Transcript
Speaker: Allison, hi hi. thank you for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you I was really looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for doing this. Same, same. How are you doing? Lots going on in the business and in personal life in general. So it's been an incredibly busy year, but everything's going great.
Speaker: For anyone who doesn't know you, can you say who you are and what you do? So for those who don't know, I'm Alison Louvera. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Juliette Wine. So we are one of the fastest growing wine brands built for the modern woman. We're best known for our first product, which is our Juliette Eco Magnum. And it's just a very high end, very chic version of a boxed wine.
Speaker: And we launched almost four years ago now, and we've seen incredible growth in that time. You can find us now in major retailers like Whole Foods, Costco, Safeway, and we've got a few new big ones coming down the pipeline this year. My husband is really into wine. I love wine too, but I'd say he's kind of a wine snob.
Speaker: And I would say maybe in the past, something like a boxed wine like five years ago, he would have been like, But it's changed and I feel like you guys are changing it. And also I wanna talk about your branding too because i actually have kind of positive affiliations with boxed wine. I think of like my mom in the 90s with her box of Merlot, like she's having friends over and it was like a really positive, fun thing. How did you mentally start off in this direction? I'm curious if you knew it would be such a success and that people were so open and interested to a new version of boxed wine in their lives.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a great question because a lot of people, when we tell them that we've done this sort of high-end or accessible luxury box wine, they're very surprised because in the US, it does have a bit of a negative stigma. It's known as being cheap and low quality. Everyone thinks of Franzia or slap the bag. And i think the reality is we really looked at the wine category as a whole through the lens of a woman. And women like us, box wine actually meets so many of our needs, right? So for example, I like to drink one glass a night, usually alone just to kind of like unwind after work or maybe paired with dinner with my partner. And I don't want to open a bottle of wine and then it potentially goes bad after two days because I'm only having one glass at a time. Boxwing really solves for that because it's fresh for four weeks after opening.
Speaker: And there's other things about it that we love, like it's sustainable. It has less than half the carbon footprint of wine in glass bottles, which for me is really important from a values perspective and something I look for in all of the brands that I purchase across categories, whether that's beauty, fashion, whatever it might be. And so we looked at the category and we recognized that box wine as a format had a lot of promise for women. We also looked at the data.
Speaker: And even though there is this kind of stigma against the format, we It is an extremely high volume selling format. If you look at like the top 10 wines in the US, almost half of them are boxed wines. And so we knew that it met specific needs for women. We knew that there was a very high demand for it.
Speaker: And then we also knew that nothing really existed at the high end tier. There's really not a lot out there, at least anything with national awareness and national distribution, that's more than the equivalent of $5 bottle of wine. And so it's one of those rare white spaces in an industry that's a thousand years old. My co-founder and I were both young women. We both come from brand and marketing backgrounds. We both love wine. And so we felt that we could really bring a lifestyle marketing and brand angle to this and overcome that stigma and give women really something that works for their lifestyle and meets the standards they have from a quality of a design and a sustainability perspective.
Speaker: I'm curious, can you give us the short version of what was the impetus for founding and what was that first year of getting this business off the ground like for you? The first thing we really grappled with was the packaging. When we set out, we initially thought to ourselves, and let's do a high-end box wine.
Speaker: Let's put great wine with a beautiful design in off-the-shelf sort of rectangular packaging. and we played around with that with a design agency for a while. And it just wasn't hitting for us. We felt that it wasn't differentiated enough. We felt that visually it didn't scream high end. And so we conceptualized our Eco Magnum, which we actually have a patent on now. And it is our cylindrical version of a boxed wine. So it is made of paperboard, just like a traditional box is.
Speaker: But it is cylindrical and cheap, and it is a little bit smaller. So it holds 1.5 liters, which is the equivalent of two bottles of wine, whereas most box wines have three liters, which is the equivalent of four bottles of wine. So we actually spent the better part of the first year really honing in on our packaging strategy and then the development of that proprietary packaging format that ended up being our patented Ecomax.
Speaker: Wow. How big was the team at that time when you first started? It was myself and my co-founder. Big team of two. What type of contractors and vendors were you working with in that first year to get it all together? Or was it all you? Because I know you you have a brand background. Were you designing these things?
Speaker: So we worked with two super talented graphic designers. One of them that had more of a functional packaging background and one of them that had more of a traditional graphic design background. And so they were really working with us hand in hand to develop not only the packaging design, but the entire brand world. And we chose working with two freelancers ultimately over an agency, just because we had a very specific vision and we really needed a partner to help us bring it to a life and improve on it versus have somebody create something for us end to end without us in the room. So we leaned a lot on those two freelancers in the first year. and we started building out our team with different full-time employees, but also contractors in the sales and distribution.
