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Inside the $300 Billion Wine Industry_ How Donae Burston Launched a Black-Owned Wine Company-MP3 · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It's going to be a very spirited conversation.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: I want to build my own legacy in the wine
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: and spirits industry.
• 0:06
  Speaker 3: How cost intensive was this journey?
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Bank account, savings, credit card, all of it was maxed out.
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: How'd you get American Airlines to convince them to say, look,
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: we need to have this inside of the arena?
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, Miami's a rosé culture, so it didn't take
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: a lot.
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: I got to talk about it.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: When I was there, we were arch enemies. It was
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: fun to go back and excuse my french shit on.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: People what are the marketing goals by territory a.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Lot of balancing the nightclub world and then catering to
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: the super wealthy.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: Allow equity stakeholders to come in or we're gonna sell
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: the whole.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Thing i never set my goals on being the number
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: one black owned rose brand in the world no i'm
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: gonna be the number one rose brand.
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: In the world welcome back byl this is uh It's
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: going to be a very spirited conversation.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: All pun intended. Yeah. Like what you did there. Yes, yes.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: That's clever.
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: It might be the first time we ever spoke to
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: somebody at their own wine company.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Is it?
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: We spoke to a few people in the spirits industry,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: but not wine.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: No, not at this level.
• 1:02
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, when you're talking about the fastest growing, yeah,
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: it's the first.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: So, Don A.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Burstyn. Yeah.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, right?
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Be more stand-up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: So, you guys met, right?
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: So actually, Nicole, shout out to Nicole Russell? No, no,
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Nicole Spence at Black Effect. She was like, hey, Troy,
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: there's this guy you have to meet. He has an
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: amazing story, amazing. She's saying it's like in spring. I'm like, Nicole,
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: you know, we got this big event that we're doing.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: So we're kind of like on a freeze right now
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: for the interviews. But as soon as we're done with that,
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: let's make it happen. And so she just kept telling me,
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: I'm like, hey, you got anybody? You know, just when
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: we're done, yeah, I got this guy. Yeah, you got
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: to meet him. You got to meet him. He's from Baltimore.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: He's a Clark grad. You got to meet him. He's crazy.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, let's do it. And so we
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: finally got it on the calendar. So I'm happy that
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: you're here. I'm happy that the spirits are here as well. Yeah, man.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: I'm excited to be here. It's an impressive story. And
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: he came prepared with the right kicks.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: So let's get into this. So you have your own
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: wine company.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: This is the wine right here, I'm assuming.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Lafayette Wine Company. That's the rosé and the blanc.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: A rosé and a white wine, right?
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Okay. So let's rewind the story a little bit.
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: Where did your passion for wine come into play and
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: how did you go about actually becoming an entrepreneur in
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: this space?
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: So I worked in the wine and spirits industry since 2001.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Started back with Cavasier during the past Cavasier days at D-Rush,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: which was Russell Simmons agency so we did all the
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: street promotions in Atlanta from there moved over to more
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Hennessy at the time was just Moet and Hennessy as
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: the ambassador in Atlanta and I was doing the time
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: when the clubs in the city was on fire when
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: the music industry was hot down there.
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: Right so it was like the MFD oh yeah exactly
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: okay so it was like the closest thing to being
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: in the music industry without being in it because listen
• 2:56
  Speaker 5: we've been throwing all the parties the liquor companies were
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: sponsoring all the parties And I just fell in love
• 3:00
  Speaker 5: with that lifestyle.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: It was business, but it was still a lot of fun.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: So I did that, then moved to Miami with them.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: And once I got to Miami is when the champagne
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: world took over. So it was like, I worked on Clicquot,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: I worked on Moet, I worked on Dom Perignon. I
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: was like, oh, this is the move. This is my lane.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Left there and then did a stint at Ace of
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Spades for three years.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Might've heard of it.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, might've heard of that. Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: United States, and Duty Free. And I was just like, yo,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: I could just do this. Working over there with that
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: guy and that team, it was so entrepreneurial and it
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: was so breaking the convention of the wine and spirits
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: industry that it motivated me to want to do my
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: own thing. And then just being in a chance encounter
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: in the south of France and meeting the owner of
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: a winery and talking shop with them and say, yo,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: we should do something.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: And that was the genesis of it all. Yeah. That
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: was like a fast forward version. Yeah. Cause I was like, this,
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: this place in South of France, he has central pay. Oh,
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: this guy. Yeah. Sean Carter.
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, how, how did you even get, I mean,
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: obviously you said in early 2001, you start and you're
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: working with, uh, Russell Simmons and his brand, but, How
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: did you get to, because it's not even LVMH at
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: the time, right?
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: No, it was an agency for Moa Hennessey called US Concept.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: So who introduced you to them? How'd you get on
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: board with them?
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mean, I literally, the job with Russell Simmons,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: it sounds glamorous, at D-Rush was literally me handing out
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: drink tickets in the club. Like I was like the
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: promotional guy, something. And then that grew into me managing
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: the promotional models underneath me. And I happened to be
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: working for, I was doing like, six jobs at that time.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: I was like working an internship at Hitco Music Publishing,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: working with a local events company called Steps. So I
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: was just in the mix trying to figure out how.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: I was going to get on.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: And I met a young lady who was the regional
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: marketing person for Hennessy Cognac. And she was like, I
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: like you, you know, I want to give you an opportunity.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: And that's how that job came about.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: So like what happens when you're in that space, the
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: club knows what type of night is going to be. Yep. Right.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: They'll say like, hey, we got Earn Your Leisure coming. Yep.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: we're going to need this many cases. Dollars. Yeah. Right.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: So like you're doing that. How often is this like
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: three nights of the week? Like, is this full-time what
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: you're doing? Yeah.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: At that point it was full-time in the clubs in
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Atlanta at that time, every night of the week, it
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: was something to do.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Right. That was for Mondays. It was Tuesday.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: So the only night we probably really had off was
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: like a Wednesday or say, so it was, it was
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: six days a week in the streets at the clubs.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: Um, but it was a rotation.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: It was the same ones every week. It was all
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: about repetition, uh, to get in front of people. But yeah,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: it was intense.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Is it commission based? No, it was a salary. Okay. Salary. Yeah,
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: it was a salary. Okay. Yeah.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: So, all right.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: So, what sparked you to go from there to actually saying,
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: I'm going to get up and running and have my
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: own brand?
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Listen, we all have had jobs where you felt like
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: you could do things better, right? So, that inspiration from...
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: being in a place that was super entrepreneurial, but it
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: still wasn't mine, right? And you get reminded of that
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: every now and then, no matter how hard you work.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: So I was like, you know, I want to do
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: my own thing. I want to build my own legacy
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: in the wine and spirits industry. And this opportunity was that.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: So what was the first step that you did to
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: start the company?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I had to look at what the business
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: proposition was, right? So knowing I had worked on Moet
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: and Moet Nectar Rosé was the number one selling rosé
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: champagne in the world. And that consumer was 98% black
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: and Hispanic. And then knowing that the leading rosé still
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: wine brand at the time was Whisperin' Angel, and there
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: were no real contingency of black consumers drinking that, the
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: correlation was like, listen, if I can take 10% of
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: the sparkling rosé consumer and 10% of the still rosé
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: consumer and bring them together, then I have a business proposition.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: So rosé.
