This is episode number seven of the Cult of Startup podcast and today's guest is Sarah Craft of Hitler's Den Wine. Hello, everyone, this is Luke Baird. And welcome to another episode of the Cold Startup Podcast where I interview startups from different backgrounds and that can range from technology to consulting. And in this episode, a wine company for you.
As a listener, it is my goal to have you walk away with stories and action items you can apply to your business or startup. And today I sit down with my good friends Sarah Kraft, who is now the co founder of Hillerston Wine. I met her about two years ago while attending a data science class at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. And we tackle a handful of very interesting topics such as why is it important to get involved with your college entrepreneurship program?
How. How jumping into a startup can be a good way to discover your true passions. How much should you spend time on planning versus how much should you be spending time on doing? In addition to that, we talk about labeling and why your product needs to stand out in the grocery store.
And finally, we talk a little bit about how can you actually market your product in niche spaces such as going to a yoga studio and serving wine after it. So I hope you guys enjoy this episode and thank you for listening. How's it going today, Sarah? It's going good.
How are you? I'm doing great. I am ecstatic to actually get this interview and learn more about where Hiller's Den wine comes from. So tell me the history of what is Hiller's Den wine?
So Hiller's Den was. So it's a newer brand, but the history actually extends back a little bit further than you might think. The Four Long family actually bought the vineyard about seven years ago and they have been making wine there. They have a vineyard and a farm.
So we're a fully sustainable operation. We've been making wine for a number of years now for some top brands and now recently cited branch out on our own venture. And hence you have Hilluzen. Hilluzen was a little township that existed before about Pre World War II, where the Vineyardin farm actually located in Marlborough, New Zealand.
So it's on the South Islands. So recently we decided to sort of start our own brand. The wine is just excellent quality and we've recently just launched our product here in the United States. So we have a Sauvignon Blanc, a Pinot Gris, and now we're also bringing over a sparkling Sauvignon Blanc, a Pinot Noir and a Riesling.
And we're in about five different states now in the United States. And it's a vertical integration, if you're familiar with economics. We've founded a company in California that works as an importing company and also works as a distributor of this wine. And it's part owned by the fan, the forlorn family, and then myself.
So that's kind of how we keep that control over the supply chain there. I love that. So let's talk a little bit about what makes New Zealand wine different. Because in the us, I'd imagine the majority of people go, well, wine comes from Europe, and wine comes from California and a lot of other states, but it's big in California.
Why the hell would I want to buy wine from New Zealand over a different bottle of wine? So wines from New Zealand have a very unique flavor profile. I mean, even if you're not very familiar with wine, if you drink beer all your life, you need a glass of wine. You go, what's the difference?
You taste the spectrum. You know, there's nothing really sets a different tone. New Zealand is one of those unique wines that when you taste it, you know it's New Zealand. It's very crisp.
There's a whiff of the white wine. You have citrus and grapefruit, bell pepper. It's very vegetal, almost a grassy flavor. And sometimes they.
You know the joke, the iconic of a New Zealand wine here is catchy gooseberry bush, which tastes a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Because we don't say that, then we're going out and selling the wine. But that's kind of what New Zealand is known for, this very, almost a harsher tasting wine, but it's very refreshing. So even in your red wine, either you don't know if they're Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc.
And they're also coming out some gray cap francs, some reds. Now, the difference between New Zealand wines and the reason why I say that and say California or even Europe, is that, you know, say California, what we're known for here is sort of sweeter, like a big red fruit, like cherry flavors and acidity. But if you taste, say, like a California white compared to a New Zealand white, it's night and day. It's much sweeter, creamier in California, even if you don't put, you know, say, the wine in an oak barrel, which will give you those creamy profile.
But in New Zealand, we make our white wines, for instance, we use stainless steel fermentation. We leave the skins of the wine on skins of the grapes on the wine for a little bit longer. We give it that flavor. We don't do too much to it.
We let the volcanic soil of New Zealand really speak to the wines, whether it's white or red. That's interesting. So the overall, I think it's interesting to sort of understand that with beer the flavor profile is almost the same every batch. Where with wine can actually be different.
Every single batch. Correct? Yeah. I mean with beer you have a little more playing grounds too.
You have say like around a 24 hour turnover period when you make each batch. So you can, you can add, you know, different, different flavors. But you know, for us with wine, a lot of times our flavor profile is so much defined. What is defined by the soil, it's really, that's kind of what we are more known for.
So more so they need a factor ingredient wine. Absolutely. The turning point that adjusts it. Right.
So if you're doing a blind tasting, you're trying to pick up what flavor quality in the wine and to what soil, what climate and therefore what location or region of the world you're tasting that wine. Interesting, interesting. So I imagine the same probably applies to wine that comes from New York because the soil, because of the environmental stf, those are all factors that contribute to the end palpable taste of the pot. Taste more earthy, you're getting more like chalky soils and things like that.
That's so fascinating how that can completely change complex of the wine. Absolutely. So are American palates ready for this? New Zealand wine has definitely been a growing trend, you know, over the past five years.
I think the American palate loves the New Zealand wines because they are so refreshing. They're so different from say your California Chardonnay. You're in. Your California Sauvignon Blanc just doesn't have those crisp, cool flavors, especially when it's as hot as it is today.
