Winery DTC Fulfillment Providers?

Anyone ITB know of any DTC Fulfillment Providers for a smaller producing winery, say 8,000 cases and less? All I see is WineDirect and WineShipping.com who look like they are more serviceable for a large scale winery.

Any advice would be welcome!

Gabe,
I reached out to quite a few last year, but almost all of them had zero interest in a small winery. Maybe with 8000 cases you might have a better chance, but my sub-2000 cases failed to excite any of the 4-5 I spoke to. Trying to find who they were in my emails now, but can’t for some reason. But one of them was Copper Peak Logistics, which is a bigger player. You can talk to David Dobrow there.

In the end I decided to do it myself, which is probably better in the beginning anyway. Maybe down the line I’ll engage better with them when sales are more proven.

Maybe try Bodega shipping in Sonoma?

I think there are a couple of issues with fulfillment providers for small wineries. They charge a decent fee and unless you’re willing to eat it, it appears to the customer like an excessively large shipping/handling charge and leads to claims that you’re treating shipping as a profit center. Second, you lose control of the timing of shipments to areas that may be having heat spikes or cold snaps. If it were me (but, note I’ve never had to do this), I would try very hard to keep it in house.

-Al

Have you looked at Pack’n’Ship?

Paul

I saw an update a month or two ago that David @ Copper Peak moved to Wineshipping.com. He is a great guy though; worth chatting to directly if he can help guide you a bit on best options.

Following…

I use Groskopf Warehouse and Logistics in Sonoma, CA. I helped them start their direct to consumer shipping program years ago, and they cater to wineries with lots of skus, and small volumes. Good people too.


Thank you for the info!!! Didn’t realize there were so many fulfillment providers.

We use Vinoshipper which handles the licensing in 38 states for us, DTC. Hope that helps.

We use VinoShipper as well but they are not technically a fulfillment house. They send you the packing slip and shipping label unless you integrate a fulfillment company to do that for you. Pack’n’ship can handle that piece and tie together with VinoShipper. We don’t use P’n’S, just the VS piece and self package then drop at UPS.

Wine Country Shipping in Windsor

And just like on the distributor side, the fulfillment options are getting fewer as wineshipping has just purchased Pack N Ship . . .

Cheers