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: 98% of rosé wine drinkers are black?
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Moet Nectar and Pure Rosé. The one in the clear bottle.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: The Moet Rosé.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: But the Moet Rosé, my favorite.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: I was going to say, I mean, we drink it.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: But that's champagne, though.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: That's champagne, right.
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: So when I think of rosé, I think of champagne.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: This is wine.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: This is wine.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: So rosé in general is just a varietal, right? It
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: just means, you know, it's made from rare wine grapes,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: whether it be still or sparkling. It's a different process
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: of making it. that's sugar dough size, that's aging in
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: barrels and stuff for the sparkling. And then for the still,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: it's pretty much just made without any oxidation to.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Give you the bubbles.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: So only black people drink rosé?
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, listen, it's the... Yeah. Why is that?
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Because it's red?
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: No, it was the marketing. I mean, that was... They
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: marketed it in the club.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: In the club, yeah.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: The red, I'm going to be honest with you, the
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: red was a great... It comes red?
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it comes red. The big thing about it was
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: red in a clear bottle. So before that, most Rosés
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: were in a darker bottle.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: It lights up. And they put the light underneath it.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: You could see it. It was a show. Well, you
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: couldn't even see what's in the bottle. Exactly.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: So what's the market share?
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: How much money does that represent?
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: You could say 100% is done by black people, let's
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: just say, if it's 98%.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: How much money does Moet Rosé make?
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: I would probably say it's the third biggest... value generator
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: inside of Moet Hennessy USA. Because it's really a US-based
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: brand as well.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: It would be like Hennessy is number one.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Hennessy number one. Probably a tie between, and this is
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: when I was there, probably a tie between Moet and Clicquot.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: And then Moet Imperial, the regular sparkling, and then that
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: would be number three.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: Not that white stock. Not that white stuff. Not that
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: white stuff. It's a huge, huge business proposition.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: And that was from a nightclub. That's just pretty much
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: from a nightclub.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was a pretty, it was, well, in
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: the beginning, it was nightclub culture.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: So it was primarily sold only in nightclubs, but now
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: retail as well.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: But yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, retail, I'm glad you
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: said that. Because, you know, I was reading 2011, perfect
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: time to be in Miami. Oh, yeah. LeBron has now
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: said he's coming. Crazy. And so how did you get,
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: How did you get the arena? So it was American Airlines.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: I know it's like FTX now. Yes. How did you
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: get American Airlines convince them to say, look, we need
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: to have this inside of the arena? Because that wasn't
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: something that you saw anywhere. No, it wasn't.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: And the first conversation was really about the championship celebration.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: So we was already in like. Oh, we went in.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Let's prepare.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: And there was a rule that apparently Pat didn't let
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: anybody talk about if they won. So that conversation quickly
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: changed until let's talk about what we can do to
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: bring like more of a social aspect to the basketball games.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Because in Miami during that time, you went to the
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: games because like that was the club. Like, did you
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: even watch the game? No, I was inside Hyde. So,
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: you know, we wanted to see what could we do
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: to promote at that time Moet and the white bottle
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Moet Ice to kind of all tie it in. So
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: we convinced them that we should do sell the champagne
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: at the bars first.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: And they were like, all right, this is cool. This
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: is going well. We like this.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: They liked the vibe. Then we did some branded cups.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: And the next thing you know, we had our own
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: pop-up bar in the concourse and it was outselling every
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: other like bar in the arena. So, you know, then
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: we just decided let's make this an official partnership. And
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: once they won that year, it was game over.
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: So as far as the wine, where do you get
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: like the grape? So, all right, the process of making
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: wine is that there's grapes and they crush the grapes, right?
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: And then they have to let it sit for a
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: long time?
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: Um... from three to four months.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: They age it?
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Macerating, letting it all come together in gel. Not so
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: much age. Aging is usually a year, two-year process. We
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: don't do that, so it's a little quicker than that.
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: All right. You have your own farm or you just
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: outsource it to like... So we have a winery partner.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: So there's a vineyard in the south of France in
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Saint-Tropez that we work with exclusively.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: They produce their own label, primarily in France. And then
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: we work with them to get a style of wine
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: that we wanted full effect.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: So they make like gallons of wine.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: And then they ship it to you.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Is this proprietary to you, this taste? Well, everything in
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: wine making typically is blending process, right? And it changes
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: every year because some years harvest is better than others.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: It's a very volatile industry. Um, so you try to
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: get a style of wine and then you try to
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: make that style every year, but it's never going to
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: be exactly the same. It's impossible unless you're making it
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: in a factory.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: So what, what makes wine?
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: So like one of the, like, I'm not a wine connoisseur,
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: but like LeBron, they have like wine cellars and it's
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: like some bottles worth like a $ 50, 000. Like what makes
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: wine high class? What makes some wine better than other wines? Like,
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: how do you gauge that?
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Uh, so France is heavily regulated in how they classify
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: their vineyards and winery and terroir. So when you go
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: to like Burgundy and Bordeaux, those are like premium, some
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: of them are premium wineries, uh, small production, like how
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: long do they age?
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: How do they taste after they age?
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: So all of that sort of thing adds into what
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: puts the value to wine and scarcity.
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's a commodity.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: So if you have a great vintage and they only
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: produced a thousand bottles, 10 years from now, those thousand
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: bottles can be worth $ 10, 000 a bottle per se.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: Oh, Central pay comes up in a story. Yeah. Um,
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: did you know that going in or is this like,
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: as you're traveling, doing the other brands, you're starting to see,
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: and you're learning from where they're going. So how did,
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: how did central pay come into the mix?
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Puff had that line and I need a girl, right?
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Ever been to central pay. So I literally took that
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: as the reason to go there for my birthday.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: Right. Like never been, I'm going.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: But when you go and doing that era, that's when
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Puff and all of them were there every summer. So
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: the energy again was crazy. It was just like, yo,
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: this is the best place on earth. So whenever I
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: had the chance to get back to France or Paris
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: for work, I would beeline my way back down the
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: South and it just became like my place. So I
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: fell in love with the place and a part of
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: that lifestyle in that place is rosé wine.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: So, all right.
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: So you get the contract to get the wine from
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: France and then you put it in your bottles.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Yep. No, it's all bottled. Everything's bottled.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: They label it for you and all that?
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: Everything.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: All right. So where are you selling it? In stores or?
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, right now we're up to about a
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: thousand points of distribution. Like when you first started? When
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: I first started, literally four hotels in Miami.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: You just hand to hand? Yeah, I just went to.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Everybody I had relationships with from, you know, years in
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: the industry and say, yo, I got this rosé. And,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: you know, the good ones were like, all right, we
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: like you. We're going to give it a shot. It
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: don't sell us on you, but we'll give it a shot.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Did you tell them it was yours?