And you have somewhere right around the corner, these are the wines that people prefer to drink. And I think, but I think that New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, although it's been it has had such a world renowned reputation as being the best from Marlboro, New Zealand, which of course we have. That's why we're also trying to do something different and new. And we're bringing in a sparkling Sauvignon Blanc.
Awesome Blanc. Excellent. So I want to talk a little bit about your history and a brief story before we get into that is I initially met you at Cal Poly. We were both in a data science class together.
Yes, I Remember that? And I was the president of Cal Poly Entrepreneurs at the time. And I remember sitting there and you asked the teacher regarding something entrepreneurial. And I was in there and I listened to what the teacher said.
She kind of blew you off. She just said, no. I was nervous. I got something there.
Like, you know, I didn't even give you a finite direction to point. You just the idea. Asked if I could advertise for the Cal Entrepreneurs Club in her class. You know, it's a big yellow poster on the side of the classroom that says, there's a club here.
We give entrepreneurship. So I want to kind of hear. I mean, I felt bad for this. I don't think she chooses at Cal Poly anymore.
But I want to hear what happened after that in getting involved in entrepreneurship. Yeah, I mean, I was a major. I know you were. You were the same at the time at Cal Poly.
I transferred in, same as you remember. We connected over that point. So it was kind of a matter. I felt like for me personally, I was almost trying to play catch up.
So I kind of. I. I'm a networking personality and I just kind of just joined everything I could. I joined six, 10 different clubs and I just got involved.
And something that really resonated with me was the entrepreneurial spirit of Top Poly, which I discovered that was. I was a business, but I had a love of wine and marketing. So I joined the Vines to Wines Club. I also joined a club called Net Impact in the business college where you business for good.
We focus a lot of nonprofit consulting work and things like that, usually typically for master's students, but we also get an undergraduate program, which is great. So I was a VP for the Service Corps for that. And through there. I met Jake Disraeli when he was directing the Hothouse.
He took me on a tour through the Hot House, the incubator program at Cal Poly. And from there, I think it was shortly after that that I met you, Luke, in my class and sort of connect the dots. So I heard about the Hatchery Cal Poly Entrepreneurs, and it just kind of took off from there. I ended up joining a wine tasting software company startup through a girl who I'd met from Vines to Wines.
She's my roommate. We went to a wine and grape seminar, the biggest one in Sacramento. The start was called Bottle Fly. So I ended up becoming a part of the Hot House myself.
I got my first level Somalia certification, which is a historic, historically known, well known wine certification. Four levels. So I'm a level one. Anyway, everything just kind of Came together, my passions clouded at once.
And I found myself in a hot house surrounded by entrepreneurs with the most incredible ideas and some of the most brilliant minds. And it just, I vibed with it and I loved it. And I love that, you know, you walked up to me and said, hey, you know, there is a, there is a space at Cal Poly for people who are driven, ambitious and have ideas to change the world in whatever capacity they think is possible. So awesome to be sort of on this path and what is it, maybe two years later now?
Maybe so, yeah, probably could roughly be about two years. That's fascinating. Sort of. See and I will agree that as soon as I jo clubs especially, I found like minded people.
There's smart people here, but these also are inspiring people to work with, which is intimidating. But at the same time they say surround yourself by those, the top five. Right. It was your top five.
Right. You know, and for me I felt like you walk in the hot house and it's 20 or 30. Right. Surround yourself always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you or who are just further along with you have more experienced people who push you.
Surround yourself by people who are going to help you achieve. Your passions will push you forward and you push them forward in turn. It's very, very exciting. I completely agree.
Could you maybe talk about top lessons you learned from Butterfly or possibly what was Bottlefly? Some of the, some of the lessons I learned from Bottle Fly, I definitely, I learned a lot on like a company building level, how to just how to form a company. Just lessons that apply across the board. I joined Butterfly before I ventured off onto this project with Hillaryston.
I'd worked previously vineyard in New Zealand. So I definitely have to get to know their processes like on the vineyard and things like that. But we haven't started the company yet. So that experience came from the bottle fly.
And the bottle fly was much more software oriented. We did a wine, so wine tasting preferences, you take say a six question quiz. You figure out. We figure out what your tasting profile is and we connect you not only to wines that you will enjoy, but we also work with you to discover wines that you might not otherwise discovered yourself.
And we connect and we use like the scriptures say like you know, if you're going to a dinner party, what wine work best with things like that. And it was an incredible experience. We traveled, you know, down south California. We went to entrepreneurship competitions, pitch competitions.
I learned a lot about myself and the software industry as a whole. I think I also learned the value of, you know, how well you work with the people that you're around, which, you know, what world are you in? Are you truly passionate about what it is you're doing? I think I definitely was, but I also felt like killers then kind of met more of my needs in terms of, you know, what was my degree, what was my passion?
What was my passion? Business. And it translated beautifully. I met some amazing contacts, not just to support network at the hot house, but also professionally from people who are willing to work with me in this startup that have helped propel me into now what's turning into a successful career.
Very exciting. It sounds like Hillary or not Butterfly was a stepping stone that needed to kind of happen for you to recognize your passions. Absolutely. It was a way to explore things in my life that I never really delved into entrepreneurship.