Speaker: And then also the sort of e-commerce sales space. One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is that when it comes to brand work and also too, i did a lot of agency management, but my background, like I was a writing major in college and maybe this is just me, but we think of design as like the product of execution. It's like they got directions and they designed it, but all of the thinking and maybe the editorial and the words is what came first. And lately I've really been thinking about what a disservice it is when brands treat it that way and just what an incredible and important leg up it is when you have a really
Speaker: thoughtful, talented designer in the mix from the jump. Oh, absolutely. we had a vision, right? And we knew what we wanted consumers to feel. Like we really felt that we wanted Juliet to be this little indulgence or moment of escape or like that breath out, that sigh of relief at the end of a long day. And so we were thinking a lot about What are the experiences in the places in the world where you feel that total relaxation and you have that escape? And so we ended up landing on the Mediterranean and some coastal places in Italy that to us were sort of happy places, right? So we were thinking a lot about the color palettes there, the design cues coming from there. How do you feel when you're...
Speaker: on a holiday in one of these places. And so if you look at our design and brand world, a lot of those colors and design cues are infused within that are very inspired by these places. But that's the reason behind it. but It was very intentional why we chose these design references. We had a real vision behind why we Do you have any advice for folks who are working with designers and or just like brand freelancers for how they can be a good partner and get the best work out of those folks? One thing i really subscribe to, and I say this a lot to like any team I'm working on, is that I really truly believe, whether it's with a designer or an agency or any sort of contractor or even full-time employee or colleague,
Speaker: You really get out what you put in. And so the output that you get from a partner like a graphic designer or a freelancer is only as good as the direction that you give. How thorough is the brief? How deeply have you thought about it? Is it strategic? Does it fit within everything else you're doing at the company?
Speaker: It really has to be thoughtful and intentional and thorough, or you're just going to get back something that's going to be like spaghetti at a wall. Right. And a lot of it goes back to, there's sort of some leadership theory that talks about if you're a leader in a business, like everything is your fault.
Speaker: And that's kind of goes back to that. If you get an output back that you're not happy with, I always go back to the original brief and then the direction that was given in partnership along the way and think through what could have been delivered better, what could have been communicated more clearly, where things could have been more collaborative versus one-way direction, and really try to think about it through that lens.
Speaker: Yeah, I hear that. And I think I do subscribe to that too. I will say sometimes it's hard to balance a very strong sense of accountability and not fall too far into, for me, sometimes like negative self-talk and being like, everything's my fault. Do you ever struggle with that? Yeah.
Speaker: and Maybe that's not the best way to phrase it. Not that like everything is my fault, but that I have a real sense of agency about the work that I do. And yeah I do feel very accountable for a lot that happens. And and definitely the type of person that if things go sideways or something doesn't pan out the way i expected it to, I feel more comfortable and more in control looking inward and yeah considering how I can improve to maybe get a better outcome next time. So it's less about like blaming and fault and more about agency and accountability. It's probably the more positive spin to put on it.
Speaker: A strong, what's the concept? Locus of control. I'm a big fan. Like, and I think honestly, even if we live in a world where things, let's be real, are outside of our control, it does give me like some peace thinking, that okay, well, there's ways that I can shape outcomes and I can shape the environment that I operate in.
Speaker: What does an average day in your life look like right now? And I'm curious for the work stuff, but also are you a morning routine person? i know you have a baby. Like how does it all work together? Yeah, i have a four month old baby. So that's new. I'm a first time mom. And I have to say juggling that with being a founder is quite something. Very lucky that I have family and support to help me through it.
Speaker: But a typical day, the family stuff is structured. Everything else is not. So I'm up. at 6, 630 doing the first feed and getting some time in with my daughter. And then am typically out the door by 830 or so. And then from a work perspective, are still at the stage of our company growth that no two days look alike.
Speaker: I'm still wearing a lot of hats operationally. Really what I work on in any given day, it can be anything from marketing, marketing, strategy and execution to operations and supply chain optimization overseeing a production run and then collaborating with our incredible sales team on this expansion into retail that has been a huge priority for us over the past six to 12 months but we're definitely at the stage where i'm still kind of in the weeds doing a lot of things executionally and that leads to
Speaker: honestly, no two days looking alike. But to me, that's exciting. And honestly, that's one of the reasons that I wanted to become an entrepreneur because I spent a decade plus in corporate America where I was siloed into a brand management and brand marketing role. And I just got so incredibly bored. And so for me, being able to touch all the different functions of the company and any given week is super fun. And I feel like it really develops me a lot as a professional.