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: So how'd you get it to sell? I mean, Miami's
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: a rosé culture, so it didn't take a lot, right?
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: It was just like you're in... You took a chance
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: with it?
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're in a W hotel. And just go.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, one thing we did do that other people
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: weren't doing is because we were produced in San Tropez,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: is we put that, you know, how they list wine,
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: it would say La Fette Rosé, San Tropez. So most
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: people that were in and out of the W and
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: the Satay hotels in Miami had been to San Tropez.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: So that was something that automatically their eyes were drawn to.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: It resonated with them.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: It resonated with them, absolutely. A taste of the culture. Yeah.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: So La Fette... Nice name. I know what it means.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: Explain why you landed on that. Yeah.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: So Lafayette du Rosé, the full formal name, means the
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: rosé party. And so for us, the tagline is a
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: party and everyone's invited because typically in wine in general
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: has been very exclusive and not inclusive.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: So we wanted to create a brand that was definitely inclusive.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: bringing everyone into it, right? Black, white, Chinese, gay, straight, whatever,
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: it didn't matter. It was just like, yo, we like rosé.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: So it's more of a lifestyle play than it is
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: a wine play. Like we could have gone with the typical,
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: you know, blah, blah, blah, Chateau Bernoulli, you know, whatever.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Like that didn't resonate with any of us. We wanted
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: a name that would definitely pop and then we could,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: you know, bring to life.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So this is the entrepreneurial journey, right? Yeah. And
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: one of the things that people, you hear in their
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: stories is that, you know, I spent my last to
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: get this off the ground. Yeah. What was that like
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: for you? How cost intensive was this journey from obviously
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: being in San Tropez to having tastings to having finally
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: figured out the bottling? And I guess at the beginning,
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: the marketing of it. I mean, that's one of your strongholds.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: How cash intensive was it for you? Everything.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: So to that point, I took my last. I emptied
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: out 401ks. I dipped into pension funds, bank accounts, savings,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: credit cards. All of it was maxed out to make
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: this dream happen. Because you have to pay for it.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: regardless if it's sold or not. Like you basically put
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: your order in for wine now and you'll get it
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: in March. So it wasn't something I could like pick
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: up and decide like next month, like I need to
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: get 5,000 bottles.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: They were like, no, you want 5,000. You need to
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: pay for all of it now.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: So you say you're in a thousand stores now?
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: Thousand stores now.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: So how'd you get into stores? How would you, how'd
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: you scale that?
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, listen, the pandemic was a blessing for us
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: as a brand, because that's the point that everybody slowed
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: down and they started to watch and, you know, racial
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: injustice movements and George Floyd and everyone started wanting to
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: support Black brands. And at that moment, we just took off.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: The brand took off and we put, you know, the
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: pedal to the metal and kept going. So that got
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: the attention of the retailers and, you know, these big
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: corporations that wanted to support Black-owned and minority-owned brands. And
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: that gave us the foot in the door. A lot
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: of that has started to go away, but we were
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: able to maintain our sales and volume to stay there
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: when these initiatives start to, you know, dwindle down a
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: little bit.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: What are some of the costs associated with obviously creating
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: a luxury line of wine, right? Like obviously you said
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: if I want 5,000 bottles, I got to pay for that.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: But those 5,000 bottles have to be stored somewhere, right?
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: So they have to be transported. So like what are
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: some of those costs that most people don't even think
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: of that are associated with this business?
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, again, the goods, the
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: cost of goods sold, the bottle, the glass, the cork,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: the label, the paper.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: The wine itself.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Then there's getting it from France on a container to
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: the United States. Then there's the custom import fees, duty
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: taxes you got to pay once it lands. Then there's
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: the storage at whatever warehouse you select. Then if you
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: don't have a big distributor, because it's a three-tier system,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: which means we basically can't sell direct to consumers. We
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: have to sell to a distributor. That distributor then sells
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: to a retailer. That retailer then sells to the consumer.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: And everybody takes that cut along the way. you got
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: to figure out how to then convince them to buy it.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: But if they not buying the product, you're paying those
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: storage fees along the way. And some of them may
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: say you pay for trucking or shipping to get it
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: to us. So then that's another cost on top of it.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: So that, I mean, that's a lot of people taking money.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So that's why the, the, the bottles cost so much. Yeah.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, listen, everybody wants typically 25 to 30%
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: minimum along the way.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: Well, profit margin, profit margin.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Um, So like how much would it cost to start
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: an operation like this?
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: Like, Ooh, the right way.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, when we officially launched in 2019, it was
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: a million dollars in inventory alone.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: Um, and that was without the market.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: And that's not marketing.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: That was just the inventory and getting it here and
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: all that stuff. I would probably say effectively the right
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: way of a million and a half, 2 million. And
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: that's playing small. What about marketing? So how, what kind
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: of marketing do you do?
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: Now we're doing all digital.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Um, we're starting to come out of that now to
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: experience when the events are coming back, but primarily during
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: the pandemic, it was, it was digital ads. It was
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: a lot of influence of marketing. Everyone was at home.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: So we could just send bottles of people and they
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: would post. But for us, we try to immerse people in,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: in the lifestyle of what we think central pay is
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: and what we want people to feel when they, they
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: experienced the product. So we take cues from, from spirit brands.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: We think they do it best in terms of like
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: how they activate. We don't want to operate like a
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: wine brand. So wine dinners are cool, but like, that's no,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: That's not a lot of fun. It's fun to some people,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: but we want to immerse you in it. So it's
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: going to be parties. It's going to be festivals. It's
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: going to be F1. It's going to be all those
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: things that are really a part of the dope things
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: that are happening in the culture.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: We want Lafayette to be there.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: What kind of influences did you have in your influencer marketing?
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, initially it was whoever. Whoever had a large following,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: to be honest with you. But it was also people
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: that were posting wine or champagne brands. And then we
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: got lucky with people like Mello. He put us on
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: his show. During the pandemic.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: He has a podcast?
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: He had a YouTube series called What's in Your Glass.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, where he like interviews people to drink wine?
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: He put you on or he put your product in?
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: He put us on. He put me on. So he
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: and I talked. He's from Baltimore.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: So we got connected through his manager.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: We got put on through that. And then Michael Strahan
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: talked about it. A friend of a friend got him
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: the product. D-Nice held up a bottle during his Instagram Live.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: So it was a lot of good things. Like it
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: just started happening in a good way. So we had
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: people reaching out, and then we were reaching out to
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: people as well.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: I got to talk about it. Ace of Spades, you're there. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: A couple of things. First of all, you're the regional director. Yep.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: So I want to know what that role encompasses. But also, obviously,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: we saw that LVMH, a company that you know, has
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: now 50% stake of Ace of Spades. Now, the second
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: part is, were you there at that point, or did
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: you help? I guess, kind of facilitate the relationship with
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: two to two brands?
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, when I was there, we were arch enemies.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: So when I was at Dom Preon, Ace was an enemy.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: And when I was at Ace, Dom Preon was an enemy.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: So there was no playing in the sandbox whatsoever. But
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: what we did see, what I saw once I got
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: to Ace is that the young consumer had no affinity
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: for Dom Preon the way they did.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: For Ace of Spades.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: So if you're LVMH, you have great product in Dom Preon,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: that's your technical vape, but your consumer is aging out, right?