I've never taken entrepreneurship class. I was in love with business economics and how the world worked. But this was just a different avenue to check that out, so to speak, and figure out, you know, now that I figure out, I love this part of a business, so to speak, where do I direct my focus? I love that.
Can you tell me a little bit more about why you changed your focus towards hoisten? I mean, a lot of it has to do with the family that I work with. They've. It's a family that I've known for many years, actually went to a high school in New Zealand, grew up in Orange county area, Southern California.
Moved to New Zealand when I was 12 and spent five years of my life there and met this family. And they've taken many international students. They kind of have this mantra where they foster, not foster, but there was the opportunity to young folk to help pursue their own dreams. You know, they're very much about empowering the youth.
And so I became very close to them. New Zealand is a lot about adventuring. I went a lot of adventures with other three sons. And once they bought the vineyard and started on this venture themselves, they.
And of course, I'm passionate about wine. They have the vineyard. I've been over there and I've just grown so close to them in a business sense and a personal level. It was just kind of a natural partnership and a partnership that I really.
I really vibed with. And so it felt like it was something I could really get behind and it really matched my skillset. And that's, at the end of the day, why I chose it. And we do produce over 200,000 cases in the vineyard.
So, you know, looking at, say, the wine industry and saying, hey, if we actually do make it as a brand. Do we have enough wine to support a successful brand? And knowing that, yes, we do. And we have the potential to acquire more land if need be, that was also a great encouragement for me to sort of step out on a limb with this family and, you know, make this project happen.
I want to hear about maybe the conversation, how that went down. Was it you went to the family, said, hey, I've got this great business plan I think you should executed here in the U.S. or they're like, Sarah, you're in the U.S. you want to go there?
If I only had a business plan already. No, it's. It's a. It's literally been.
Since they found out I was. I was in love, in love with wine and passionate about agriculture and business and all these things. And since I worked in the vineyard and I just, I worked with them, I didn't ask for much. I just, I worked and I loved getting to know them, who they were and how they operated.
They have literally just said, hey, do you want to sell the grapes? Do that. You want to sell the wine? You can do that too.
If you want to work with our son, who's at the time based in New York, and make this something that is, that is our own, you know, that is a representation, reflection of who we are as a family and a culture, then you're welcome to that too. It's literally, you know, the world is your oyster and we're willing to back you up and we believe in you. And their son, who is my business partner, Caleb, for long, could never do any of this without him, really, Truly. And they said, you know, just write up a plan.
That's when we wrote the first business plan year and half ago, we said, okay, we have this idea, let's put it together, let's see what we can do. And then I work to rewrite the business plan. It's always changing. The business plan is always changing and adjusting, and you're pivoting in small and sometimes larger ways.
I can remember on Snapchat, you posted a couple things about that. Like, oh, business plan for xyz, right? I would always like, what the hell is this? Tell me more, because I'm so curious.
The 30, 40, 50 page business plan is still growing. I mean, I mean, it's. Sometimes it's hard to get back to because you're, you know, how much you plan versus do you know so much of what you do, you know, you have to figure out how you do this. What are these top five Things that are going to move us forward as a company, you know, but you also have enough planning there that you're not doing things that are pushing in the wrong direction.
And it's such a, it's such a fine line to play. Sometimes you try to move forward fast enough and work hard enough that you are moving forward. But you know, you're also, you do have to have that direction and realize when you're falling down like a rabbit hole. Right.
So you have to be very aware. And also being young and yes, I'll admit, inexperienced, you have to be very careful of some of those partnerships you walk into. You have to be so careful. And we have, we've messed some of those up.
But the amazing part is that even when some of those things go wrong and yes, money spent and also lost, you know something? The people I'm working with, A, don't give up and B, it's. Even though there's some loss, there's also so much gain. So overall, you're still moving forward at a pretty rapid pace.
So that's just, it's part of the learning curve. You know, entrepreneurship, you're trying to make this exponential learning curve. It's, it's impossible to really do that, you know, and just, and get it all right. You have to realize that there's so many things that are going to wrong.
You just have to accept that they are. Learn from it and as fast as you can, move on and just keep going. It sounds like you, you said, I'd rather be digging in the ditches per se, as an entrepreneur starting a wine brand in the US Than dealing with software. Because that emphasized your skills.
That was the thing. Right? I mean, don't get me wrong, like, I love the software industry because I was in that startup. I understand so much more about that side of the world than I ever did.
And I'm able to tap into that and that knowledge and that skill set, even with the things I do with this company, Hillersdon. You know, our brand is owned by a parent company that acts as the important distributor. And so I won't talk about some of those plans, but I have some things in the works where we're tapping into that back end, so to speak. There's a service side to what we do that I think will be to some degree, not maybe, maybe a bigger someday, but a large revenue stream for us.
And I wouldn't really have that knowledge or know how to use it if it weren't for the skills that I learned in Bottlefly. I Think the simple fact of it was with bottle flies, it's just I hadn't been so ingrained in the software world for as long as I had with something that was a little more extroverted and marketing business oriented, where you're dealing with some, you know, some. Some big ego, so to speak. It's just, it's a different ballgame.
