The DTC Trap That Built Juliet Wine's Retail Empire | Allison Luvera

Speaker A: We had to launch dtc, but we knew that wasn't our end game. And so that created this kind of three year journey where we launched in DTC and then had to slowly transition to retail.

Speaker B: Polka would not be in Target if we hadn't proven momentum in dtc. You had to start DTC no matter what.

Speaker C: Meet Alison Louvera, co founder and CEO of Juliet. In just three years, she's taken it from DTC to shelves at Whole Foods, Costco, Safeway and more.

Speaker A: One great piece of advice that we got early on that I think was so critical because we knew we would ultimately be in retail, we set up our unit economics as though we were in retail from day one.

Speaker C: Exactly. See, that's so important. And so many D2C brands come to me now and they're like, okay, my business model is no longer making sense.

Speaker A: Exactly. Because they don't think about those margins that come out in the middle from the distributor, from the retailer.

Speaker C: I would love to hear a little bit about your decision to fundraise, understanding

Speaker A: your industry and what the most likely outcome is. And then you can kind of engineer your fundraising strategy around that. So for an alcohol, for example, they're a lot more frequent than they are in other categories, but they happen earlier and we have to think about that.

Speaker C: What would you advise a new startup founder in your space specifically to go about it?

Speaker A: So I would just say.

Speaker C: Today on Unfinished Business, we're joined by Alison Louvera, founder of Juliette Wine, a brand that is rethinking how we approach boxed wine for women in a more sustainable and approachable way. Alison is going to walk us through how she took this alcohol business from a D2C focused business into a big retail expansion. I met Juliet on a panel about two months ago, uh, for Women's History Month. And I learned so much from you. So I'm excited to have you on and have our listeners learn from you. So why don't you start off by just telling us a little bit about Juliet.

Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. So Juliet is one of the fastest growing wine brands for women in the US and we launched about three years ago with our first product, which is a very chic, high end version of a boxed wine.

Speaker C: It's beautiful. I just got mine today, which has

Speaker A: got two bottles and we actually just recently got our patent on it, which really exciting.

Speaker C: Wow. Congratulations.

Speaker A: So it's something we've got a bit of a brand moat around, which is amazing. And we currently offer six California made wines all of them are low sugar. We use low intervention winemaking, so only natural additives. And we're currently offered both for sale on our website, our DTC platform, and also in select retailers. So we launched last year with Whole Foods, uh, Safeway, Costco, Total Wine, and Harris Teacher, which is really exciting.

Speaker B: Wait, how did you even get started on this?

Speaker A: So my background is in wine and spirits. I mean I spent the first half of my career in fashion media and then I took a little detour and transitioned into wine and spirits. So I actually worked as the head of luxury marketing for one of the largest wine and spirits, um, organizations in the world. So I got to work on some just iconic brands like Champagne and the Glenlivet. And so I had had that experience in sort of corporate America and just really wanted to try something entrepreneurial.

Speaker B: Wow. Wait, and. Yeah.

Speaker C: And how do you even get started?

Speaker B: Like we're both.

Speaker C: No, I know because we looked into the alcohol space for a little bit with Lee. We had a very crazy idea but it never panned out. But it is a complicated space.

Speaker A: Oh my gosh, it's so hard.

Speaker C: How do you even start? How do you even find the winery that you want to work with? And then we'll go into the detail of distribution and all that which I know is so complicated in your space.

Speaker A: It's funny, I actually get the question, uh, uh, like over and over again from investors like working in the wine and spirit space or the alcohol space in the US Why on earth did you choose to do a startup in it knowing like everything that you knew? Because it is very, very difficult. Um, so to answer your question, so how we got started, um, so we actually, we got the idea to do a high end box wine. Um, we felt that box wine as sort ah, of functional form factor was so amazing for women specifically because, you know, if I think about myself and how I drink wine, I'm having one glass of wine a night.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Maybe every other night. And if you open a bottle, you're inevitably throwing out half of a bottle, you know, the next day or the next two days because it goes bad. Whereas boxed wine, you can have, you know, one glass a night, it stays fresh for four weeks after opening.

Speaker B: Oh my God. We felt like actually amazing.

Speaker A: It's amazing.

Speaker B: Is that on the, your label?

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. Because that's like, that's the one thing I'm going to actually remember when I see Juliet four weeks after opening.