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: And Ace was grabbing that young, rich consumer around the world,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: like India, Asia. Dubai, like they were going to Ace
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: in the club where their parents might've been drinking Dom Perignon.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: So I think that's, if I had to make a hypothesis,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: that's what LVMH saw, the future. It wasn't right now.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: It's like, okay, these young guys aren't picking Dom Perignon,
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: they're picking Ace. But the experience was great. Like I said,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: it was super entrepreneurial. Like Dez that ran the whole
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: operation over there was very much like, yo, beat the street,
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: break convention, break the rules. How do we get this done?
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: And that was kind of like our directive. But it
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: was a lot of work because for me coming from
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: the LVMH side at the time, it was easy to
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: get in the door.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: But when I got to Ace, some of those same
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: doors were like, yeah, I don't know. We don't really
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: have that crowd here. And I was like, what does
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: that mean?
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: Your crowd doesn't make money? Yeah, exactly. Right.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: So it was a lot of trying to convince some
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: of the old guard that this was a real champagne.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: The bottle is gold for a reason to stand out.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: And it worked.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: So it was it was it was fun. It was
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: fun to go back and excuse my French shit on people, right.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: To be like, Oh yeah, you was talking shit. And now,
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: now we fast forward three years, that same company that
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: you was holding and how praise owns 50% of that brand.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: Right. So how do you feel about it now? I'm
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: a gold bottle drinker. Um, so I know some of
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: the role was, uh, marketing goals for each territory. Yeah.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: Which is interesting, right? So you had, what were the
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: areas that you were responsible for?
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: So Southeast United States, Latin America being more of like Cuba,
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Dominican Republic, et cetera, and duty-free zone.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: So what are the marketing goals by territory? Give me
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: an example of something that will work in Southeast, obviously
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: United States, and then all right, this is what we're
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: going to do for the duty-free zones. Yeah.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, for instance, if I use Miami as an example,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: there was two aspects to Miami. There was the club life,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: for sure. You got to make sure Ace is popping
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: and Liv and all those places like that. But it
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: was also how do you get in front of high
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: network individuals in settings that they want to be a
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: part of. Watches was a big way. We did a
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: lot of watch partnership dinners and parties. Yachts and boat
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: shows was another way. So you have to really When
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: you get to the high net worth individual in marketing,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: you got to go to their touch points. You can't
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: just be one of those brands like, I'm going to
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: do it my way, especially for a brand like Ace.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Let me ingratiate myself in your world first before we
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: come in and kicking down the door. So it was
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: a lot of balancing the nightclub world and then catering
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: to the super wealthy in their sort of environments, which
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: is a hard balancing act, right? Because most people think
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: of Ace as the club brand. So it was a
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: lot of hurdles to overcome with convincing people otherwise.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Speaking of nightclub, nobody drinks wine in a club.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: They will soon. But in the U.S., they don't drink it.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: You can go to nightclubs in France, in the south
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: of France, in Paris, and you'll see people drinking rosé
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: wine at nighttime in a club.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's a cultural thing.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Wine has a long way to go here in the
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: States in terms of marketing, and that's primarily because... the
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: gatekeepers for wine, the Psalms and all that have put
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: so much fuss on it, right? So you and I,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: we go to club. If I can't put ice cube in,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: if it's not cold enough, or if I have to,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: you know, sniff and swirl, you can be like, yeah,
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: I'm not doing all that.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to have fun. Let me get busy.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: So for us, we like, let's break convention. You drink
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: how you want. If you want to go make a
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: rosé margarita with that and some Don Julio or tequila brand,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: go ahead.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Tequila or wine?
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: So we have a rosé margarita, which is basically, you know,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: four parts rosé wine and one part tequila.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: Shake it up. It's crazy. Okay.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Well, in America, nobody's really drinking wine in the club.
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: So, and I would assume that that's a big part
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: of the revenue stream for alcohol, but every alcohol, tequila,
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: you name it, champagne, all of the alcohols have huge
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: profit margins in nightclubs.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but Tito's is the number one selling vodka in
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: the world and probably 10% of their business is in nightclubs.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: A lot of people drink Tito's in clubs.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: Now they do.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: But when I used to work on Belvedere too, you
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: couldn't pay a nightclub owner to serve Tito's because for them,
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: it was like, get that cheap shit out there, whatever.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Right.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: But now you look at Tito's sales, what is it?
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: 3 million cases a year, maybe four. I can guarantee
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: you 90% of that is coming from retail or bars,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: not excluding clubs.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: So you're saying you don't need clubs to survive.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: By no means.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: All right. So what's the average client? Somebody that's just
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: having wine at dinner?
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: So for Rose, no.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: So typically Rose has been more outdoorsy, brunchy, warm weather spots.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: We're now starting to see the shift as we push
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: for like ski season, you know, operate ski sort of
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: things like that. And then just every day, like you're
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: starting to see more people drink wine at dinner or
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: even at home than you would have four or five
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: years ago.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: This is true. Yeah. I'm thinking about my own house. Yeah.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: This is true. So, man, how, because you said you
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: were doing, I think, a thousand different locations you have
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: right now? How do we get to that point, right?
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: You started with one, obviously, but how do we scale
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: so fast? I think in 2021, you're the fastest growing rosé?
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: Fastest growing imported rosé. In the country? Yeah. How?
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, listen, again, like I said, when the
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: momentum hit for us, like we were on the phones,
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: we were presenting to the buyers from, you know, these
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: big chain stores, you know, hotels and resorts in Miami,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: let's go get in front of them.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: Like, look at all the momentum we have.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Cause you know, again, Miami, Texas, well, I say Florida, Texas,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: and maybe one of us, they were the only places
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: open post pandemic that everyone was rushing to. So we
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: were just creating that critical mass in those cities and
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: out there and putting people in front of the brands
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: and yo, look at all this press, look at our gram,
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: look who was holding us up, you know, all that
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: sort of thing that gets people to even say yes.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: So it was a lot of pitching, a lot of selling,
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: a lot of selling, not in a sense of beating
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: the street, but a lot of selling in terms of
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: presenting to decision makers to get these national distribution deals,
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: like a one hotel, an addition hotel, a Hyatt hotel group.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: It's a lot of those meetings. So do you have
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: red wine? Red wine's coming. Yeah, man.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: So right now you have the Blanco and the Rose.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: And the red wine is coming.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: Red wine's coming.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Out of the Blanco and the Rose, which one is
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: a better seller?
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, we just launched a white wine as a thank
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: you last year. So this is the first full year
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: that it's going to be in production. But it's different occasions, right?