But I'm very grateful for both and I wouldn't take any of it back ever. I love that it sounds like you made the right choice and you are happy with your choice as a whole, which is hard sometimes as an entrepreneur to do because you're facing decisions that impact who you are, your family, your friends, where you're living. There's all these things that factor into being entrepreneur. Right.
When you're young, I mean, but it's almost disadvantaged because again, a lack of experience, but you're more experience, experience later on you have more to lose, especially you have a family. It's very, it can be, it can be very difficult. It's always gonna be difficult and very stressful. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
As an. You can find yourself, you know, in your late 30s and go, well, I barely got this off the ground and I have anything really show for it. Guess I've done a good job. Like that reality can occur.
So it's necessary to have some of that because that's part of the driving force. Right. So it keeps you up till 12 or more, you know, further answer emails, you know, because you're, it's. It focuses your mind and makes you different or it can drive you the other way, you know, and you have both those experiences along the way, certainly.
So I want to ask this question because I'm curious as to where like the process of how the wine's made and somehow gets here to the US Is the wine made in New Zealand, is it made air shipped here in Cuy or made here in the U.S. tell me. Very good question and something that I'm actually quite, quite proud of it. I love how all this works together.
Love this. So how it's done is we grow the grapes on a vineyard in New Zealand, obviously. And this grapes are then transported to local winery. So we use a contracted facility, top quality facility in New Zealand.
But the wine is. The winemaking process is directed by our winemaker. He's one of the best in New Zealand, Liam. And then he has an assistant now, Kate, and she used to make wine for Tim Crawford when they were just top quality in my opinion.
So they make the wine there and how we did our first run of wine, Sarsonia Blanco Pinotri was we took a 20 foot shipping containers and we lined each one with a bladder. So a plastic bladder, what's called a foxy tank, and you fill each of those with wine. So it was say 24,000 liters of wine. And we brought that over and then we filled bottles in the United States.
We bottled, packaged, packaged in California. And how that works is we brought it into a bonded warehouse. You have to do that when you're moving wine. It's not been packaged yet and it was bottled there.
This company that we use also provided the glass, it provided the packaging, the capsules. One of the reasons why we import in bulk was, you know, I mean, we're for sustainable operation for the, you know, for wine grape growing practices. And when you ship over a container in a bladder, it's if you have less weight than wood with their glass, less fossil fuels, etc. Another reason why we did that was also because we had access to a company here in California that used ceramic paint and put that on the glass.
Ceramic screen. It's not screen printing, but it's like it's a ceramic paint that they put on the glass. As for our labeling, so it's labeling here, so it's textured. These air bottles are not paper labels.
They're very unique. They can put a ton, ton of different colors on there. It's one of four machines in the world that can actually use this process. So the machine's located in Richmond, actually, old Henry Ford buildings.
He's a tour of it. It's very cool. So yeah, that's. We did.
Our warehouse is located in California and that's where we ship out to our different distributors in various states where we're now selling. I can't envision this like hot tub sized thing of wine coming across the ocean. Oh my God. Is quality controlled, et cetera, et cetera.
You know, the wine stays. We always get that. It's like, no, the wine stays top quality. It's bottled right.
When it gets here, it's gone to the warehouse and ready to go. Awesome. No, no. This giant bat wine came across the ocean.
Sounds like a cool experience. I want to learn maybe a little more about your, your brand as a whole and why you went with the specific designs that you did. Because in holding your bottle, it's got that texture to it. It's got more of a tactile feel to it and it looks really cool.
And I could see it on the shelf being like, what the hell is that any particular reason that you came up with beforehand? You're like, we gotta go dress and differentiate yourself, or was it like, this happens to be really cool. We're gonna do it. So the general inspiration behind this bottle is we want you to look at it, sit on the shelf and just wanna pick it up and just keep turning because you notice how label it just kind of keeps going.
So it's a wraparound. That's one of the really cool things about using the ceramic paint for our labels. So the inspiration behind the design itself, though, beyond just the cool texture and the fact you could chop the top of the bottle and make it a candle or whatever, we have a lot of people that come to us all the time with gifting ideas. It's a great bottle for gifting.
So that's. Our wine club is more focused on. So you get a discount and you can use it for gifting purposes. And once you drink the wine, you can still use the bottle, but.
So the inspiration for the bottle is. You'll notice it has a very. It's a steampunk look. It looks very industrial, like a lot of metallic colors in there.
And we have bionic animals on. It's kind of a theme across our bottles, except for the sparkling, more traditional, more delicate feel. And you know, you'll see that soon when it's here. But the inspiration for that is.
So our. The owner of the vineyard, Bruce Warlong, he was a mechanical engineer back in the day. He had his own firm, and his dream was always actually to run and own his own. His own farm.
So when he was finally able to run that business for series of years and sell it, he then bought this vineyard, the vineyard and farm that they now operate on and work out of. So he was there with his wife, Marianne and Matt for long. One of their sons I originally met, he runs the vineyard in the farm with them. And so that was the inspiration.
And we use a lot of technology on the. On the farm, the vineyard itself. So on the top portion of the vineyard where the house sits, there's a solar panel. So the whole house is powered by solar panels.
