Ep. 1036 Amanda Gunville | Voices With Cynthia Chaplin

Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. This episode has been brought to you by the wine to wine business forum twenty twenty two. This year, we'll mark the ninth edition of the forum to be held on November seventh and eighth of twenty twenty two in Verona Italy. This year will be an exclusively in person edition. The main theme of the event will be all around wine communication. And tickets are on sale now. The first early bird discount will be available until August twenty second. For more information, please visit us at wine to wine dot net. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm Cynthia Chaplin, and this is voices. Every Wednesday, I will be sharing conversations with international wine industry professionals discussing issues in diversity, equity, and inclusion through their personal experiences, working in the field of wine. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate our show wherever you get your pods. Hello, and welcome to voices. I'm Cynthia Chaplin, and today I'm excited to welcome Amanda Gunville to the show. Amanda's been described as a serial entrepreneur, which I love that term, with experience ranging from pro sports to the beverage industry, to technology, and well beyond that. Her focus nowadays is on operations and marketing strategy, and she is currently the COO and the CMO of Wandering Ivy. It's a disruptor wine brand, which we'll get to that in a little minute specializing in elevated single serve wines from award winning family owned vineyards from around the world. And wandering Ivy wines were chosen for the second year in a row to be featured at PGA Championship in Oklahoma this year. So I'm really excited to have Amanda. There's so much to talk about today, so welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's a huge pleasure. I'm just gonna give our listeners a little bit of background I know Wanda and Ivy was started by Dana Spalding in two thousand and seventeen, and you came on board in twenty twenty. Tell us a bit about the company's mission. What gave Dane the idea for single serve wine. You know, we hear a lot about can wine and boxed wine and things, but what Wanda and Ivy is doing is a little bit different. So I wanna go there as well. What are you doing there at the company? And and what's your day to day role there, Amanda? Well, those are that's a lot of questions. So I'll start with from the beginning. Them in. You did. I love it. So, yes, the company was started in two thousand seventeen, and I love love love the story. Dana, our founder and c CEO, had a previous career with JPMorgan and private wealth management, specifically, actually been focusing on the food and beverage space. And she came home. It was a Tuesday, and she'd had a particularly great day at work. And she was about to pour herself a glass of wine. And, of course, to do that, she was going to open up a full bottle, and her husband looked at her and said, are you seriously going to waste another bottle of wine, knowing that she was only gonna have maybe a glass glass and a half and likely, you know, the rest of the bottle or majority of the bottle would go down the drain in a couple days later. And she looked at him a little perturbed and said, yes. I am. I deserve it, but it it sparked an idea in her To say, you know what? I will go shop in, you know, for a smaller format, single serve wine. And what she really found was low quality wine and low quality packaging, you know, the as you mentioned, the bags the boxes. And back then, not not even cans were invented yet. And so, you know, she tried a few, but but really, you know, just didn't find anything that felt like a treat after that great day of work. Right? And so She started exploring, is there an opportunity to, create a luxury experience in a smaller format? And that's when Wanda and Ivy was born. And in addition to that, she also noticed that there was Almost no focus on clean, you know, kind of that organic ingredients within the wine space. We pay attention to what we put into our bodies in terms of food, but nobody had really paid attention to what's actually in the bottle and and a lot of the mass wine producers add a ton of sugar, even artificial flavors to kinda get that consistent flavor year to year. And so those were some of the things that she was excited to explore, and, birth, wander, and Ivy, like I said, she started in two thousand seventeen, but the product was, available, about a year later in two thousand eighteen. Wow. That's super fast. What a what a great drive from inception of idea through to product on the Mark Isn't that the truth? And it is a challenge. The the wine business is, as you probably are well aware, is extraordinarily difficult and expensive. And, it's it's pretty impressive what she was able to do. Let's let's just hit on the packaging for a second before we walk away from this because it is so interesting. Anyone who hasn't seen Wanda and Ivy should definitely take a look at their website. Tell me why she went with the packaging that she did. Let's talk about what it is. I won't give away the secret. You go for it. And and why she chose to go that direction. That's a great question. So, you know, one of