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: You have some places that don't take, you know, rosé
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: as serious and they'll go for the white first. Or
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: you have some people that are huge Sauvignon Blanc fans,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: they'll go for the white first. So if you look
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: at the rosé category, I mean, the wine category in general,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: white wine is by far a bigger seller than rosé overall.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: Rosé sales are probably six to nine percent of total
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: table wine sales in the United States, period. White wine
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: is like 27 to 30%. So the growth potential is
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: bigger on the white wine from a business economic standpoint
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: than it is on a rosé.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: Bigger piece of the pie. This man knows his wine.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: He knows his wine. He has his statistics. You said
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: the pandemic obviously escalated and elevated the brand. May 2021,
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: I know you were one of the first to take
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: a payment from Constellation Brands. Can you explain who Constellation
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: Brands is and why did they choose you to invest in?
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: Obviously we know with the pandemic and obviously social unrest
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: that happened, you know, companies were committing money to brands.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: How'd you go about, you know, getting them involved? Yeah.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: So Constellation is a drinks giant, probably the number two
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: wine company in the world. They also distribute and own
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: Corona beer in the United States, but also some of
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: your favorite brands like Kim Crawford. If you ever heard
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: of that, Prisoner Wine is another one of their brands. Um,
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: but that conversation really came about once the announcement came out,
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: you know, again, community is everything people were just hitting me. Um,
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: and two people in particular have relationships with executives at constellation.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: So that gave me, I think a quicker intro to
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: the system. So when we sat down and talked, it
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: was all about what do you see for the brand?
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: What do you think is going to be in three
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: to five years? It was never an immediate thing. It
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: was like, we want to understand your vision, what you're
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: trying to accomplish. And for me, again, it was disrupting.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: the rosé industry and the wine industry to bring more
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: people of color into it, right? That was my thing
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: from day one. Like how do, this is a multi-billion
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: dollar industry and we don't really own a lot of it.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: So they understood that journey and then they also understood
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: that like, listen, you have a vision and you have
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: a niche. Like you're bringing new consumers into the rosé space.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of conversation about that in the
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: future of the brand, but it was a long process.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: It was like a nine month due diligence negotiation process.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: They had allocated You can correct me if I'm wrong.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: They said they were going to allocate, is it $ 100
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: million to brands? $ 100 million over 10 years. Over 10
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: years to owners of wine companies who were African-American? Spirits.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: Wine and spirits.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: People of color, their own alcoholic beverage brands, put it
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: that way.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: Just a nine-month process. You had the percentage of, that's
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: pretty shocking, 98% of the people who consume Rosé look
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: like us. How many people were even in the running
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: for it or even were aware that this was actually
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: taking place and they could have taken advantage of it?
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a good question. I'm not even sure about that.
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: I'm not even sure.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: But listen, I think the hard part for all these
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: companies that announce venture opportunities is, are we ready as
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: a people to own the business, right? I don't necessarily
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: think I was ready when I started the conversation. I
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: had great advisors that got me ready throughout the process.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: But due diligence is a weeding out process, a lot
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: of it, right? So I don't think a lot of
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: us understand what it takes to get to that point.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: What do your financials look like? What do your projections
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: look like?
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: Your balance sheet, your income statement, like that's a learning
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: process in itself. So I think a lot of people
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: have businesses, but when you get to that point, if
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: someone's going to give you money and invest in you,
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: like that's a whole different thing beyond is your bottle
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: pretty and is.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: You know, that sort of thing, right?
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: So I think that's been the challenge for a lot
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: of these companies, why you haven't seen so many announcements,
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: because for me, it's not really I think the challenge
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: is it shouldn't be ventures in terms of investing in
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: brands that are already doing well. It should be incubation
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: for our community. And I think that's where it's kind
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: of misguided and should be redirected.
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: So what's your plans on scaling? How do you take
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: it to the next level? Is it through influencer marketing?
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: Is it through just hitting the pavement?
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of ways, right?
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: The thing for us is we are being very cautious
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: of scaling too fast, right? Because we can go get
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: 4,000 more doors tomorrow, but if the product's not pulling
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: out the door, then you're discontinued.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: So what did you really do it for us, right?
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: So we're trying to be very strategic in looking at
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: DMAs of how we go to market.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: So we don't look at a whole state.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Like for instance, in New York, we're looking at Brooklyn
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: and then lower Manhattan, restaurants, bars, and then our community
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: has been supporting us since day one. When we look
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: at somewhere like Texas, it may not be downtown Dallas,
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: island park area it may be frisco where more of
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: us live you know they have a little bit more
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: money so we're really breaking it down that way and
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: doing deep dives in those areas with influencers that live
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: in those areas uh marketing campaigns in those areas whether
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: it be digital and you'd be surprised even radio terrestrial
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: radio and the markets are working as well.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: It's part of the the marketing i know like there's
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: companies that just deliver the one like drizzly is a
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: company i know that you do is that part of
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: the marketing plan too? Like we're going to, rather than
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: having to be in the stores, we'll just actually put
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: it on a company like Drizzly and get it out
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: to the people. Yeah.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: But you're still in the distribution because the way Drizzly
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: works is they use the stores in their area as
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: their delivery mechanism. So if you're not available and you
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: go in Drizzly, you can put in a name of
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: the product and say, sorry, not available in your area.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: But we did use the research of saying, all right,
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: where's Drizzly's big markets and cross-referencing it against the areas
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: we want to be in and say, we need to
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: have a, a consolidation of stores there. So if someone
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: goes on Drizzly, they can actually get it. So what
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: are some cities like looking forward into the future? What
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: are some cities or targets that you have that you're
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: not in right now? I mean, we're in 34 markets,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: but are we really in them?
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: No.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: So we have pockets, a lot of it based upon
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: some of the hotel chains that we have agreements with,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: that we rush those markets ahead of time. We certainly
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: could dive deeper in L.A., We certainly could dive deeper
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: in New York City alone. Our presence here is small, strong,
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: but small. I mean, this is the number one selling
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: rosé market in the United States for seven months out
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: of the year. So, you know, we definitely got to
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: crack New York City.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: As you said, throughout the year. So seven months. So
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: what months are those?
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Usually you start planning in New York, February, March, it
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: kicks off, September, November. When it starts to get October
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: and it gets cold.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: When it gets cold, people aren't drinking rosé anymore.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: In the past, they haven't. They're starting to change, but typically, no.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Buyers won't even bring in a new rosé in October.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: I wasn't even thinking that. Okay. Yeah.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: So, you know, you got to be here in New
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: York to win. Then Florida for sure. Chicago is a
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: big rosé market. So, we're going to crack that. And
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: then Texas and California. I mean, all the major markets
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: for sure, but it's just how deep do you go
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: inside of them.