Speaker A: Four weeks after opening. That's actually insane because of the mechanics of the pouch inside. And so what's really interesting is that there's a lot of little things about boxed wine from a functional perspective that I think make women really drawn to it. And you see that show up in the numbers. Like, some of the most largest volume wines in the world are box wines. And yet there was just nothing out there that kind of met our standards of, um, quality and sustainability and had this, like, chic design world that we were looking for. And so, so my co founder and I decided, you know, why don't we try to like, just reimagine boxed wine? We want to create a wine brand for women that has, like, everything that they want. And, you know, we set out to do that. But I have to be honest, even though I had a background in wine and spirits, we had no idea where to start.

Speaker B: No, but like, even the pouch, like when you say the pouch of Juliet allows for the wine to stay long, for four weeks. Like, how did you even find someone to design that pouch?

Speaker A: So the pouch we use is industry standard.

Speaker B: Okay. So that, that's the. Okay, cool.

Speaker A: So the, uh, all Dr. Pouches.

Speaker B: Wow. Wait, can I just say something? This is a Mom, I didn't know that box wine, like, I never even considered box wine, but now that I know that it. So all box wine lasts long.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: That's amazing.

Speaker C: That is something.

Speaker A: And it's so interesting that you say I've never considered boxed wine because.

Speaker B: Except for Juliet.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, when we've done our customer research, you know, about 25 to 30% of our customers seem to be trading up from other boxed wines. But the vast majority are never had boxed wine. Women that have never considered box wine because it has the stigma. It looks cheap. It looks. No, totally. And they will consider it because of Juliet and because we're sort of educating a bit on some of the great benefits of box wine.

Speaker B: Yes, that's an amazing benefit that I never knew.

Speaker A: So it's definitely. I mean, we, for us, it was like a light bulb moment when we're like, box wine is amazing. Like, we've gotta reimagine this. We've gotta make it high end.

Speaker B: In a sense though, like how you were reimagining it was through the branding.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: So, like, it wasn't that you were reimagining, like, the complicated part of launching Juliet wasn't coming up with this new way of boxing wine necessarily.

Speaker C: You get a patent though, so it sounds like there is some tech around the boxing, right?

Speaker A: Ah, yeah. And I think exactly like you said, I mean, the wine we put Inside is fantastic.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So it's great quality wine and we knew we wanted to do that, but we knew that that wasn't going to be enough because really anybody could do that. Franzia could, could put out a higher end box wine with great wine inside in their packaging. And we didn't think that was going to resonate. And so we thought a lot about, and the design and why we landed on redesigning the packaging and creating our patented form factor was that we felt that we had to visually, you know, distance ourselves from other box wines out there. So our packaging is a cylinder. So it's, you know, it's made of paperboard, just like a regular box.

Speaker C: It's beautiful. It stands out like, you know, it's

Speaker A: Juliet wine, but it's a cylinder and so on shelf, you know, you look at Juliet next to some of our competitors, which are some of the largest wine brands in the US and in a, um, half of a second, you know, we're something completely different. And we knew that that was going to be so important. Yeah. When it came to overcoming the stigma against the format.

Speaker C: So interesting. And is the quality of the wine higher than other types of boxed wines or do you have boxed wines?

Speaker A: Definitely, yeah. Yeah. So some things that, you know, are really core to our standards when it comes to wine. Um, we feel very strongly about ingredients, transparency, um, being very intentional about how many ATT we use and what those additives are and then also, you know, the provenance of our grapes. So we, you know, we're a little bit more selective about the, you know, the vineyards that we'll work with, the areas that we'll source grapes from, um, when you get commercial wine, which is basically like any wine under the equivalent of $10 a bottle, the reality is you're getting kind of grapes that are of a bit lower quality and they're sort of sourced from, you know, wherever you get the best price. And these brands and companies use a lot of additives to create a consistency of style. And so, you know, that was a sort of type of wine that we knew we didn't really want to create.

Speaker B: And is it cheaper to package boxed wine than wine in a bottle? Like, is. Are there any advantages for you as a company sourcing high quality grapes, but you're actually able to not sell it to the consumer so steeply because you're. The packaging is a lot less expensive than others, or no.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I think the key thing to remember there is that box wine is larger format, so you're getting like great value for money. That comes along with a large format. Because for Juliet, you know, we hold. We're an eat. We're a Magnum, So we hold the equivalent of two bottles of wine. So we have one packaging unit for two bottles of wine. Wow.

Speaker C: Yeah. You wouldn't tell. Like I just saw it earlier. It looks like a bottle of wine.

Speaker A: It looks pretty compact, right?

Speaker C: Y. Yeah. Yeah, it does look. Come back.

