Clink

Clink is a wine distribution business that targets a boutique market segment for national distributors to develop the upper-premium wine buyer persona. To explore all aspects of entrepreneurship, this course emphasized creation and development – from idea to inception to capital raise. Together, my team identified an opportunity and developed a complete business plan.

Time 12 weeks

Team 5 people

Tools Miro, Illustrator, Procreate

Role user research, illustrator, designer, marketer

Market research

U.S. consumers of popular premium wines are growing. These wine buyers want to explore wines of quality and understand the story behind the product. They crave wines that punch above their weight and take them somewhere new. However, those wines are increasingly scarce in their price range, and they have no easy way to identify them on the shelf.

Grocery consumers of wines under $20 have little technical knowledge and struggle to identify quality and value when purchasing based on price, origin, and brand. 

Objective

1: Give value consumers wines that are easy to identify, low cost, punch above their weight, and empower them to explore.

2: Give grocery retailers a consolidated line-up of wines under $20 that over-deliver on quality and provide variety without the SKUs.

3: Give non-U.S. producers of low volume, high quality, and low price wines a path into the U.S. market.

Go-to-market

Revenue generation

Convert grocery distribution representatives in high-volume states and grow direct to consumer business with brand awareness

Lean model

Technology drives efficiency and third-party partnerships and leases minimize fixed costs until product-market-fit is clear

Capital required

$1.9M, funding tech development, marketing, sales, and operations in years 1-3

TAM: $7.36B (2.8% CAGR)

importer revenue, wine sales, U.S. 2019

SAM: $655M

from still-wine, off-premium — CA, NY, TX, FL, NJ

YR5 SOM: $3.1M-$9.6M

in 10%-30% of stores, with 6 skus (average $), and 10% of $s from DTC program