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: We got to stop going to places without having to.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: What's up? So what about overseas? Yeah.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: So we, um, again, through partnerships with hotels, we have
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: a national partnership, uh, global partnership with Soho house. So
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: the white wine will be in all the Soho houses
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: here in the United States and in the UK, uh,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: and rest of the world. Um, we are sold at
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: our winery in a couple of spots in France. Um,
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: but next year we're going to go deep because again,
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: if you're talking about lifestyle and what we want to
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: be a part of, we need to be a Mykonos.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: We need to be in Ibiza everywhere. All of us
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: are going and traveling every year. You should show up
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: and see Lafayette there.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: Hmm. Now, one of the things that I read that
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: you do is you donate proceeds. Yeah. Don't really see
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: that too often. Yeah. Is that something that you intentionally
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: went into the business saying like, I want to give
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: back because that's just part of my DNA, who I am? Yeah.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: Where did that come about? And how's that going? Yeah.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: So for me, again, I love travel, right, man? I
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: love traveling. I know what travel did to me. It
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: changed my life traveling around the world with Moa Hennessy
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: and post-college and all that stuff. So I knew I
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: wanted to give that same opportunity to kids earlier and
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: kids that may never have that opportunity. Like for me,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: it didn't happen until I was 24, 25. But you
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: talked to a lot of my coworkers or coworkers in
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: corporate America, and they've been traveling since they was 12, 15, 16.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: They have a circuit they go through every summer with
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: their friends. And I wanted to give Our kids, our community,
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: that experience. So there's an organization called All Abroad, and
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: they actually take underserved kids from Atlanta and now Baltimore
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: on trips in high school. They just came back from Kenya.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: It was about 10 kids. And we want to expand
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: that because the more we can expose our kids beyond
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: their neighborhood, block, city, state, we just all become better people.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: And it makes them better business people, better students, better doctors, lawyers, whatever,
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: because now they have a global perspective on how things work.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: Um, but it's hard.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, listen, you, you, you have to commit to
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: actually giving money from sales, whether you're getting those sales
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: or not. I can't tell that organization, I'm gonna give
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: you $ 50, 000, $ 100, 000. And then the end of the year say, sorry,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: I didn't get the sales. I can't do it. I mean,
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: that's unfair. So we, we purposely a lot money that
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: has to go to those organizations because we believe in
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: them so much.
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: Um, what about, uh, expanding outside of wine? Have you
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: thought about that?
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Um, um, Probably going to do a sparkling wine, not
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: a champagne because it's not producing champagne. And then mezcal
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: is my favorite. So I'm looking at some mezcal propositions
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: right now. First, I got to get this to the
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: point where there's an exit and then we'll roll to
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: the next one.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: That's great. You said exit and I was thinking to myself,
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: obviously you build a brand and we just came from
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Ace and we saw them get 50% of the ownership away.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: Is that something that's on the board? Like as soon
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: as we build this brand to a certain point, because
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: a lot of times we create businesses, a lot of
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: people create them to sell them at some point. Yeah.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: Is that the vision for your brand that we're going
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: to build it to at some point? We're going to
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: allow equity stakeholders to come in or we're going to
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: sell the whole thing completely?
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, if the number's right, you can get the
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: whole thing. But certainly, I think the mistake a lot
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: of us make and certainly, you know, our older parents, whatever,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: when they had business, they held on to them forever
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: and They don't really think about the exit, but we
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: can create generational wealth with a sale. Then we can
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: all go do something else and flip it and get
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: more business. So for me, this is a tough business.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: It's tough as hell. So if I can exit healthy,
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: get some money and then go flip that into some
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: other things.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: Why not? But yeah, we're selling. To answer your question, sure.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: We're definitely selling.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: When you started this, did you ever....
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: Did you get any help from the people at Ace
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: of Spades? I never asked.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Let's be honest about it. Where am I going to go? Jay,
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: I'm launching a rosé brand.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: Will you help me? We never really had that sort
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: of interaction. He didn't have wine, right?
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: We never had that sort of interaction. That hierarchy there
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: is Desiree is it, right? I certainly wasn't going to
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: be like, yo, can you help me with the rosé?
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: You knew her? We had one, a couple, one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: The boss. Right.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: But I mean, it just wasn't, it was just one
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: of those things where I wanted to do it on
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: my own without that, because I also didn't want it
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: to be a celebrity brand.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: So that was another reason why I didn't look at
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: that from the outset. I wanted to, I wanted this
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: to be a brand that was truly really built by
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: industry veteran.
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: Do celebrity brands have less credibility in the like spirit world? Like,
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: are they looked at as like, Oh, this is not
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: credible because a celebrity owns it.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: No, but I think that's become the cookie cutter approach.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Like everybody now that who's your celebrity, you're like, damn,
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: you didn't even, could you taste it first? Yeah.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: And then a lot of them don't work.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, we all see the successes and
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: think like it's a recipe and a formula. And sometimes
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: it just isn't like that. There've been a lot of
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: celebrity failures out there as well.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: So let me ask you this.
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: It's a, it's a French name that, has, well, previously,
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: I don't think it has it on these bottles, but
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: it has the location.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: It's called French Central Pay.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: Wouldn't automatically expect it was owned by somebody black.
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: But you're doing interviews, so obviously you're in the forefront.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: Did you ever think about not putting yourself out there?
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: Because a lot of times, unfortunately, it's like once we
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: realize something is black... Nah, we ain't rocking with it. No, well,
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: two things happen. the white people classified as a, as
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: black brand. And even some black people might look at
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: it a different way.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: So, but then on the other side, you could put,
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: you get support being a black business, right?
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Like Carmelo. And he probably did that because you're from Baltimore.
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: You're black.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: It's like, okay, he's black. He has a wine. Why
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: not show him love?
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: So it's, it can go either way, but I can
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: see how, you know, being labeled as like a black business,
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: a black brand, can be harmful.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So in the beginning, no, I did not.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: Uh, in my PR team, the PR team was like
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: adamant that I get out there and talk about myself
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: being the owner and founder. Cause I had no interest.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: I wanted the product to live on itself for that
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: very reason. I didn't want it to be stigmatized as
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: like a black owned brand. And we deal with that
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: to this day. So I tell everybody, yes, it's owned
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: by a black person, but it's not only for black people.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: And I have to say that cause everyone's like black Rose.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: I'm just like, come on. You know what I mean?
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: Like, no, it's a luxury Rose from the South of
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: France from central paid. That's owned by a black man.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: So you totally get that. I think the challenging part
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: was to make sure that it did look and feel luxury, right?
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: Because you could say you're a high-end luxury wine um
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: so for us it was it was important that all
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: everything about it felt like the competitive set so you
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: can never say oh but that's less than there's nothing
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: less than about this product we can go toe-to-toe with
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: the best of them and i never set my goals
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: on being the number one black owned rosé brand in
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: the world no i want to be the number one
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: rosé brand in the world period.
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so the white one, obviously, and you
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: said you're going into red. I'm just trying to think now, like,
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: you have the PR team. Yep. Right? We obviously know
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: you're the owner. Who's coming up with the ideas for expansion?
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: Who's a part of the team that has helped this
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: grow so fast in such a short time, right? Because
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: we're talking maybe three to four years. Yeah. So who's
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: the people that are around you that have helped you
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: get here In a sense of, did you create relationships
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: as you've grown from brand, obviously from Moet to Ace
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: of Spades, obviously maybe with the people at the Heat.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: Are you looking at people like, as you're growing, like,
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: all right, I like this person. When I start mine,
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: I want to come back and find this person. How
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: did you build a team? Who was the team?