the things that, obviously, any creator of a product wants to do is to create differentiation on a shelf. Right? I mean, you have a million choices when you're at the grocery store or a liquor store in this case. But how do you how do you stand out? And as we talked about creating that elegant experience with with the wine, and so she created this glass bottle, which in in in the hand, it is heavy and just feels like a luxury. It's the cylinder shape, and it's it's It's absolutely beautiful. She and the graphics team, did a wonderful job in designing the the labeling. But the thing that's really exciting is that she submitted the bottle, to to get the patent, and she was awarded that. So nobody else can have the exact same packaging as as we do. And it's sort of with the size of a can. I mean, how what's the size of the serving? It's six point three ounces or a one eighty seven milliliter, which is a fourth of a bottle of wine. So it's a it's a it's a pretty hefty glass of wine. I think when you're at a restaurant and get a a a pour, a lot of times they say there's five glasses to a bottle. So ours is a fourth of a bottle. So it's it's a nice glass. That's great. That's fantastic. I wanna talk about this sort of disruptor idea. I I love that word. It's so active as a descriptor word. Wander and Ivy's been called a disruptor wine brand. Tell tell me what that means to you and to the company. Is this a plus or a minus? How do you view this term? It's so funny. Literally, my mom asked me the same question two days ago. She said, what does it mean to be a disruptor brand? And I look at it is that we are, you know, we're used to doing the same things over and over and over again, whether it's a certain car, a certain a way of life. Right? And when a new brand comes in and challenges the way that you do things day in and day out, that's a disruption. I I think a perfect example of that is Uber. With, you know, the car service. They completely disrupted the transportation industry, you know, in terms of taxis. And, in terms of Wanda and Ivy, obviously, people were just used to sort of the big conglomerates having, you know, whether it's a box of wine or those little plastic bottles of wine. That was just that's what you get if you want a a single serve wine or wine for cooking for that matter. So we came in and sort of disrupted that thought that you can have premium luxury experience in the smaller format. Yeah. It's amazing. I it's I I love where the market is going with this, and I'm sort of obsessed because In Italy, we don't have a lot of this. There's still a very, you know, old school, old white men, view of wine, in big, heavy, dark glass bottles, and there's not a lot of single serve, for sure, unless you want a little, you know, very inexpensive, take on the train little split of prosecco. So I'm fascinated by what's happening, in other markets with with this sort of single serve idea, but this is definitely a step up from, as we were saying, you know, a a a box or a can. I've seen many elegant cans. I think boxes are getting better, but to have a glass bottle is really different. So Where is your market? Where are you selling? Are you selling into restaurants or into grocery stores, into liquor stores? How's it work? Our business is is split pretty much fifty fifty in in the sense that we We have a direct to consumer where you can go on our website and we ship to, a little over forty states at pretty much any state that's legal to ship to. We, have our license to do that. And then we also have our wholesale business, which is exactly what you were just asking about. So we are in, you know, six hundred Kroger stores across, the United States. We're in twelve different states in the United States and we're and and growing. But we're in, you know, Walmart whole foods in the if you're not familiar with the Kroger, Kroger is a conglomerate of of, grocery stores. I am because that was my grandmother's regory store when I was a little girl. Yep. Of course. And you're oh, hi. You're from Ohio, so you know that's where they're based. So Exactly. Yeah. And then definitely, you know, where we also have a ton of successes in the hotel business. So This is perfect for room service. It's perfect for sort of the grab and go spot, right, as you're checking in in the hotel. And and that actually, we do a really, really strong business in hotels. For sure. I never thought of that as as a market for a single serve wine, but you're absolutely right. The number of times I arrive at a hotel at some odd hour, and the bar is closed or room service is closed, and just really want one glass wine or any wine. You can't get any at whatever weird time it is. Yep. That's a really interesting market. I had never thought of that. What a what a great, target to go for. It's clearly working for you because, you know, the the the overall US wine market the numbers that we're getting nowadays say that it it fell point five percent in twenty twenty one according to Impact Data Bank. But Wanda and Ivy sales went up three hundred and fifty percent production growth over the year in twenty twenty one. How on earth did you manage that? Yeah. No. That's kind. So, so we produced three hundred and fifty percent. Our sales growth was about two hundred