Drink Different – Wine Clubs Are Not Just Nice to Have
| Wine Clubs Are Not Just Nice to Have The most important shift in our thinking was to understand wine clubs as a cash-flow strategy, not just a loyalty perk. Trade offers 60–90-day payment terms and takes a third of your margin. A wine club member pays upfront at a better price and automatically comes back. That’s not a comparison, it’s a different business model entirely. We run two models. The traditional club, where we curate the box, and they receive it, commitment in exchange for convenience. And a modern subscription model, where they build the box, set the rhythm, and control in exchange for loyalty. Different customers. Different psychology. Same outcome: they keep coming back. For the people who don’t want a subscription? Commerce7’s loyalty programme rewards their behaviour anyway. Every purchase earns. Every earn pulls them back. Between clubs and loyalty, almost no one slips through the net. The Tasting Room Is the Funnel Every person who walks through our cellar door is a potential long-term customer. Most leave without a trace — and for years, we let that happen. Now, the tasting room visit is the start of a relationship, not just a transaction. We capture emails at the point of sale. We tag what they bought, where they’re from, and how they found us. Klaviyo picks up from there with segmented follow-up sequences and, eventually, a club invitation. The cellar door is where the relationship starts. Commerce7 is where we remember it. Klaviyo is where we continue it. We Ran a Campaign That Didn’t Sell. We Stopped. That’s Fine. Good idea. Good wine. Good email. Didn’t sell. The data told us quickly. So we stopped and moved on. This is actually the part I most want wine producers to hear: data doesn’t give you the right answers, it stops you repeating the wrong ones. A campaign that fails fast is better than one you keep running out of hope. What DTC Actually Requires In the early years, DTC feels like all input and no return. Email cadence. Club runs. Data reviews. Follow-ups on top of actually making the wine. Then something shifts. Club members compound. Repeat buyers multiply. Your best customers start bringing their friends. The margin difference between DTC and trade isn’t just a number on a spreadsheet. It’s a fundamentally different business model. We’re not fully there yet. But we can see it from here. What We Want You to Feel We want every customer to feel like these guys are always thinking. Always improving. Always trying to make buying wine better. Not perfect, but never standing still. That’s the real product. Not just the bottle. The relationship, the experience, the consistency of showing up. Drink Different. Live Loudly. Pour Generously. Kevin Swart Co-founder and Chief Idiot at Black Elephant Vintners |