Speaker A: Yeah. And that was really intentional because we felt so strongly that it had to fit very neatly into a fridge.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: No, it makes sense.

Speaker A: We wanted it to fit in the side shelf and we wanted it to fit on the shelf, but it's almost

Speaker C: something you want in your kitchen.

Speaker B: It's that beautiful branding.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's the power of branding.

Speaker B: So important.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: And so speaking of branding, and we talk a lot about how branding is important on a shelf, but you start. Actually started D2C primarily.

Speaker A: We did.

Speaker C: So talk to us about the journey from like, what makes you. What made you start D2C and how did that evolve into more of a retail focused business?

Speaker A: And so just to kind of give a little bit of context with the beverage alcohol industry, they're a little bit different from your typical CPG industry where, you know, there was this like golden age of DTC and it was like, really cheap to acquire customers. That never really happened in beverage alcohol. In the same way. It's always been really expensive to acquire customers. And at the end of the day, um, you know, customers have never really gotten used to the sort of, you know, I guess the ritual of ordering alcohol online. Not in the same way that they do with like, uh, beauty or skincare or fashion. It's just never taken hold in the same way.

Speaker C: And is part of it also the bottles and the glass bottles?

Speaker A: Yes, it's expensive. So it's very rare that you see a brand that can sort of COVID all the costs of shipping and fulfillment because it's heavy. It's a typical shape, so it requires packaging. And so we knew all this going into the creation of Juliet and we knew if we were going to really scale, we would have to be a retail brand. But we wanted to launch in DTC first for a couple of very strategic reasons. Like, number one, we were really pushing the ceiling of price point with boxed wine. And so we wanted a forum where we could do price testing. You can't do that at retail with alcohol in the US because we actually don't control the end price. We can't because of the three tier system. And so we knew that if we were going to test price points, we'd have to do it online. And we also wanted customer feedback. You know, what we're doing is very differentiated. We had this, you know, unique looking, form factor, high end box wine didn't really exist before us. And ultimately we also wanted to create a larger platform beyond our first product that resonates with Millennial and Gen Z women. And so we wanted that one on one conversation with her.

Speaker C: Yeah. And so powerful. Right? We saw that too. Like being just directly in touch with your customer.

Speaker A: It's so valuable.

Speaker C: It's so valuable.

Speaker A: And you learn so much.

Speaker C: Yeah, you learn so much about what earlier on in the process.

Speaker B: Yeah. And how do you brand it? Like understanding what messaging actually works.

Speaker C: What works? And you get that customer feedback firsthand.

Speaker A: So we felt super strongly that if we were going to be successful with so many unknowns, because there was a lot of innovation going into what we did, that we had to launch dtc, but we knew that wasn't our end game. And so that created this kind of three year journey where we launch in DTC and then had to slowly transition to retail. And that was definitely something where there was just like a lot of learnings along the way.

Speaker B: Like, you're in Whole Foods.

Speaker A: Yeah, we're in Whole Foods.

Speaker B: So how did that process evaluate what

Speaker C: prompted that change also from D2C to what made you think wake up one morning that D2C is not where we're heading?

Speaker A: The cost of acquisition.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, when you're doing omnichannel all the way, when you're doing all the right things and you know, we, we had a lot of like, marketing experience and, you know, we knew we're doing all the right things and we knew that it was resonating and we were getting conversions, but the cost of acquis was, was higher than we wanted it to be. And then simultaneously, we're just getting constant feedback from the customers. When can I buy you at Whole Foods? When can I buy you?

Speaker B: When can I buy you as much

Speaker C: as you want to get your wine.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so we noticed this pattern that was just showing up and it was never ending and it was constant of people asking, when are you going to be in retail near me?

Speaker C: And so. And do you think you could have, you should have started retail or do you think the past of going through D2C was necessary to get you there?

Speaker A: I think it was necessary, but it was definitely more difficult than we thought it would be.

Speaker B: Doing the leap over.

Speaker A: Yeah. Starting with D2C and then making the transition into retail because you also, like, it's just not that smooth.

Speaker C: And the business model I feel like for D2C is different. It's very different. I always tell founders to think about that business model for Omnichannel because you're going to get burned in different things

Speaker A: on the retail side. One great piece of advice that we got early on that I think was so critical in, you know, I think the transition would have been a lot harder if we hadn't received this advice was that because we knew we would ultimately be in retail, we set up our unit economics so important, as though we were in retail from day one.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: See, that's. Seriously, that's so important. Like, and people don't.