and thirty percent, and You know, I just think it it is because we're so different and and, you know, it's just a market that nobody had had tapped into yet. And so, you know, there's there's a lot of folks who are waiting to get married, you know, or their partner has a different palette and, you know, wants that glass of whiskey or beer instead of wine. And this is honestly just an answer to something that maybe a problem they didn't realize they had. But once they, you know, once they saw the solution, they were they were excited about it. And our favorite thing, honestly, this is truly our favorite thing. People don't expect the wine to be that good because the in historically, singles or wines just have not been good. This is true. This is I think this is something you have to fight against. I know my husband doesn't drink. So I am, you know, I'm very on board with a single serving sort of a thing because I am usually drinking by myself. But, yes, I'm always leery. Is this gonna be good quality? What I'd rather just open a bottle of something I want. So we'll we'll get to where you source your wines in a bit because that I think is fascinating too. Yeah. Well, it is it is literally our favorite thing. We, you know, we do obviously virtual meetings with whether it's a distributor or a retail partner, and we love doing live tastings. And the faces are just phenomenal. Or if they haven't ever had it and then in they tried it and now we're having a follow-up meeting, it's the same reaction every single time Oh, wow. This is really good. And and Dana and I get so excited about it because, we take great pride in our choices. So Well, so who do you see as your competitors in the sector? I mean, are you trying to take a swing at traditional, you know, normal sized bottles of wine, or are you aiming, you know, are you sort of fighting back against the modern boxed and canned wines or or both? I mean, where is where are your customers in general? Aside from people like me whose partner don't drink or things like that, where are your main customer bases coming from? I mean, we're excited to say that we're the number one premium and organic single serve wine brand, which is true. You know, I suppose if you if you had to, you know, put a name out there in terms of, you know, our competitor's unusual wines is a is doing something a little different, but you know what's so cool about the wine industry is that it's such a collaborative space. I I just find it so differently. Whereas, like, you look at some, you know, companies say, like, iPhone versus Samsung Android. I mean, you're only gonna buy one phone. Ninety nine percent of people. And so that is a true competition. But just think about when you go to the wine store, you'd probably buy ten different bottles from all different producers. And so we don't really look at the wine industry as, like, if you buy mine, you're not gonna buy theirs, or if you buy theirs, you're not gonna buy mine. Really, people will probably buy both of our, you know, ours. And we're proud of that. And it is is a really cool industry to be a part of in that regard. That's such a good point. That is a very good point. I think, you know, as you say, people do and and probably even a bit more so in the past. Stick to one thing, one brand of car, one brand of phone, that kind of a thing. But it's not really like that with line. That's that's a very, very interesting point. Let's talk about the line of wines that you have because you don't just have one. You you have the line. And I know that you source your wines from family based. And as you said, organic wineries, which I think is a big selling point, especially with younger generations and people who are new to wine. How do you select the wineries that you partner with? Yeah. It's a great question. So we're really, really proud of the fact that we, have found family owned vineyard partners on our own. So we don't use brokers, which, I think, ninety five plus percent of folks who source grapes and juice from other countries use brokers. It's definitely the faster easier way to go, but we have genuine relationships with with our family vin own vineyards. And How many how many vineyards have you partnered with? How many wines have you got? Let's well, we currently have I mean, we we've produced seven different varietals over time. We currently have five that are active in our portfolio. And let's see. Four, five of them are from different countries around the world. So so how do you find them without a broker? Who's is somebody and and I would like to job, is somebody sent out dispatched to hunt down a good winery? This thing called Google. The romance is gone. Yeah. I mean, you do you do you start there and you just start exploring and reaching out in in our process is that we, you know, we'll reach out, find out, you know, do they sell wine in bulk in general? And, and then we have them send us samples. I can tell you I have I I mean, sampled dozens and dozens and dozens of wine, and we, you know, we're very picky. So of that, maybe we'd select, you know, two to five percent of what we actually try. So it's a lot of it's a lot of trial and error. And then Well, it's it's so interesting. I mean, the the sort of process step by step, so you