Speaker: Yeah. Do you feel like it's like five years of experience in like 18 months? Oh my gosh. More like 50. You learn so much as entrepreneur. I mean, a lot of things you're learning in the hard way, let's be real, but it's just an incredible experience. Even if I ever went back to corporate America or a large organization, i think I would be a thousand times better as a leader and as an executive for having this experience because you have to learn so much and you have to become proficient at so much and it's really high stakes. So you have no choice, but sort of do or die. What are the skills that you feel like you had innately that you were already really good at that served you well? And then my next question will be, where do you feel like you've developed the most as a leader from this experience? So I will say for me coming from a background of sales and marketing, that's my bread and butter.
Speaker: So I had that really going for me walking into this because I could do that with my eyes closed. Also marketing especially is a function that I'm just really excited about. And I'm always reading the trades and I'm scrolling through trends online and I like to keep up with the latest because modern marketing is evolving so fast. And so for me, that was very easy and a really fun opportunity to be able to apply everything I've learned over the past decade plus career to a new brand. I would say that what i had to
Speaker: really learn on the fly was the sort of finance and operation side of things. I have a finance education, but I've in practice never really done anything beyond being a partner to an FP&A professional or being a partner to an accountant internally at a company.
Speaker: And so that was an area where I had a lot of ah learnings for sure. And then for me as well, it's been a long journey for me to become more proficient at public speaking, communications, even something like this, being on a podcast. That's not something that ever came naturally to me. And this has been ultra year journey to become better at it. And Definitely that becomes even more accelerated when you become an entrepreneur and especially a female founder of a consumer brand, because there are a lot of opportunities to speak publicly and be on podcasts and show up on social media and share your journey. And so that's been an area where I think I've probably come the furthest, but I've seen the benefits of that. And so it's definitely something i had to work at though.
Speaker: That is interesting because I feel like you immediately struck me as such a polished force and as an incredibly articulate person to whom this stuff comes like really naturally. i love hearing that. it is so flattering. But no, I have worked incredibly hard. I've been through multiple media trainings.
Speaker: I practice so much. If I have a public speaking opportunity, I've got a script that boils down to bullet points. I practice and film myself. I watch that back. I've worked a lot on voice inflection and tone, which I feel like I still have a lot of improvement to do. And I've talked about this on like TikTok and stuff before, because I do feel like it's important that people know that you can learn this stuff.
Speaker: Yeah. like if you're a shy person or you don't feel comfortable communicating publicly, you can work at it and become better. It's definitely a skill that I think tends to be viewed as something you're naturally good at or naturally not good at.
Speaker: And it goes back to what we were talking about before. Like you have agency over that. It's something that like any other skill you can learn and improve at. Am I ever going to be like a prolific public speaker like Obama or something? No, probably not. But I'm worlds better than I used to be. And that's something.
Speaker: I'm not on TikTok because for the two months that I was, I went crazy. i was obsessed with it. I'm a TikTok addict, so I can't engage, but I'm going to go look up yours and watch them. And yeah I love that. There's two things occurring to me as you're talking. One,
Speaker: We have this incredible client. She's accomplished so much. She's now later in her career and just doing a lot of investing and she does a lot of speaking. And one thing she said to me, akin to what you're saying, is she was like, it didn't come naturally. And I prep so, so hard. and She's like, it's not extemporaneous. It takes a lot of work.
Speaker: What type of public speaking training or coaching did you do? Did you work with one coach? How did you approach it? And I'm thinking for people listening who are like, oh, I need that too. Yeah. So I've worked with a few different coaches at a few different stages of my career. I was actually provided coaches at previous jobs because there was a public speaking component and that was something that was really offered to me.
Speaker: And there's agencies that you can work with. There's freelance coaches you can work with. I would just advise anyone to do some research and find someone with great reviews or some ask around in your network.
Speaker: But I will say in this day and age, and speaking of TikTok and YouTube and everything like that, If you can't afford a coach, there are so many incredible resources out there that you can look at for free, right? You can go down a rabbit hole and find videos with different tips, different exercises you can do. and really there is nothing more painful, but nothing more useful than just filming yourself speaking for five minutes about something and then watching it back.
Speaker: A really great tip somebody gave me once is do that. So, tell yourself speaking about something for five minutes. Watch it back with the sound off and then listen to it back not looking at the video.
Speaker: And take notes on what strikes you. things you like, things you don't like, things that you think look great, and then internalize the feedback and do it again.
Speaker: Because there's different things you'll notice about the audio, your voice, filler words that you use versus what you look like on camera. What are your facial expressions?