Speaker C: So many DTC brands come to me now and are like, okay, my, my business model is no longer making sense.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Because they don't think about those margins that come out in the middle from the distribution.

Speaker B: So from day one, even on D2C, you priced it in a way that it would work on the shelves of Whole Foods.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker B: No, so, but like, my question is, even with Hulk, and I think about it like, Hulking would not be in Target if we hadn't proven momentum in D2C. Like, would you be in Whole Foods if you hadn't proven the D2C channel? That's a thing like. Yeah, exactly. So you absolutely had, you had to start D2C no matter what.

Speaker A: You had to start DTC, we had to start D2C. We had to prove out the traction.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: We had to get the customer feedback, we had to test our pricing and

Speaker C: have, and you had a brand presence,

Speaker A: but it didn't make the transition any easier.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And we even having the DTC traction, we still faced a lot of skepticism. And I think it took us a lot longer than we thought it would to find our distributors. And then we had to get into the independent channel and prove out some traction there and then go big. Then we had to take that data, um, and go to Whole Foods and go to the Kroger's of the world.

Speaker B: Are you using the agency to work with those retail relationships? Because that's what really. Wow.

Speaker C: You work with a distributor which is unique to alcohol. Right.

Speaker A: You have to get to a distributor. So we have, um, we have an in house VP of sales.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Who's someone that I've worked with previously and she's incredible and she has very deep relationships in the industry. And I think it's, I think it's important in Any industry. But I think it's especially important in alcohol. Um, it goes a long way. And then we have really great distributor partners who, you know, they've got their people that also, you know, work with the key retailers. And so we work hand in hand with them and trying to get the placements.

Speaker B: And how do you do, like, let's talk about your team. Like, how do you do branding and

Speaker A: how do you do your ads?

Speaker B: Like, is this in house? Like, what can you say?

Speaker A: Well, this is something that came up on the panel we were on because we're very similar to Hulken and that we've got a very small full time team.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker A: Um, so we're five employees now.

Speaker B: Five employees. And on the shelves of, ah, Whole Foods.

Speaker A: I love that. We just have a lot of. We have a lot of contractors we work with, we have a lot of agencies we work with.

Speaker B: So talk to me about specifically around like paid marketing. Like who's managing that is in an.

Speaker C: Is that even a part of your business at this point? Like is paid?

Speaker A: It is on and off. We did take like a slight break. So H2 of last year was when we really went like full steam ahead in retail.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: All of our chains, launches that we've done today have all happened in H2 of last year. And being a small team with limited resources, we had to make some decisions 100%. Yeah, yeah. So we did sort of pull back on the paid media. Yeah. Um, we are ramping it back up now. We work with, um, freelancers.

Speaker B: And how do you do like something that we talk about, like, how are you doing? So even for the, for the retail channels. Yeah, let's say like they have an end cap. Right. Or like they need marketing materials. Who's doing that? Like, who's actually doing the photo shoots? Is this like in again, like, is this like a branding person in house? Is it an agency?

Speaker A: So we have one marketing person in house. Okay. And then we have some freelancers that we work with.

Speaker B: Um, in an agency or just like a freelancer?

Speaker A: Just freelancers.

Speaker B: Love it. Wow.

Speaker A: And then we do. How did you find all of our cre. I mean, honestly, through like word of mouth and yeah, we find a lot of people through our founder network. Like other, I mean, you guys know, like, yeah, other founders. Um, I'm in a couple slack groups where, you know, just every single day, like, hey, do you know a great video editor? Hey, do you know a great designer? Um, and so we did find a lot of our great talent. We found through those sort of, you Know networks.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Wow, that's amazing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I remember you posted on LinkedIn a few months back about Dupes.

Speaker A: Oh my gosh.

Speaker C: Cause we're facing similar challenges at a Falcon. And I know, I know the feeling of, uh, waking up one day seeing dupes online.

Speaker A: Get a good IP attorney.

Speaker C: Get a good IP attorney and. Yeah. How do you handle it? First of all, emotionally, as a founder, but also from a business standpoint.

Speaker A: I know it's really crazy. Um, it depends on what the copycat is.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So we've dealt with two different things recently. Um, one being a very large wine corporation that just uh, com. You know, they, they really copied everything about our concept, like our strategy, our positioning, which was bad enough but kind of expected. And uh, had that been what happened, we wouldn't have done anything and we would have taken as a compliment. But then in their launch campaign, they actually used our photography from our Instagram.