you find whiners you're interested in. They send you some samples and you make a choice. And then what happens? You said they they ship in bulk. So what happens? The wine comes to you from wherever they are. Yeah. Exactly. So, what we typically do is, you know, we will place a purchase order, and you kinda have to give a down payment, which is pretty hefty to secure that. And it depends. Sometimes, you know, the wine is ready, and sometimes it's not quite ready. And so, you know, or we might not be ready for, you know, to bottle it. So we'll maybe we'll ship it right away, but, sometimes we'll wait until the optimal time. And then we, you know, we utilize the number one international wine transportation company, and they'll put them in, you know, giant giant tanks essentially and ship them by water. And then we receive them at our, usually the Oakland port, but it goes and then it goes to our, production partner in Napa, California. That's where we ultimately bottle our wines. And, and then, and then they go into the warehouses in in Napa. We have two different ones, one for wholesale, one for our direct to consumer business, and then ultimately We we get them onto shelves or into people's hands. Italian wine podcast. If you think you love wine as much as we do, then give us a like and a follow anywhere you get your pods. Well, it's it's fascinating. I I I know that it sounds sort of like simple logistics, but I'm sure there are many people who haven't really thought through. How does this actually happen? So, I I wanna talk more about the company too and I know that Wanda and Ivy is a certified woman and disability owned business. What does that mean? I mean, that that doesn't really happen outside of the US. What does that mean to be certified this way? How does it impact your business. And what's the driving philosophy that went behind getting this kind of a very particular certification? It it is a very arduous process. I will say. But there are a couple different, you know, entities out there that will certify and To be certified, women owned, certified disability on, fifty one percent of the company has to be owned, you know, by a woman or by someone who has a disability. Dana has both. And she, so so It is it's interesting. They come they come to wherever you work. They I mean, they audit the company, to great length because unfortunately, people who are in industries that say get government contracts or you know, things state contracts, they will oftentimes have mandates that, you know, you have to use a certain number of minority owned businesses. And so some people will, you know, put someone's name on it that, you know, Is it really running the business? They're the ones who are really running the business, so they've gotten really good, which I appreciate at auditing companies to make sure that, yes, Dana is, you know, the one who is actually running the business and owns it fifty one percent over fifty one percent. And, you know, it's it's it's an honor to be a female owned company, in my opinion. It's so rare. And Dana has a condition called syndactyly, which is a deformation of her hands. And that's what qualifies for the disability owned. It's it's just fascinating. As I said, this sort of certification on these sorts of points of, you know, who's running the business and and what gender they are and and what other challenges they're facing doesn't really happen outside of the states. And I I think it's so important to make a point of that. It's it's quite clear, you know, in all of your information and and all of your blurbs and things that this is something that's really meaningful to your company. How how is the, you know, sort of in your company, the employees? What's the ratio of men to women? Do you know? We are we are a strong group of females. We have, we have currently one employee who's a man, and the rest of them are our females. We have one our winemaker is a male, and he's a he's a contractor, not an employee, but, you know, we've just been really fortunate. I will say that when we were currently hiring three different positions right now, and we didn't we certainly didn't say like, oh, we want it to be female male, you know, this ethnicity, that ethnicity. We just said, let's find the best candidate. And we have just been really fortunate. We have found some incredible females to join our team, and it's it's just been fun. My his my history with companies, I've pretty much only worked with males. And this is a unique experience that I just absolutely treasure. I'm so excited by that. It's it's great to know that that this is really, you know, not something that was just kind of token movement will hire some women. I I I love that this is really making some waves, and and it is exciting. As you said, it sounds it sounds attractive. It sounds appealing to work in a company filled with smart driven women, I hope that you are inspiring a lot of other people out there. You know, we we all know that this is a huge problem in the wine sector globally. You know, misogyny is something that we all are working to correct in the wine sector. In the US, in particular, you know, less than three percent of funding goes to women led businesses. I shudder to think what the percentage is in Italy. You