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, when I built, so the team is still only
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: four of us, which is crazy. We do a lot of,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: and that's the internal sales.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: The whole team is almost here? Wow.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for the most part. But again, I take a
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: very like outsourced mentality to a lot of things, right?
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: So there's certain projects will tap into the network. I
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: know this person was good at X when I worked
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: on this brand. This person was good at X when
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: I worked on that brand. You tap into them for
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: those specific areas. The last thing we wanted to do
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: was to be so heavy on salaries that we didn't
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: have cash flow to do what we needed to do
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: to move.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: So for that reason, we didn't hire a lot of people.
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: But yeah, we definitely tap into those networks.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Like there's group chats of everything that happens, label design,
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Instagram captions, like it just flows around. And then you
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: have to bounce stuff off of other people to really
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: get that real input. Not too many people because too
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: much feedback is bad, but they're trusted in the circle
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: through over the years, yeah.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: So let me ask you this.
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: As far as the rose and the blanco is concerned
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: do you have an idea long-term vision like is in
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: your perfect world would it be 50 50 split well
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: now you got the red one too is it like
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: a 50 50 or 33 33 or is the rose
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: always going to be the flagship product and the other
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: ones are kind of like ancillary.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: What's a good question um you know ideally because we
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: started with the rose it's going to it's should always
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: be our flagship. But based upon the share market that
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: white wine and red wine has, you would think that
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: they will overtake the rosé someday. But for me personally,
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: it's going to always be the rosé.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: Rosé is a champion. Yeah. How much of your data
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: is just consumed, right? Because do you have other interests
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: outside of doing wine or is this wine is because
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: I'm listening to you talk and I'm like, He knows
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: all the statistics for me. Pretty well versed in this.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: Does this consume most of your day or do you
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: have other interests in investing or something else? I mean,
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: for now, this is day in, day out.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: And that's because we're at this inflection point where you
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: got to, if you go now under the window and
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: it's going to.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: Be closed, right? So we have to focus. I have
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: to focus.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: It's important to know what my competitor is doing, what's
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: happening in the space. So I spend a good portion
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: of my day my girl would probably say way too
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: much of my day on this, on this business.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So the people that you used to work for now,
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: your biggest competitors. Oh, for sure.
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: And they all watching, like you look at LinkedIn and
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: your Instagram stories. She's like, Oh, all of them. She's
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: looking at my story.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Has there been any negative issues, feedback or anything?
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: Um, you mean from previous? Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, uh, you know, Jay's a big name. People
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: use his name for clickbait. I don't say it, but
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: people see Ace of Spades, and then it becomes like, oh,
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: you work for Jay-Z? I was like, I never said that.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: So you deal with that. I haven't heard that personally,
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: but I know that's probably a sore.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: Spot over there, right?
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: And then for the previous company, they never thought that
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: I could leave and do something like this. And we're growing,
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: and we're nipping at their heels, and we are the younger,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: cooler people.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: Great tasting rosé. I feel like you wanted to say something.
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: With the freshest shit on the block.
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of black people that are in the
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: spirits world, but most of the time they're like brand
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: ambassadors or influencers or like they run the marketing team.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: What's your advice for somebody that wants to become an
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: entrepreneur in this space but doesn't really know how to
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: go about it but might be passionate or might be
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: in the business already?
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, listen, I did rotations, whatever job and brand,
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: for the most part, they wanted me to take in
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: that business. At the time I was at those companies,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: you do it because you learn so much. Even at
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: the time, it feels like hell. You're like, what the fuck?
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: Like you learn something like from working sales on the street,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: from working duty free, from having to work with the
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: finance team every day and going through POs and reconciliations
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: and all that stuff like that. You do learn the business.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: And I think, you know, in order for us to
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: start heading these major corporations as we all will in
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: years to come, we got to start knowing every aspect
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: of the business. Most CEOs, even if they're not doing
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: it daily, if they sit in front of their board,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: they better be able to take those darts and understand
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: what's happening in every sector. So to your point, well,
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: why I have to know the statistics, I got to
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: know what's going on with freight. I got to know
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: what's going on with price increases, all that sort of thing,
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: if the brand's going to be successful. So I tell
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: everybody in the industry, start as an ambassador, but take
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: the jobs and the brands that don't sound sexy because
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: you'll learn something. I worked with some unsexy brands before
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: and it's benefited me now for sure.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: You said that the brand took off during the pandemic,
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: but during the pandemic, a lot of companies had supply
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: chain issues. Yeah. How'd you guys alleviate that? Oh, we
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: was putting stuff on airplanes.
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: But also you got, if you think about it, states
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: were shutting down, right? So If markets were shutting down,
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: we were rerouting that inventory to places that were doing well.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: But we did run out of stock. I mean, we
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: ran out of stock like two, three times. Like sales
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: were flying. We'd be out of stock and we got
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: to try to get it to two, three weeks out
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: of stock. So it was a lot of outages for
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: us as well. It's just how you come out of them.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Good thing is that everybody was understanding that it was
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: taking five to 10 days to get a wine bottle.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: I should have been there in two, three, but you know,
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: we got through it, but it's still tough to this day.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, containers that are leaving France, Four weeks transit
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: time is six weeks transit time. Then it gets to
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: the port. It's sitting there for another two weeks. Luckily,
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: we have the refrigeration units and everything in place to
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: keep the wine good. But it's a lot of people
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: that got bad wine and booze sitting out there on
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: those docks. It's just going to be flooded into the
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: market here soon.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: And we'll see.
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: But actually, the pandemic might have been good for you
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: because I forget I was in Brooklyn the night where
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: they was about to shut down the city.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: And I drove past a liquor store.
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: And I actually went to a liquor store and the
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: owner was saying that it was the best day ever,
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: even better than New Year's.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: New Year's Eve is traditionally the best day, I think,
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: for those local liquor stores. And he was like, that
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: day was better than New Year's Eve.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: So I say I have to say, once people realized
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: that they was going to be locked down.
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: They was buying alcohol.
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: Crazy.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Did you see an uptick in your product?
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: Uptick.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: Like it was, we were up like 300% during the pandemic,
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: literally 300%. Like it was crazy. Like the website was crashing.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: We were running out of stock. Stores were running out
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: of stock. Like, and it's sad, right? Because it was
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: such a horrible time, but man, it was a blessing
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: for us. Like it was a blessing.
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: I remember seeing them Instagram posts, Like, you want to
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: know what your neighbor's doing? Look at their garbage. Yeah.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: It was like they went down the street and everybody
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: had like seven bottles of wine. That's it. You had
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: nothing else to do. That was it. You were just
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: sitting at home drinking wine like, when are we going
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: to be able to go back outside? So, you recall. So,
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: what's the toughest obstacle, right? Because you said this shit
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: is hard. And it sounds tough. This isn't an easy thing.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: So what's been some of the toughest obstacles that you
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: had to have faced during this journey of entrepreneurism in
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: the world of spirits?
