Collaborate with influencers
Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2025 6:32 am
We have used email marketing for e-commerce and have gathered valuable lessons that every entrepreneur and marketer will find useful. Here is our story.
In 2011, a few friends and I had a simple idea. We wanted to help people drink great wines at affordable prices.
We were a small group of friends trying to build a career while living in California. We had small children, new mortgages, and the expenses of trying to make it in California. At the end of the day, there wasn't much money left over to crack open a few good bottles of wine each month.
So, we decided to start a site to help people drink great wines at an affordable price. But we didn't just want to make a profit.
Besides making money, we also wanted to do some good in employment data the process. So, we wanted this business to have a cause. We thought, “wouldn’t it be great if we could make a difference and offer wine at an affordable price?!?” That’s when we came up with the idea of donating clean drinking water for every bottle of wine sold.
At the time, there were some really cool companies doing something similar in other industries. For example, Tom's shoes donated a pair of shoes for every pair of shoes sold. It was an inspiration to us, so we decided to weave our cause into it as we got the business off the ground.
So, we partnered with Charity Water and found a way to donate clean drinking water for every bottle of wine sold. We were excited about our potential to make a difference and help people drink better wine.
We had our idea and off we went.
The next thing we needed was a name. In hindsight, we probably could have come up with a better name, but we called it CellarThief.
You see, a Thief is a device used by a winemaker to sample wine from a barrel during the winemaking process. We thought that was a great play on words because we were also trying to offer great wines at a “killer” price.
A wine barrel thief
With a name, we then needed to find a logo. So, we pulled from 99 Designs, asked our friends to vote on the logos we received, and chose one.
In 2011, a few friends and I had a simple idea. We wanted to help people drink great wines at affordable prices.
We were a small group of friends trying to build a career while living in California. We had small children, new mortgages, and the expenses of trying to make it in California. At the end of the day, there wasn't much money left over to crack open a few good bottles of wine each month.
So, we decided to start a site to help people drink great wines at an affordable price. But we didn't just want to make a profit.
Besides making money, we also wanted to do some good in employment data the process. So, we wanted this business to have a cause. We thought, “wouldn’t it be great if we could make a difference and offer wine at an affordable price?!?” That’s when we came up with the idea of donating clean drinking water for every bottle of wine sold.
At the time, there were some really cool companies doing something similar in other industries. For example, Tom's shoes donated a pair of shoes for every pair of shoes sold. It was an inspiration to us, so we decided to weave our cause into it as we got the business off the ground.
So, we partnered with Charity Water and found a way to donate clean drinking water for every bottle of wine sold. We were excited about our potential to make a difference and help people drink better wine.
We had our idea and off we went.
The next thing we needed was a name. In hindsight, we probably could have come up with a better name, but we called it CellarThief.
You see, a Thief is a device used by a winemaker to sample wine from a barrel during the winemaking process. We thought that was a great play on words because we were also trying to offer great wines at a “killer” price.
A wine barrel thief
With a name, we then needed to find a logo. So, we pulled from 99 Designs, asked our friends to vote on the logos we received, and chose one.