know, even though we know from from hard factual data that people who invest in women run businesses typically see double the return on their investment compared to companies led by men. You know, they there's this old belief that female led companies don't make it to raising, you know, large amounts of money, but Wanda and Ivy has raised multiple rounds of million dollar funding How are you achieving this? It's incredibly challenging. The the arena winery is competitive. The wine sector is not easy globally and logistically after COVID. You know, there have been all kinds of problems. How are you achieving this huge financial success? I I love this. This is probably my favorite topic to talk about, and I appreciate your knowledge around it because honestly going going into it, I did not realize. And so the the way that I actually came upon Wanda and Ivy was in two thousand nineteen. I was a part of, a group of ladies, six of us who were passionate about supporting female owned businesses because of those statistics. Two point three percent of funding goes to female owned companies. And even the ones that get them, they tip on average get about eight hundred thousand dollars as opposed to a male who on average raises one point two. Despite the fact that you just, as you just said, they know, their success is there. So I was a part of this group. I love this story. It's my favorite. So bear with me. We had a pitch day, and, it was in fall of twenty nineteen. And we saw eight companies that day and in walks Dana in high heels on a on a day that it was blizzarding in Denver, by the way. And all of a sudden, I look at her and I said, this woman is pregnant. Oh, she's really pregnant. And, she was eight or nine months pregnant in heels in a blizzard and walks in and just knocks the pitch out of the park. It was just a twenty minute pitch. We all fell in love with her, so we did a deep dive diligence with her. And here's why I think that Dana has been so successful. We spent a whole day with her, and she is absolutely incredible. And she's this very unique individual where she's incredibly intelligent, so, so, so thoughtful, kind, and just I mean, to the point where and I'd I'd maybe other companies do this in all of my experience, and I've done diligence on thousands of companies I've never seen this, you know, we said, well, what happens if something happens to you? Which, you know, who's gonna run the company? That's always a question in your due diligence. And she said, oh, I took out a life insurance policy on myself so that if something happens to me, all of my investors will be paid back. Hundred percent. Like, who thinks of that? And so her risk mitigation is just second to none. So fast forward, myself and two other in our group decided that we would all invest independently. Into into Wanda and Ivy, and it was right at at as COVID, you know, was starting. And I just we we all just wanted to help different companies in whatever way we could in this challenging time, we didn't wanna see female owned companies, you know, go out of business. And so I offered to just help Dana. You know, I used to own and run a beverage company, and I had my level two so I'm only gay certification just for fun. And we started working together and had so much fun in such a short period of time that, we decided to make it official that I would formally join the company. And then since then, we have raised two additional rounds of funding, and I can take zero credit. Dana is just she does pretty much all of the fundraising she does. And then I, you know, I'll come in obviously is, you know, support. And I think, you know, a lot of it is our growth. People are supportive of that. And, again, just all of the sort of the things that we've put in place to kind of secure our success. Well, numbers don't lie. Yeah. Numbers don't lie. I think that's, I mean, you can have the best packaging and the prettiest face and all of those things, but numbers don't lie. So that's that it's such a good it's it's such a good tale of, you know, believing in what you're doing and making it fun and, you know, bringing in a bunch of, as I said, talented women. I mean, Wonder and Ivy is also paying it back. And this is something I really love about your company. You donate one percent of your sales to charitable organizations who are feeding people who can't feed themselves. So I'm just wondering what the inspiration for this charitable endeavor was. I I'm sure I can guess, but it's nice to see a corporation that's so successful paying it back. What what inspired you guys to do You know, it just it truly does just speak to the heart of who we are. Obviously, who Dana was because she's the one who started it, and she was donating before, you know, I I joined. And it's important to note that we commit that regardless of profit. So if we lose ten million dollars, we're still going to give a percentage of our sales. So it's so important for us to give back you know, in and, again, it just speaks to the heart of of who we are and who Dana is. I like the holistic idea of it too. I I really I think this is something it's as a business model, it is respectable and and sustainable. And I think really appeals to, you know, a corporation that's not just out to make