Part of the irrigations as well. We use drones that fly over the vineyard and map out the vineyard, also act as bird scaring. We do have two straws fans as well, because it is an AC cooler microclimate of the region. And every time I go is some new, like patent pending.
With Bruce redesigning some harvesting machine or the irrigation system, or finding some way to recycle the old vineyard Post which are swept away from the river. That's rival. That runs right alongside the river, sorry, the vineyard. So that's sort of inspiration for the steampunk look.
And of course we want to. We saw that trend coming up. A lot of millennials are kind of catching onto that, the youth. And so we just love it.
It's kind of this old school feel, but also very, very modern. And so the animals you'll see on our Savanna Blanc and Pinot Gris are red skinned deer and a wild boar. So where that comes from is the vineyard is surrounded by. Surrounded by nature reserve.
And you can actually hunt red skin during wild borrow on there. Our Riesling, we've put a hound, so we use dogs to herd the sheep and things like that. And then on our Pinot Noir we have a hawk and so also use those for bird scaring as well. And that's kind of got a bionic feel.
All of them have a bionic feel for the hawk in particular. Kind of playing off, you know, the fact that we use the drones and then we also have the hawks. And you're kind of having this beautiful mixture of technology and nature in a way that's respectful and sustainable, but also in a way that is also brilliant and just absolutely fascinating to work with. I always love hearing the storytelling behind a brand because I would have had no idea that all these animals are sort of native to where this vineyard is, but they happen to be bionic because the guy who owns the vineyard is an engineer and really likes that element.
So always innovating. Yeah. So it's sort of a mix of all those. Oh, Kiwi ingenuity in New Zealand.
There's always a way. There's always a way to get anything done. You do it yourself. I love it, I love it mantra.
Yeah. It's super unique. And I don't know if everybody does this. I'm probably.
I like knowing the extra layer that brand puts out there, that the art actually means something. My podcast cover, I. I wanted the artwork that we saw at large. You could see all these startup terms, but we saw little you couldn't.
So it's got two meanings. I like knowing that storytelling. I think it's. And I noticed that right off the bat.
Yeah. So there's something you need to. Yeah. I wish more brands would be willing to go the extra mile to do the storytelling and think about that stuff.
And also just a side thought. And all this is. The technology that agriculture uses is amazing. Being Agassiz major, I had no idea the Technology that actually these forms use and how sophisticated it can be.
That's super interesting. Super interesting. Well, let's sort of segue into a new topic and I want to talk all about marketing, talking about the branding, but I imagine you guys have an on ground operation. So you're going to stores and going to shows and stuff like that and then possibly maybe have marketing through social media.
So let's talk a little bit about what you do on ground. Well, since it's a startup, you do everything. But to break it down for you, we kind of, we work on a multiple levels. So I just recently moved to LA about a month and a half, two months ago.
So we kind of try to keep it to, from a face to face standpoint in say California or la. It's a great place for us to kind of have almost a mobile tasting room. So we were recently tasting an art gallery from an artist to photographer from Australia. It was a showcase for an Australian fashion designer.
So we're mixing in that kind of world. We do tastings in fitness studios, like yoga studios and cardio bar centers. And there you kind of meet a lot of people in the restaurant industry and things like that. We also will be doing tastings at some, some clubs, like some sailing out clubs and golf clubs and things like that.
They, I was just at a tasting in Nevada and they loved it, they wanted to buy cases of it. So in that sense a lot of our face to face is like that. And some of the sales that we focus on are more wine bar, sort of specialty wine shop oriented and where we can do say winemaker dinners and sort of talk, talk to the wines and make those sort of more meal pairings and things like that. We also go to.
So that's our kind of mobile tasting room. Okay, I want to maybe go a bit more than that. So when you go to the tasting stadium studio, that's kind of unique. You guys did your workout, but guess what, we got wine on hand.
Do you, do you make sales there to develop a customer or is it like hey, we happen to have it at the store or you can buy online. I mean when we go to say like a yoga studio or whatever, oftentimes we'll, that's kind of a sign for us too. If we pour the wine for free usually and we say, hey, sign up on our mailing list, you can pour a glass of wine, they have a reusable tumbler with our name on it and you can put it in the dishwasher. People love it, They'll Pick a company, they take your brand with them.
Exactly. And so then now we also have beautiful T Shir that were designed by makers and allies who by the way, also designed almost everything for us. Bottles, packaging, et cetera. Absolutely incredible.
And stainless bispo based shout out there. Thanks. And so we've also found recently not only are they interested in say like T shirts or you know, cups, whatever, but we do at all our events is we actually use metal pours that are animal heads. So, you know, we have a stag on our, you know, the Sauvignon Blanc where we have the Red skinnedier, we have a boar on the one where Pinot Gris is on the bottle, et cetera, for, you know, same with other wines as well.
And we found that people are so in love even just with merchandise. Right. And so it's something for them to sort of take away. And then we also give them, with that we collect a little tasting card the size of business card.
None of our information on it, but it just has some of the rainy features, a picture of the red skin theory. It's a little something to sort of take away. So you can follow us on social media and things like that. And oftentimes I'll come up a second time and that's when they buy the sh.