Speaker C: Crazy.

Speaker A: And superimposed their product into it.

Speaker B: No, you're joking.

Speaker A: Not joking. And that's wild. To the point that like the photo they used had my co founder's hand in it with like her personal jewelry. So it was very recognizable.

Speaker B: Yeah. So then what happened?

Speaker A: And her hand was in their marketing kit.

Speaker C: You, ah, know, it's so funny when I go on Alibaba, I see myself and my kids. I see my kids on Alibaba, uh, with Hulkins pretending to be Hulkins.

Speaker B: I was like, what, what happened? Cause sometimes I'm like, it's almost like.

Speaker C: But from a big. You would expect that from Alibaba almost. But like this is a legit company. This is next level.

Speaker A: I know. So we listen to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they didn't even know. Maybe they outsourced because I've worked in those companies. Right. So I know how it works. If you work in those companies, you're not actually the person taking the photography.

Speaker C: No. Sure.

Speaker A: So I, what I think happened is they probably had some creative or design agency do it on their behalf and maybe they, maybe AI played a role and they weren't even aware.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Just to give them the benefit of the doubt is what I'd like to think happened. Um, but I'll be honest, I don't know if they handled it that well. I, I did like a public LinkedIn post about it. Um, just basically calling them out and saying like, we expect better. Like you've got the resources to copy startups.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, and they sent me back some like cease and no cookie cutter, uh, emails written, clearly written by lawyer. Just not even taking partnership, just saying like, whatever. That's wild.

Speaker C: That is.

Speaker B: So this is where branding's so important and building a community.

Speaker C: It is flattering. There's a part of it that's obviously flattering. Clearly hitting a nerve and doing something right.

Speaker A: We are a small brand who is having a very large impact in the industry.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: That is exactly what 100 to do.

Speaker B: You want to get attention. You want them to cut, but it's frustrating. But you want them, you want them to come.

Speaker C: So frustrating. And people lack creativity. People lack. I don't know this just.

Speaker A: But that's part of the reason, by the way, that we felt so strongly about creating a form factor.

Speaker B: We could.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally. Because we cannot stop companies from saying, oh, they're having success with a higher end box wine. Let's, let's do one too. And at the end of the day, they have bigger marketing budgets, bigger sales teams. They have a national distribution network they could plug themselves into overnight. And so, you know, when we thought about the form factor and inventing our own packaging design, that was really front and center in the decision because we knew we needed something that we could protect. And so case in point, the new, the new, you know, copycat we're dealing with this week actually.

Speaker C: Oh God.

Speaker A: Is uh, another startup company actually that I don't know how they got our packaging. Maybe they went to one of the factories we use, but they have our packaging.

Speaker B: Oh my God.

Speaker A: And so that becomes a bigger issue because that's protected and we can, you know, do a little bit more from the enforcement perspective.

Speaker B: And I find it expensive though.

Speaker C: It's expensive. I was going to say we are probably protected with multiple patents.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: And to enforce them is difficult. And we do enforce them. But it's expensive.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then the question comes up about licensing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So we've gotten approached by several companies who are looking to license our packaging and that creates a whole other. But thought process around.

Speaker C: Yeah. Like, do you want to actually make it?

Speaker A: At what point should we go down that route? Is it going to cannibalize our, our business and our brand? Um, but that's what.

Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know. Like I'm actually very like, uh, I'm more like lenient in that way. Like I'm kind of like, oh yes. Because I do think if you build a beautiful brand, you know, like, I don't know, I'd rather be a part of that expansion story. Even if it's under, you, um, know, if it's creating new Revenue.

Speaker C: You know, we were even thinking, should we be producing the bags?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. For our dupes. Yeah.

Speaker C: Like, should you be producing the wine and the box?

Speaker A: We're gonna do it anyway.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker C: Like you might as well have it. No, totally.

Speaker B: And understand the.

Speaker C: An interesting question.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, I would love to hear a little bit about your decision to fundraise. And um, I know every D2C brand is different and does a different thing, has needs for funding at different times in their journey. And what would you advise a new startup founder in your space specifically to go about it?

Speaker A: Yeah, I have a real love hate relationship with, I think so do all fundraising and our decision to fundraise. Um, and there's days when I'm like, we wouldn't exist today had we not done that. And then there's days when I, I like hate my life because of it. Um, so I would just say when I, when people come to me and ask about it, because it happens all the time. The one thing I do try to really drill into people is just, just understand what you're getting into and do this with your eyes open. Because, you know, fundraising can be really great. It can be the fuel you need to grow and to scale and to get to the next milestone. But it also eliminates options for you. Right. Like once you fundraise, you're on this trajectory and you're accountable to certain people and you cannot change that.