Speaker: What are you doing with your body language? And I've found that to be a really helpful exercise. Yeah. It's so cringe though. Listening. Why Allison was laughing was I have a turtleneck on it and I like covered my face when she was talking about watching videos of yourself. It's hard, painful. work Painful, but you have to do it. You just got to bite the bullet and watch yourself and improve. There's no other way.
Speaker: I admire the work you've done. and I appreciate you sharing that too. I think anyone would presume it came really naturally to you and you expressing like, no, it was a lot of behind the scenes, painful work. And it's really cool.
Speaker: Yeah, it still is. All right. I want to go back to one thing. So when we're talking about your dayto day today, we got your morning and we got your day. What are your evenings like? How do you wrap the day up? I'm very big on having carved out like family time in the evening. I'm someone that grew up – We had family dinner every night. It was really special to me, just a great time to come together and connect with the family. And so – Even though our daughter is four months old, we try to do that in our home now. So I do bath almost every evening and then my partner does bottle and then we have dinner together really quickly. And then typically, I'll be honest, both of us are doing a little bit more work after that.
Speaker: from like 9 to 11 or so before we go to bed. So that's kind of a typical evening. Obviously, there's times when we've got events to go to or we've got other commitments.
Speaker: Someone's traveling, but a normal sort of day-to-day experience, that's what an evening looks like. Before you had the baby, would you also be doing work in that 9 to 11 window or is that now where you're fitting it in?
Speaker: Yeah, we would. and Again, i would still insist on family dinner, just the two of us. It's just something that I always loved about my childhood. And so I've always wanted to preserve that ritual. And then, yeah, we typically are doing like a little bit of work.
Speaker: 9 to 11. For me, our winery and production are in California. And so I'm typically still getting emails in until six o'clock or so Pacific time.
Speaker: And so for me to go to bed and do one last check around like nine, 10 o'clock makes a lot of sense because then I don't wake up in the morning with all of these missed emails from the day before.
Speaker: Are you in New York? I'm in New York. Yeah. Are you okay with me asking a little bit about what it was like to plan a maternity leave as a founder? Sure. The short answer is I didn't plan one.
Speaker: I actually didn't take a formal maternity leave. So i definitely had a modified schedule for about a month. And that was something where my approach was really just to clearly communicate that to my team, just what the guardrails would be when I'd be available, when I wouldn't, when I'd be checking email and Slack, and then kind of just go from there.
Speaker: I will say i lucked out because our baby was born on Christmas Eve. And January is an extraordinarily slow month for Wine and Spirits.
Speaker: And so the six weeks or so that I was working that modified schedule, not on 100%, it was a really slow time anyways, where the industry in general tends to take a step back. And so it was a little bit easier of to manage. But it's definitely something that I'm still pretty conflicted about. i have kind of a love-hate view on being a founder and maternity leave. But at the stage our company's in right now and the number of things that I'm still accountable for from an operational perspective, just taking like a two to three month leave and being like pretty offline, it didn't really seem possible or realistic. We're not at the place yet where I'm replaceable. Which is a little bit scary, right? Like we want to get to that place. And if we have another baby, hopefully we'll be in that place and I'll be able to take a more formal leave. But that's the reality, I think, of being in an early stage company and having a baby. You don't really get that same experience. But I think for me and why it's not like a woe is me situation is that we're a remote company.
Speaker: And so sure, I was working, but I was home. My baby was right there. And so i feel very grateful about that. There's never going to be a situation where i have to go work night to five in an office and not see my little girl.
Speaker: I appreciate you sharing that. I mean, something I think about for myself, like how would we do that? For yourself, do you can't take maternity leave. It's a hard reality, right? It's really tricky. You're irreplaceable. know, and about similar I'm similar. like, well, I could do six weeks. There could be coverage there. We could figure it out, but not full. My partner's European. People over there are getting like half a year off. In Australia, they get a year paid for maternity leave.
Speaker: It's amazing. i Amazing. I appreciate you sharing it. I like to ask about it. I always want to be careful because for some people, I feel like it's personal. It's sensitive. and It's to me like something to be respectful of. But we have one amazing client who's a founder and she did exactly what you did. Essentially, she took like a modified schedule for six or so weeks and then was back. And one of her goals in working with us is she's like, I want to bring in enough accounts that I can have full coverage when I have my next baby. And that's like a key goal. I like talking about it when comes to founders. And at the end of the day, it's very individual choice. And I think there's no right answer. It's just what works for you and your team and the seed your company is at.