money, but that's out to do some good in the world. There's not that much of that going on right now, so it's good to see that. There's another really interesting thing that you're doing called Wisdom Wednesday. And I really wanna hear more about this. I know my my listeners will wanna hear too. Tell me what's going on with Wisdom Wednesday. Yeah. So that is something that I thought about when we first you know, when I first joined the company, just trying to, you know, just think of different marketing ideas that that we could do with little to no money. And so we, we I said, well, what if we, you know, did a a weekly segment that we post on our social media channels, and we just try to be try to sort of educate, you know, people who are who love wine, but maybe don't know anything. And and let's be relatable. You know, let's not come at it. There's a there are plenty of resources out there, but honestly, they're they're so sophisticated that I don't know that the average viewer or reader fully, you know, embraces what they're talking about. So we said let's be relatable. They can be really off putting too. They can they can really make people feel excluded. Exactly. Yeah. It's it's kind of a little bit of a snobby, you know, feel to it. And so we said, let's go in and and, hey, what when we push record on the camera, let's never push stop. If we mess up, let's just own it, laugh it off, and keep going. Because we're, you know, we're not masters. We're just we're just trying to help, you know, let everybody know that fun facts and tips and easier ways to order wine and what to look for and just just give some fun information. And so we, you know, we film those probably like you do with your podcast. You you film, you know, eight or so episodes at a time, and and then we release them over the next month or two. I think it's great. I love it. Again, it's another way of outreaching into, you know, a community of people who who might buy your product and might not, but you're still giving them extra content and and, you know, things that they can take away with, things that they learn that might inspire them to get interested in wine and and not feel shoved out the door. I I like that outreach aspect of it. It's almost as good as the charitable donations, very similar in what well, Before I let you go, I've gotta ask you two questions. First of all, what's your favorite Italian wine? And secondly, where would you like to see the Wanda and Ivy portfolio grow? What kinds of wines would you like to bring in the next couple of years Oh, such a great question. So my favorite I mean, I'm, you know, Kianti SanJave essay. I I love I love that grape. I mean, there's some you know, it's it's one of those days, like, what am I eating? Right? So everybody knows if you watch our wine with them Wednesdays, I'm the one who comes in with with food and wine pairings. So, you know, there's a great barolo depending on what I'm eating. But I also come on. Who doesn't love to open up a Persecco and cheers to something great in life? So I'd say both of those are our favorites on my list for sure. And where do we wanna see us grow in terms of varietals. Well, we are constantly doing r and d. Our our bottle is is very challenging in terms of, you know, bottling. And so we have we definitely have some r and d going on for some exciting hopefully new innovations in our space, in term, and that includes varietals. And I also, you know, we get a lot of requests for a pinot noir. So that's something that we look at. Tasted in abundance of Malbec. I just haven't found one that I, that we love and want to bottle. But those two are probably the highest on the list and Additionally, a semi sweet. People always say, do you have any sweet wine? And I will never probably I don't say never say never, but we would probably never bottle a, like, a muscato as sweet as that, but maybe a lovely riesling. We'll see. I it's it's all about finding the right partners. Exciting. Exciting. Well, I'm gonna point you straight at Sicily and and take a look at some of the things that are going on down there. You've got Norello Moskalazio on at Aetna is is doing very similar things to to pinot noir, as well as a lot of other interesting native grapes in Sicily. I'm gonna point you straight there. Take a look. Take a look. I I love it. This is how we find our wines. We, you know, it's just word-of-mouth. And next thing you know, you have something beautiful in a bottle. Exactly. Well, Amanda, I'm really grateful that you came on today. It's so encouraging and inspiring to hear about a, female led company that's being super successful and doing something that's so new and and modern and, you know, has the potential to go places that old and traditional wines couldn't go and and engage a whole new audience of of young people or people new to wine. I wish you all the most success, and I'm really glad you came on today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. For having me. We hope you enjoy today's episode brought to you by the wine to wine business forum twenty twenty two. This year, we'll mark the ninth edition of the forum to be held on November seventh and eighth twenty twenty two in verona Italy. 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