Speaker B: You have a boss in a way.

Speaker A: Yeah, you have a boss in a way. A lot of bosses actually.

Speaker C: And you can also have partners. I think if you have the right investors, they become more than bosses, they become a part of your journey.

Speaker A: Yeah. And if in, in good ways and in bad ways. Right. And then it also creates like, you know, you sort of have to go for a certain outcome. Um, whereas, you know, in this day and age, like it's actually it's better to become profitable and to be a self sustaining business, even if that means you grow slower. And once you fundraise, the expectation is that that's not what's going to happen. And so there's all these sort of tensions that come along with it. Um, we decided initially to fundraise because we knew we wanted to create this new packaging format. We knew that would take a certain amount of time, a certain amount of R and D costs. Um, we knew there'd be MOQs we'd have to me. And so we didn't see a path to doing it without fundraising. And so we just decided to kind of go all in um. And in the end it was really good that we did because the transition from DTC to retail plus the R and D process, it all took a lot longer than we thought. And so I think had we tried to bootstrap, I don't know.

Speaker C: Yeah, it would have been challenging. Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, but you. Yeah, it's definitely um, it becomes another job.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: It is a full time job. Yeah, we've done it twice. We know how it is. It is a lot.

Speaker A: And I just, I, I really try to drill into people that have never done it before just to like. It's great. If you want to go down this path, do it with your eyes open.

Speaker B: Uh, absolutely.

Speaker A: Understand what you're getting.

Speaker C: And I think you're in a space where it can make sense because you're in a space where exits happen. Like I think of Gruns that kind of is, you know, how everyone is glorifying bootstrapping and being profitable. But actually grunts is like the anti playbook in many ways.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Like they raised shitloads of money, hired big teams. Like they're doing the opposite of what we're doing. Right. But they're in a space and like food and Bev. I feel like yes. Supplements there are. You have massive players for these big exit paths.

Speaker A: It is such a good point too in like understanding your industry and what the most likely outcome is. And then you can kind of engineer your funding strategy around that because. So for an alcohol for example, um, exits are pretty, they're. They're a lot more frequent than they are in other categories but they happen earlier. So you know, and we have to think about that when we talk to, you know, there's certain venture firms that would never be interested in this because they want a 20x return and yeah, absolutely. Probably not going to give that to them.

Speaker B: Yeah, totally.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So it's just understanding like what the exit ah might look like in your industry.

Speaker B: Yeah. Where you want to go, where you

Speaker A: want to end up and what makes sense in that context.

Speaker B: So I have um, one final question on this Friday. So you talk a lot about how Juliet is for, you know, women and women like boxed wine. I'm curious to see how you think about expanding to a uh, more male audience. Do you even think about that? Are you just staying very focused either

Speaker C: or expand your product? More products?

Speaker B: Yeah, like I'm just curious. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: So I don't think we'll expand. I mean for us we want to target women.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: I think if you look at a wine aisle today like your typical wine aisle, there's a lot that's lacking for women. You sort of have two things, right? You've got got. You've got a sea of dark bottles with white labels, some fancy script on it, talking about this vineyard or that chateau. And it's great wine, but there's no brand, Right. There's no light. There's no brand world or lifestyle you want to be a part of. Or you've got these female targeted. A lot of them are alternative packaging. They're canned wines, they're pouches, whatever it might be. They're bright colors and, like, sexy branding, and the wine is shit. And so I think that, you know, when we think about it through the len of us as female consumers, like, can you imagine walking into Sephora and you had to choose between efficacy or brand? Like, that doesn't exist in other categories. The expectation is that you always get both.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so I don't think there's a lot of people doing that for women in wine specifically. I also think that women are underserved in the category. There's enough out there for the men.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Like, we.

Speaker A: We can. We can just focus on women and be okay. Um, we are looking at expanding into other varietals, other formats. Um, and again, all through the lens of, like, what does the sort of modern woman want the wine experience to be like? And how can we deliver that? So it's something that we're working on now. Love it.

Speaker B: I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited to go.

Speaker C: I mean, we have. We have two boxes right there. I brought you something amazing.

Speaker A: Toss it in the fridge. Yeah.

Speaker B: I love it.

Speaker C: I know. I love it. Well, thank you, Allison, for coming. This was so much fun.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me on.