Speaker: And it's also, by the way, like the beauty of entrepreneurship is... but You get that flexibility to sort of write your own story and define exactly what works best for you. Like if I worked in an organization and I said, I want to take six weeks with a modified schedule, I mean, I'm going to have to go through layers of approval for someone to say like, that's not the way we do things. But when you're an entrepreneur, you have that flexibility. And it's just something that I'm super grateful for.
Speaker: One final question before we wrap some things up. When you were little, I'm really curious, what did you want to be? Like, what was your vision for yourself? And it's okay if it's like eight different things. I'm very curious. Tell me all of them.
Speaker: It's a funny question. I'm laughing because there is a very short, specific answer and it is hilarious in the context of what ended up happening. Apparently, i don't remember this. My mother has told me this. When I was little, I used to say that I wanted to be somebody who worked in a tall office building wearing a fancy outfit. That was it. Like there was no profession was specified, no like real rule.
Speaker: It was more just like the image. I wanted to be business woman, right? I didn't have the words for it yet, but that's apparently what my goal was when I was little. And it just cracks me up because it obviously ended up becoming very true. if you look at my first handful of jobs out of college,
Speaker: I worked in fashion media and I worked for the three big publishers. I worked for Hearst, then for Vogue at Conde Nast, then Time Inc. And that was my job. Like I got dressed up every day. Back then there were dress codes. We had to wear heels and look the part. And I went to these fancy tall office buildings and it was all very much what my younger vision for myself was. But it is funny looking back on that story that I've been told because... You think most young kids are like, oh, I want to be a ballerina or an astronaut or something specific. And no, I just had a vision for like what the vibe would be.
Speaker: Yeah. No specifics. I have to say, i love that. And it's resonating with me. I used to have a little desk in my room as a kid where I'd play office. But also, too, I don't know about you, I'm 39. And i feel like the late 80s, early 90s, it was very like working girl glam was kind of in the culture. Yes.
Speaker: I actually think about that a lot because I'm 40, so we're similar in age. And I think a lot about the impact that pop culture had on women in our generation, what we wanted for ourselves professionally. like I wanted to work in publishing, in fashion, right? like That was very much informed by movies like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, right? She's this magazine editor and she's got this glamorous life and she's running about town like the devil rose prada definitely connected with my desire to work at vogue this idea of the like glam office woman in new york city was very much in pop culture and i think it inspired a lot of women to then want to
Speaker: emulate that. It always makes me think about how Reese Witherspoon says that when she did Legally Blonde, like one of the comments she gets to this day from women is that inspired them to want to become lawyers. And so it's so fascinating to me that what's going on in pop culture when you're having your formative years can have a real impact on the rest of your life. And then in tandem makes me wonder, okay, well, what's going on in pop culture now that's inspiring next generation? Like, what do they want to be?
Speaker: Hopefully not robots. Yeah. No, I totally agree. That's so funny. Well, I have to say my husband and have plans tonight. We're watching the first Devil Wears Prada and he's making chicken piccata and it's the devil. I i don't know. got some type of pun going on. Tell me about your relationship with the Devil Wears Prada with the Vogue experience because I feel like it's so on everybody's mind right now with the sequel.
Speaker: I worked there for two years. it was a tough two years. It was a very challenging job, but i'm so grateful for the experience because I learned so much. I think it laid a really great foundation for me as a professional moving forward, and I've made a lot of great friends. I have nothing but respect for Vogue team, the brand, what it stands for, how they've been able to protect, maintain, and build it over time while still being modernized. And nothing but respect for Anna Wintour. i think she's just an incredible force. And I was on the publishing side, so I had very limited interactions with her, but every interaction I did have, like she's incredibly impressive. And I really love how with the sequel, it seems like the Vogue team in general, but Anna Wintour as well have really like more embraced it and they're kind of in on the joke now.
Speaker: That's made me really happy because I think there was a little bit of a tension when the first one came out. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I know we have to go, but I can keep talking you forever. I think you're so fascinating and you're such a generous and open interview. Like, thank you so much. Of course. Thanks for having me on. This was fun. Anyone listening who wants to follow you, we will definitely put your LinkedIn in the show notes. We can put your website in the show notes. Where else could we send them?
Speaker: I'm on LinkedIn, TikTok, Substack. I share a lot about my experience building Juliet and just sort of some of my views on business and culture in general. And then for Juliet, we are on Instagram and TikTok. And then our website is drinkjuliet.com where you can purchase our products there. But we also have our store locator because we know a lot of women love to shop for wine in stores. So that's the best resource to find out where to buy Juliet.
Speaker: Thank you. And anyone listening, if you want to check those out, we'll throw them in the show notes. So just scroll down and you can click. And Allison, appreciate it so much. Thank you.