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately, I'm still, regardless of the years of industry experience,
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: we're still judged differently than some of our other brands, competitors,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: I should say. A lot of them get green lights
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: and yeses a lot faster. And I still have to
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: explain why we're better. No, we're not this. No, we're
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: not that. So the gatekeepers in this industry, and more
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: importantly than that, the three-tier system itself is... the most
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: gangsta shit out here, right? Because as I explained to you,
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: I can't sell my product directly to any consumer.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: I have to sell it to a distributor.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: I then have to then rely on that distributor and
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: his sales force to go potentially present it to a
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: retailer for the retailer to carry it for you to buy.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: It's a broken system. Like how to look at beauty brands.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: You look at most, you know, fashion brands, they can
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: go straight from the warehouse, their website to a consumer.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: We can't, we don't control any of that.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: So I'm at the mercy of, of these five or
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: six big distributor families to present my brand in order
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: for consumers to buy it.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: Like that's a problem. Yeah. So what's the incentive incentive
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: for them to even say, let's move yours. Yeah. Like,
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: is this a situation where like I could come in,
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: I might have more capital than you. Like, Hey, listen, distributor,
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: whatever their name is, yo, here's a million under the table.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: Make sure this gets off your shelves. whereas somebody who
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: doesn't have the type of capital is just like I'll
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: move it if I want.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: To yeah that was like the I don't know but
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: we I mean listen they focus on right now on
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: the issues that you have these large conglomerates and like
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: a LVMH, like a Diageo, partnering with a distributor, they
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: get all the focus and attention. And then all the
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: other 4,000 brands are thrown into one division together with
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: 10 sales reps that's supposed to like go out here
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: and present like 4,000 brands. So that's why it's incumbent
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: upon us to like build the brand heat to hope
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: that's the part that retailers will keep asking. I mean,
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: consumers will keep asking the retailers, yo, you got this brand.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: What is it at?
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: That retailer then called a distributor. But the three-tier system
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: is broken. Like it's the most anti-competitive industry thing I've
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: ever seen in my life. It's nuts.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: There you have it, ladies and gentlemen.
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: Before we wrap, what's your five-year, ten-year plan for your company?
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: What do you have envisioned?
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: Like I said, the white wine will become a full-time
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: SKU in 2023. We expect gangbusters for that. We'll continue
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: to develop and penetrate other markets for the rosé. The
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: red wine will come in three years. We will be
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: the number one selling rosé wine brand in the United
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: States of America, that's for sure. In five years, there'll
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: be an exit. And then you'll see the other spirits
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: and wine brands come behind it. I will build a
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: wine and spirits company after this.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Another one.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: Another one. A full-fledged.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: A full-fledged. Tequila, vodka.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all that.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: So this is like the starter.
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: This is the starter to something bigger.
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at the guy behind Avion Tequila,
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: Ken Austin, he's done it now three times. Avion Tequila,
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: proper whiskey, and now he's a partner in Termana.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Why can't I do that? Why can't I do that?
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: So you're already going with it and with the end
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: in mind.
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Important. Do you have the end in mind when you started?
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: No, I thought I was going to have this thing forever,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: but that was a naive me not understanding.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: When did you start to think about that?
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: The conversations with Constellation. I have a great advisor, Robbie
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: Robinson from Pendulum. And probably the first conversation, he's like,
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: you know, there's probably going to be some conversations around
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: them acquiring you whole out throughout this. I was like,
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not doing that. And that's when he broke it down.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: Like you're being short-sighted because 100% of nothing is nothing, right? 20%
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: of what they could potentially do for you. could be
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: life-changing for generations to come.
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, the value of selling a company, a lot
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: of times people don't fully appreciate that.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: But, you know, Elon Musk.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: Sold PayPal and started SpaceX first, actually. And then he
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: started Tesla.
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: And, you know, he made a couple hundred million for
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: the first company, but now he's worth a couple hundred billion.
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: You just got to have capital. We don't have liquid
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: capital available. A lot of times in our communities, like
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: I want that money to go out there and be
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: able to take a risk. I'm going to put X
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: amount of dollars into this, this next Airbnb and see
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: what happens and not have to really stress about my return.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: But what's it, I mean, funding is obviously an issue.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: Is that, I mean, how did you have to go
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: through like that process of actually trying to acquire funding
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: and go through banks? Cause I feel like that might
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: not be, is that something that, banks are like, hey, yeah,
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: let's help fund this black business.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, going to banks was never an option.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: I knew they were going to say no, right? There
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: was no track record. The sales wasn't enough. We didn't
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: have enough of our own capital invested, which is why,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: you know, when we started, we were the only a
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: hundred percent black on Rose and we no longer can
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: use that tagline, but that's for a good reason because
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: when constellation invested, they took a percentage of the business.
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: So we're not solely black owned. So I think a
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: lot of times in our community as well, they'd be like, Oh,
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: it ain't really black on. But like, if you understand
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: what it takes to scale and build a business, there's
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: not enough of us to go to, to go get
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: the amount of money that's needed a lot of time
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: to fund a venture like this. So yeah, I took
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: money on, but I'm okay with that. But I think
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: you need to have that conversation more about like funding
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: and what it means.
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. I will
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: be tasting this at your, where can I buy this at?
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the easiest way to his point, like
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: Drizzly going there, that's the easiest. But here in the city,
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: you got Happy Cork, you got Parcel Wine, you got
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: Empire Wine. Um, if you drink it at places, you
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: can go to Soho houses, you can go to the
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: gathering spots in Atlanta and DC.
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: Like, yeah, all of them.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: We try to be everywhere. It's sexy for me, bro.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: It's like, I'm having the product wherever I want to go.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: So if it's not there, then it's a problem. Shout
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: out to the gathering spot.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: Is it on a website to buy?
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can go on a website and it'll take
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: you to either, there's two ways. It'll take you to
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: stores in your area. You can put in your zip
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: code or you can just buy it through like a wine.com,
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: which we have a direct link.
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: What's the website called? www.lafeterose.com. L-A-F-E-T-E-R-O-S-E.com. I was just going
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: to say our brother, Ryan Wilson at the gathering spot. Yeah, man.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: we will be down there shortly. And so we will
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: definitely have to make sure that this is on every table.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, Ryan's a good brother. I went to him
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: as soon as I launched the wine. He was like,
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: you black, I'm taking it.
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: I knew he would.
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: Happy course to shout out to him. They, they, uh, they, uh,
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: actually have another one of our alumni inside. They're still, uh,
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: our folks from Montreal, the creme. Yeah. So shout out
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: to them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's my guy. Yeah.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: Steven.
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Good, good people. Yep. Yep.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Well, Troy, housekeeping items?
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, shout out to everybody on Patreon.com. Shout out to
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: all of our earners on EYL University. Y'all already know
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: that's the number one place if you're looking to learn
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: anything in the world of entrepreneurship, business, financing, investing, we
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: have it all. So shout out to all y'all. Shout
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: out to everybody that's supporting the merch. And shout out
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: to the front, the rosé of the party. Old black man.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: Thank you guys. I appreciate y'all having me for real.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: No doubt, man.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll see you
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: next week. Peace.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: Peace. Yeah, man.