Now we've just launched our wine club and so now they can come and sign up for the wine club. So it provides a great platform for us to kind of grow this unique community in this hubbub of la where we meet so many different people and oftentimes again, restaurant tours and things like that. Gives us a platform, talk about the wines, taste the wines with consumers who wouldn't otherwise have had it. And they just fall in love with the brand, they fall in love with us and they.
And they'll reach out to us oftentimes. And so that's kind of a model that we've made a little more personal in la. Typically in the industry, when we support say like a retail shop or wine bar, we will go in and do and just speak to the wines and you know, you have a wine maker feature, whatever, so you go in and pour the wines and talk about them. But this is a way that we can make it a little more specialty and be the only wine coin, essentially what it comes down to.
Yeah, you sort of corner your market because it's not the wine offering. Right. And we do this by partnering with say art gallery or fashion designer or people who run like a health made simple. They promote health and wellness and A product called Juice around la.
So we partner with them, we do cocktail events with them. We're doing two events this weekend and it's just such a special partnership with them, you know, getting. We're behind them, they have us again. These partnerships are so key, especially when you're young brand and oftentimes I'm working with a lot of young, also ambitious people.
Yeah, I'm curious to know a little bit more about what's the conversation that occurs to get into one of these places. Is it that you guys are mapping out? Hey, there's 10 events that are going on in Los Angeles in this month. We need to contact these people and we strike out with seven.
We get three. Honestly, I mean it's so cliche to say, but it's your network, it's who you meet, who likes you, do you like them? And we just kind of met them along the way and you meet one person and choose you 10. And it's literally just been a very organic growth in terms of the opportunities we have to board these different locations.
And Caleb has been in LA a little longer than I have, so he's had a chance to sort of meet some of these folks and now they point us to other people and it just kind of happens again. They love the product, they love representation, they like us. And so we end up finding ourselves like, okay, let's only maybe do one or two events a week or something. You know, you kind of have to almost scale down a little because we find that we're getting so many great people backing us up, which is really encouraging.
Yeah. And I love this because it sounds like there's sort of a momentum thing that occurred. You know, the first handful might have been difficult to get. You know, I find these people, you get into those places, but as you do more of this, it snowballs.
So X Yoba Studio might refer another Yuba Studio. Oh, hosting was here. It was great. They brought a good vibe, they were fun, they brought free samples.
It was unique and it was just a great opportunity to sort of get in there and get it. And following that, in the end you have turns on revenue which you know, of course gradually is. Which is great to see. All right, so on that point I think we should shift in talking about social following or.
You mentioned following that. Right, right. So I know, at least on my Facebook feed I get sponsored ads for lifting that pop up page and I follow it currently. What do you guys do on social to engage with your customers?
So we use a couple of platforms. Our main Platforms are obviously Facebook, Instagram, we do Twitter and we have Pinterest. Facebook and Instagram obviously kind of our main hubs of activity. Previously it's been a bit more, more planned and been a bit more external of Caleb and I sort of.
But now as Caleb and I are traveling and just getting a lot more people behind us, we kind of decided to take over both of those aspects and we learned how to push ourselves on Facebook. We have, you know, say like we have one, we have one post that will pin up the top of Facebook. So I see as you come in and we'll just set a budget for the month and we'll say spend like 5 to maybe $20 a month on ads depending on like the events we're going to. And we just focus it on those locations.
I mean you just kind of do it based on what your needs are as long as you don't use the tool social media on like say Instagram. We're trying to push more having, you know, we've done say like we sort of focused on okay, what does the branding packaging look like, what's the story behind us. Then we get kind of a photo shoot with makers and analysis again who also did our design worker models. And so we have more professional outlook there, some brighter shots.
Now we're bringing some things a little more personal. Now that we're traveling to those different states where we are selling our wine, we have a little bit more activity and hubbub. So we're bringing that into it. And so the goal is to become as we're say, you know, now we're sponsoring sailing events.
I'm a competitive sailor eraser. So as we sponsor those events, or Caleb for instance is involved in nonprofit and theater work, as those events come along, we also, you know, we'll post those or if we're pointing at the art gallery. So at the beginning it's more like what you start off with is this is who we are. So we look like you're telling the story.
If you're building up a rep, you know, what is New Zealand wine? From Marlboro and whatever. Marlboro, New Zealand. Like what is, what is it about?
And now it's getting to more of like, well, hey, this is what we're doing on a daily day to day basis. And now people kind of meet us at those locations and sort of like, okay, where can I buy it? In a nearby store. And that helps us when we're walking into the local Whole Foods, which by the way, we just got into Nevada that's the first foods.
First whole foods, which, if you don't know how it works, once you're in the system, you're, you know, you can see walking in other foods in Nevada or Chicago. We're also selling it. And then it's, you know, it's much easier to then get your wine as well. It's getting the system.
That's the initial. That's the hardest part if you want. But you know, so now it's. Now that's there.
That's. That's where now we'll start focusing some of those safe Facebook ads and things like that. And Instagram's also doing some really cool things where if you say like a post, you can click through on their website or you have a setting where you have four photos instead of click through. So that's great for.
You can do events. If you have an event, four photos, you put that up there and if they like it, they follow through your website. It's all about the click through. And we finally generate the most traction from say, you know, Facebook and Instagram.
