In addition to a questionable business model, Lot18 has/had a fair amount of incompetence as well. I bought a few bottles of Cali cab from them, which didn’t arrive, so I contacted them and they said “oh, well it’s not shipping yet, the winery will send it in the fall”. Long story short, fall rolls around, still no wine so I contact them again and they say “it was shipped, we will initiate a tracer with UPS”…still no wine after several weeks of back and forth. Finally they say, “well, it must’ve been lost we’ll send you a replacement”. Replacement arrived shortly thereafter, along with the original order as well (in a separate box with a different tracking#), both sent directly from the winery.
I never did business with them again, needless to say.
I have friends that are serial startup founders. They jump from one failure to another living off of some investors money. Regarding payback: Like anything, for some it is and for some it’s not. KPCB, US VENTURE, SEQUOIA, and others have done well. On average though VC has done poorly. LOT18 to your point is one reason why…
also, simply a discount outlet for an established brick and mortar retailer (BP Wine)… just like Cinderella wine (Wine Library) and WTSO (insert NJ based retailer name here - I forget)… so really, very little marginal cost to running it above and beyond their own retail shop / normal online channel…
I haven’t followed, so admittedly I wouldn’t be aware of that… was that recent though? Just came across this article from Oct 2012, which seems to indicate that they were connected at that time… (and explained the need for a new warehouse location):
but again, that’s a few months old so very good chance I’m not aware of more recent developments… anyway, sorry for the thread drift…
Last Bottle has not been around for very long so we don’t know if their model is sustainable or not. I am guessing they will survive because of their proximity to Napa, their numerous connections within the industry, simple business model and generally appearing to be savvy guys.
Due to my restaurant connections I can tell you there is still loads of inventory sitting around in various books that needs to get moved off. These deals have fluctuated wildly but have been too numerous to list since the economic collapse. With a recovering economy, I can see the surplus market drying up and the Lot18’s of the world going the way of the Dodo bird. I’d say it’s not just wine though: I don’t see how all these “deal” sites can survive particularly when bigger players with more muscle like Amazon are entering the market.
Yikes. The first rule of business is to always play with other peoples’ money. Look at Vinfolio. The founders allegedly personally guaranteed some aspects of the business and are the target of big lawsuits still making their way through the courts (Google “San Francisco Superior Court”, then “Vinfolio” in the search engine).
Welcome to the party, pal. I’m very familiar with a three year old negoce wine business with strong and sustained growth, positive cash flow, growing national distribution, successful exclusive product development with a regional branch of a high end national grocery, positioned and in process to do a lot more…and looking for capital that’s not friend or family stuff is like you’re asking to reanimate the dead. I guess this is what people mean when they say money’s tight out there. Geez.
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