught up in some, you know, some headwinds in the industry and, you know, also just a sort of trepidation from the distributor side on this is a new thing.

21:37Allison Luvera:This is very cool. We like it, but is it going to work? And so, you know, for us, the first big hurdle we had to get over was like finding the right partners. And it took us a long time. We finally did find the right partners. But, you know, the transition after that initial hump, you know, things really started to build quickly because we had to build enough traction and proof of concept to get those distributors to say yes, which then we could turn around and easily share with retailers in addition to our direct-to-consumer data. So, you know, it was very easy for us to over, you know, the course of 18 months or so collect data to show.

22:21Allison Luvera:There is a market for this. People are willing to pay more and they'll also, you know, repurchase. But we've got to show them the data. And so, you know, we, it just, it took a while, but it's also, I would say, challenging to manage the mix, the channel mix, how much you invest in each channel from a resource perspective, both human resources, but also budget. And so we're still figuring that all out as we go. But that's something that's been really, really tricky to navigate as well. I think for us, our mindset is very much that we're a new product, new brands, really a new category. And so we don't expect that we're going to get everything right, right out the gate.

23:13Allison Luvera:But we just take it one day at a time, one step at a time and try to make progress and improve and improve and improve. And so that's where we're at now. And it's been great so far. we, you know, we've got massive placements with national retailers that we didn't know would ever even talk to us, like Whole Foods and Costco and Safeway, you know, were mandated in 100 % of Harris Teeter stores, which is huge in the southeast. So we're definitely getting there, but it hasn't been seamless. It hasn't been as seamless as the headline of like, we started in DTC and then all of a sudden we're in hundreds of doors.

23:53Allison Luvera:It's like, whoa. That's glossing over a year of like really like hard work. Speaking of investments that are different than money, it's like just the brain space alone, right? To sort of like wrap your head around all of those different, the relationship dynamics, because the relationship dynamics of direct to consumer are are like adorable, right? Like you find one person and then you just find more people like that one person. And then, and the transaction is so easy. And, uh, to counterpoint that in retail, you have to really like have a person, a person fall in love with you in a really big way, and then evangelize champion your business to the rest of their business.

24:41Talk about virality. Like one buyer can unlock, you know, a hundred stores of effectively virality for your product. And sometimes it really just comes down to like, do they like you? And sometimes that like tentative question of do they like you is like, do they think you're legit? Like if they give you this shot, are you going to screw it up for them or not? Which is operation.