Is one better than the other currently? No, I'd say they were. They're about equal parts at the moment, just because. And we do cover such a large age range as well.
So it just depends on say what your preferences. But now I found it's pretty equal. Interesting. Are you constantly engaging with, let's say, comments and stuff like that?
Yes, we are. And actually so, so Caleb, I am more operations, side travel a lot, you know, working with finances, things like that. My title is COO, obviously wear 10 different hats. So Caleb and I do a lot of crossover.
He is cmo. He's our chief marketing officer and he will do a lot of that playing on Instagram, on Facebook and he will interact. Yeah, we interacts with that. With any people who come on Instagram or Facebook.
Yeah. I feel like that's something that some brands leave out is that they'll go, I'm really social. I'm doing so much stuff on social media. And they don't.
They completely neglect the idea that social media is supposed to be social. Right, right. You go and find the other St. New Zealand wineries or people who are doing something similar in your area or whatever even we will follow the retailers that we want to get into and you know, what's their vibe, what do they like, what do they want from us on a merchandising standpoint in their stores.
Right. And so you go and follow them and we get involved on their channels and then that Introduction to going to, let's say, Whole Foods in X area or something like that. Oh, you're acting on that specific Whole Foods for three months. They kind of know who you are.
Right. Easier get in the store by doing that than just a cold call or a cold introduction. Yeah. I mean, to some degree, yes.
Because you also have to realize that there's larger retailers. I mean, their marketing is run in, say, by the corporate office and maybe a state that or city that you'll never really know about. So to some degree it's. It may be effective if you maybe run into that specific person.
But I think it's more of just a lot of what you do when you walk in. Sales call wherever you go, retailer, wine bar, whatever it is, you do your research. You have to know what are you walking into? What is it, you know, like, how do they set up their store?
What are their programs? How would your wine best fit in with who they are? Maybe Whole Foods different by any chance? So for instance, in San Luis, right.
So in the Central coast, our Whole Foods typically are more locally driven, Right. So they focus on local California wines. I've met the buyers there. I just kind of had a conversation with them.
And that was, that was. That's been their push. So they've been actually pushing out some of those international wines because that's the local trend. That's the thing.
You can be in the whole food system, but you kind of choose your Whole Foods. You know, we're just using some examples since we're about it now. But you kind of have to choose carefully, right. And decide, you know, or even just ask, you know, what is this kind of wine that you're looking for in Norwegian?
Interesting. So are you doing that research by happenstance that you're kind of like, oh, it looks like here's the industry trend or you're stumbling across. A lot of it is, you know, maybe people you talk to in the industry, you know, through ideas, back and forth, what's going on top level. Because they sometimes know things on the back end that you've never known about.
Even like say company mergers or things like that. Obviously, Whole Foods is not going through that, but, you know, but it can even just be as simple as going into the store and kind of exploring the shelving, talking to the buyer, having someone else going talk to them. You go in later to the sale. Do they have a wine bar?
You know, a lot of it's just very basic, hands on, like just the typical maybe where it gets more complicated. You have to know, like when you're talking to the buyer, what are they after? Right. So what concerns them?
You know, for somewhere like Whole Foods, what concerns them is, you know, great packaging, a price that's not too low, not too high. It's hard to figure out what that price is until you've been around for a little bit. And also making sure that your product matches the quality they're looking for. It's all this kind of.
This is balance. It's this game. Retailers are much more concerned with the strictly logical aspect, I would say, of the wine. You know, like, you know, the black and white, smaller wine bars, restaurants, bartender, you know, bartenders, things like that.
They're want to know a little bit more about the nerdy side of the product, if you will. You know, how it's made, what's unique about it, things like that. They want something they can really get behind and get excited about and also have an affordable price point. And you have to be able pick your range.
Where does your wine sit? You have a bunch of wine there, but you're sitting in a certain category. Yeah, right. Is wine categorized by price, categorized by higher prices of higher quality wine?
No, it's. It's also, it's. I mean, you have to think of like, you know, what region are you selling in? You know, right now, the New Zealand category for Sauvignon Blanc, Pierre, is very competitive.
There's more and more of it. So it's driving our prices down. That's why our sparkling Sauvignon Blanc has had such a great response, because there's very little of it out there, and yet it still has the toad of the name, this falling for Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand. But, you know, we're.
It's ours. Right. But it might have us fall somewhere in the Prosecco or Cabot range because we're kind of. We're not one of the first, but, you know, there's maybe two or three out there that I can think of one of the newer wines to do.
We still don't really know where that price point is going to set. So we kind of go out gas barter lovers to do negotiations. What, you know, how much we can give on price, how much can they. And how can you talk about it, you know, and what's the market response?
How much does the market value it? Yeah, right. It's case by case sometimes, really. Okay.
Very frustrating. So if you put your product in Whole Foods and it doesn't sell for some reason, they give you the boot or is there anything additional that you do post to be in the store? So once you're in the store. So Whole Foods in Nevada, they're going to.
I'm going to be back out there again and do a tasting with them. So you run tastings in their stores, like monthly tastings or like whatever they. Whatever they want. Oh.
