One of the fasting-growing wine brands in the U.S. doesn’t own any vineyards. They don’t plant any grapes. They don’t even own any wineries. Instead, they buy and re-sell premium wines.
It all began during the last recession. 90+ Cellars President Kevin Mehra saw some big inefficiencies in the wine market, so he came up with a plan to flip the industry on its head. Because of the recession, people were no longer buying expensive wine as much as they used to. But wineries were still producing similar amounts, meaning they had a surplus of expensive wine to sell.
So he came up with a plan: negotiate a fair price to buy the wine from other brands that can’t afford to sell their surplus, put his own label on it, and sell it for roughly $10-$15 per bottle.
The result? Despite launching in the height of the recession, 90+ Cellars has grown 580% in five years and is on pace to sell 290,000 cases of wine this year.
On this episode of The Growth Show, Kevin Mehra and Brett Vankoski join us to talk about:
- How they launched during the recession and have been able to manage sustainable, profitable growth without raising capital since 2011
- Lessons Kevin learned from failures at his two previous beverage companies
- How they’ve been able to take advantage of three key inefficiencies in the wine market
- Plus, everything you need to know to buy a good bottle of wine
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