A recap of the last year and important decisions we are making for the year ahead.
As we covered in our State of the Independent Marketplace report, it’s been a big year for us and we’ve learned a lot. This post is about sharing those learnings and announcing key decisions we are making to continue progressing on our mission.
We’ve always built this company focused on two things: solving the growth problem for wineries, and listening to our customers to help us build the best solution.
When we launched, we quickly saw wineries who were doing exceptionally well, and many who weren’t. The ones that did well were in lock-step with our product, amplifying the messages we shared, and ultimately were taking advantage of a more holistic approach to growth.
This led us to building out our ecommerce functionality, hosted websites and changing our fees to make sure we could support where you were taking us.
And the results have been very clear.
Not only are wineries starting to see real growth results; together, we have built a sustainable model. For a flat $2.95 per order, wineries are getting a hosted website, robust ecommerce, flexible wine club, and a growing set of marketing tools. Because of the holistic approach, we can align our incentives with yours and work alongside you to get that first time customer to join the club. We can enable you to expand your reach without limitations of which website that customer will ultimately purchase on. We are truly alongside you to empower your growth.
Vinebase being a growth platform means that we have to move beyond being a traditional marketplace. Traditional Marketplaces work off high commission fees that aren’t sustainable and oftentimes end up alienating their merchants in the process. We’ve found a better way: one we’re calling the Independent Marketplace model, and we’re leaning in.
Tactically, this means we are asking all wineries to join our full product offering. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve only onboarded wineries who are able to fully commit. We’ll be reaching out and are excited to talk about the product we’re building. Building the platform for independent wine is only possible with independent wineries. We’re grateful for the trust we’ve been given, and will keep working to earn it.