Cover Story

(Image courtesy of Wander + Ivy)

In northern parts of the United States, the transition from winter to spring often is described as an awakening as leaves return to trees, flowers return to bloom and the longer daylight hours motivate increased socialization. Dana Spaulding experienced her own awakening when she found a need state in the wine category following a casual conversation with her husband.

During Spaulding’s time in wealth management at JP Morgan, she was working with successful entrepreneurs in the food and beverage space. Following a positive day at work, Spaulding went to open a bottle of wine to celebrate “a little win” only for her husband to ask whether she was going to waste another bottle of wine.

“[H]e was highlighting that I was very frequently wasting wine,” she explains. “I open the bottle. I have a glass. He likes things like whiskey and beer and then later in the week three or four days I find myself throwing away a portion of the wine that spoiled so he was like hey let’s make a change here…, which was about eight years ago now.”

Following this change, Spaulding began shopping in the single-serve wine section, but found herself less enthused with her options.

“[I]t was interesting to me to not find any real focus on clean organic ingredients because I was so focused on the foods that I was eating and organic ingredients in there, but really didn’t see that in wine,” she says. “So all of that was my recognition of white space in a category that I ultimately decided to fill, and really create the premium, organic, single-serve wine brand that I was personally looking for and just didn’t feel existed in the market.”

This lead Spaulding to the founding of Wander + Ivy, an organic single-serve wine brand, in December 2019.

Spaulding further explains although she was mindful of opting for organic foods in an effort to avoid pesticides, the wine space hadn’t seen that same investment.

“[T]here’s been such an awakening on the food and other beverage side over the last 20 years over consumers really wanting to be aware and mindful on the ingredients that … particularly seven years ago, wasn’t at all happening in wine,” the CEO says.

Recognizing the early stages wine was in when it came to organic offerings, Spaulding was eager to be part of that story.

“This feels quite early in the wine stage of massive awareness and growth in organic wine and I wanted to be a part of it,” she says. “I set out to not only get quality wine inside a package that felt really premium but also can we do this in a way that still feels really clean, still is the purest form of what we can get into the bottle, make us feel a little better the next day and just have consumers aware of what’s actually going inside their bodies, that was something that was really exciting to me to be a part of.”

Portfolio built for the consumer
Packaged in 6.3-ounce glass bottles, Wander + Ivy’s portfolio is comprised of a variety of wine varietals. Available in retail and hotels across the country, the wine also can be purchased through Wander + Ivy’s direct-to-consumer retail channel.

In line with its perfectly portioned mantra, the company’s mixed pack is one of its most popular as it offers consumers to enjoy a tasting of the varietals.

“Our most bought product is our mixed eight-pack, which is a really lovely mix of several varietals and that I think gives people this really fun way to do a tasting whether by themselves or with friends to do through the products,” Spaulding says.

Although Spaulding notes that she feels fortunate that one varietal doesn’t stand out much from the others, she has noticed that their Rosé has evolved from a summer staple to year-round favorite.

“This feels quite early in the wine stage of massive awareness and growth in organic wine and I wanted to be a part of it.”

— Dana Spaulding, CEO at Wander + Ivy

“What used to feel like the summer of Rosé really is all year-round and we see it pretty consistently as our top varietal throughout the year,” she says.

When it comes to building out the varietals, Spaulding explains that Wander + Ivy looks to stay aligned with the top varietals in United States ― as long as the supply and the demand is there.

“We source from certified organic family vineyards around the world so we always try to keep them as consistent as possible year-to-year and then listen to consumers and our retail, wholesale partners that share with us ‘hey can you bring this?’” Spaulding explains. “So every year our strategy is to be pretty consistent and focus on a core set of varietals while bringing anywhere from one to three innovations or new varietals to market.”

A key example of this was the addition of its Pinot Noir, which Spaulding notes was completely driven by consumer demand.

“We were asked for it all the time on both sides of the business and it was a harder one to deliver. In general, it’s harder to find those certified organic varietals that not only are certified organic, but taste good. That is the No. 1 thing for us, it has to taste good. People are not going to come back if it doesn’t taste good so we were able to do that, which was amazing last year. This year, we have a couple of things in our pipeline, which are really exciting.”

Scaled for success
With a market thirsty for organic, single-serve wine, Wander + Ivy has seen that interest translate in growth in terms of sales, footprint and capital expenditures.

“This has been a big year for us. We have always been in very big growth mode,” Spaulding says. “We’re a high growth company, and we’ve doubled or tripled about every year. This year the sales side of the market, what that has looked for us is jumping from 20 to 30 states of wholesale distribution so by the end of [July], we’ll have 30 states of wholesale distribution.”

This has allowed the brand to enter many more specialty retailers, grocery brands as well as traditional liquor stores and hospitality. Yet, it is the hotel channel that has been an exciting contribution this past year.

“Hotels have been such an exciting area of growth for us, as travel re-emerged after the pandemic we were so excited to help hotels reinvent what in-room mini-bar experiences looked like,” Spaulding says. “It feels super curated to have our wine tastings for folks so really strong hotel presence across the country as well.”

However, with Wander + Ivy’s founding just before the pandemic, its DTC has been a core aspect of its business from the onset.

“We launched December of 2019. I had a baby January 2020 and thought we were going to ease into it and the pandemic hit, so we have skyrocketed our DTC business since then and it’s become a major portion of our overall business,” Spaulding says.

Currently, the company ships to 38 states, but is growing quickly to support entering more.

Among the ways that Wander + Ivy is ensuring it can support its retail and DTC demands is through its $2.5 million investment in a custom bottling. For 187-ml and 375-ml still wines, the filler can achieve bottling speeds up to 100 bottles a minute. It also has the capability to fill 1.5-liter bottles at varying speed and can accommodate sparkling products.

Spaulding explains that initially Wander + Ivy was modifying existing bottling lines with changeparts to accommodate its package. However, her team and board recognized that this was not a scalable solution.

“We are growing so fast. To be able to keep up with demand, we need this to be faster, meaning our production to be faster and we need it to be more efficient and we need to get to profitability,” Spaulding says. “In order to get there, we need to make some pretty substantial investments to own our own destiny, to really fully control the timing and scale the volume of our production. About two and half years ago, we made the decision and it’s been about a two year process of a $2.5 million investment to create a custom Wander + Ivy bottling line that has the optionality to do bottling for any kind of standard bottle, but really was made for the Wander + Ivy bottling, which for us, massively scales production and dramatically improves our margins to allow us to get to profitability.”

Given Wander + Ivy’s then five years in the market, the view of the investment was that it would de-risk the business as well as open up the innovation capabilities, Spaulding notes.

“For example, Bubbles, and that was something that we specifically decided to incorporate was a carbonation element of our line because really we were pretty limited on still with how we were doing it in the past,” she says. “Our bottle is so unique, so we wanted something to be built for us and allow for a ton of innovations in the future. [It’s] a long process but really a very worthwhile exciting one that puts us on an exciting path forward.”

With this strong investment, Spaulding is optimistic about what’s in store for Wander + Ivy in the years to come.

“We have so much in the works when it comes to innovations that are in our pipeline that our line allows for,” she says. “Continuing to build the team, continuing to build distribution. I think we’re really just scratching the surface in the ones we’re currently in, so really deepening where we have current distribution; expanding to the states where we don’t yet have distribution in, and for me it’s really becoming that nationally known brand that when people feel the way that you feel with wine, just wanting to have one glass they immediately think of Wander + Ivy. They have it on their bar cart, they have it in their fridge, and we just become a staple in their home and that to me is such a dream and I think we’re on our way there.” BI