So you continually try to educate with that region. You go there, you. If they have any wine, they want you out there talking about it, tasting people on the wine. So, you know, people like, oh, great.
And they go and buy it. And also, since I know a lot of people in that area, I'll be really pushing that for those people. Again, Facebook ads pushed more towards those people, which is worried about Facebook. Actually literally directly targeted.
Right. Whole Foods in Nevada. Okay. So this is the thing about social media.
And I've heard it, you know, people go back and forth all the time. It doesn't have that much reach, blah, blah, blah. But you know what? It has enough of a reach within your network and perhaps just beyond, because you can't target those as a social.
At the beginning of a brand. I feel like today there's so many products, especially with wine, not so much in tech, because obviously something very different, very new people just media latch onto. But for wine, the marketing oftentimes has to start with word of mouth. Yeah.
And sometimes the best place to do that is on your social media platform because you're so busy working, you know, doing as much as you can to get this product moving and going and happening. That's not. You can really educate everyone in your network is by, you know, your Facebook, your Instagram or, you know, your Snapchat or whatever it is that you're using. You use everything that you can to make sure that word of mouth keeps circulating so that people are aware.
And then they are the ones who are your number one like. Like, you know, support. Right. And they tell their friends, and those friends tell their friends, you know, and that's how you start that momentum.
Right. Yeah. It sounds like you've got to get into the store and then continue to educate people about that product. Because you could just be in a bottle of wine on the shelf.
And I'll be honest with my experience, I go to Whole Foods and I'm looking at the wine there. There's so many brands. Absolutely. And I.
I'm not somebody who's a connoisseur of wine in no way. But I wouldn't know what the hell I would start. So it happens to be that sort that's like, hey, we're listening. We do X, Y and Z.
And here's why you should prefer our wine over these brands. Right. Changes the dynamic completely. Because now I have a personal association with brands, but I really like that.
So now we're sort of coming to our conclusion here and I got a handful of rapid fire questions for you. First one, what words, advice would you give to somebody who wants to start a wine brand? Oh, man. It's hard honestly, looking back when you're starting a product or anything.
I mean, especially in wine. There's. There's so much out there and if, if you don't feel like you have the support, the proper investment and the quantity of wine to back up the brand that you're thinking of, you know, doing or whatever, don't do it. Yeah.
If you feel like you have the potential of having that, then the first thing you should do is go and trademark your name. Go and look it. Because there's so many names that have been trademarked. We got stuck in that little debacle when we had.
We originally called off the grid, then became Hillsden as the middle finals. When we went through that whole shift and trial to figure out what name we could use. And it's, we exhausted so many lists and it was a nightmare and we lost a lot of sleep over that. All startups, I feel like, have to go through the name game.
You have to. But in, but in wine or any, in any industry where there are a lot of products, you know, it's a very competitive market. Yeah. Like wine.
So much wine. You have to. The name is so important because you know, you could start your brand, use your name and so come along, sue you, threaten you, whatever. You have to spend so much money to change your name.
Luckily we're relatively kind of the beginning. But the thing is, if you get a name, you trademark it, you can sit on that name for three years and not use it. Yeah. You know, you can get two or three.
Some people have five in their back pocket and that's, you know, Brian C. Moss, our trademarking lawyer, he teaches wine Watch How Poly and that's one of his number one biggest pieces of advice for anyone starting brand, whether it's beer or wine or spirits. You know, Aaron Burke who used to Wild coast spirits and now he's Caliber feature interviewee, which you guys will absolutely love. That was, that's.
It's something very important, something that I, you know, talk to him about and it's part of why he changed his name. So it's that's gonna keep in mind. Definitely. I think that's great.
Words of advice and sort of a cautionary pill to everyone. Do you have a favorite book that's maybe entrepreneurial related? Yes, I do. It's by Malcolm Gladwell.
It's called Outlier. Okay. Outlier and Tipping Point. Okay, I'm a big Mac, David and Goliath.
But okay, so I love those three. Outlier, Tipping Point, and David and Goliath. But I think from a startup standpoint, Tipping Point was Outlier is a word of encouragement because, you know, you figure out that the most successfully people you know aren't as maybe perfect or lucky. They are kind of lucky.
You know, factors have to line up and opportunities have to come along that you're able to then take and you have to be able to take them. So it's more of encouragement. Tipping Point is a more like how to really get the snowball moving in your startup. And how do all those factors in terms of people and how the world works, I guess, and the economy, how does that all fit together to help push your business past the tipping point?
You do so much work to get to this point where then you can just move, but how does it get there? And then what specifically are those factors in terms of people? Because startups are so. Your team is so crucial to so few of you.
What people do you need on your team to make it success? And I think real Tipping Point really speaks to that. It really does. I absolutely love anything by Malcolm Gladwell.
Well, thank you sir, for your time. I sincerely appreciate you coming over here and connecting this interview with me. As always, you live. There you have it, folks.
That was Sarah Craft of Hillary's Den Wine. I will leave links to her contact information in the show notes. As always, reviews are greatly appreciated on the podcast and itunes. Feel free to hit me up on social media anytime.
I'm on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and anchor and Snapchat, all at the handle of cult of startup. Love you guys and take care of.