(re) Introducing The Wine DTC Vendor Matrix

It’s that time of year again and in conjunction with the SVB Annual Report I’m releasing the updated landscape of DTC vendors. So first, it got a whole new name thanks to the marketing & design help from Erica Gomez. This new format gives us a lot of room to grow and helps us cluster companies towards their specialties.

Some notes about the Matrix:

1. We only include live vendors that have actual customers.
2. We’ve collapsed a few groups and expanded a few others but the entire vendor list moved from 71 to 94.
3. Only two vendors live in two locations (WineDirect in Fulfillment and Full Stack Commerce and Orion in Accounting and Full Stack Commerce).
4. We do include international vendors if they target the US winery market.
5. In the Full Stack DTC group, Commerce7 came in strong in 2018 acquiring major winery customers like Constellation and Opus One as well as wineries that lead in digital usage like Twisted Oak. This is a strong sign of the maturity of their product and, after today’s announcement of live and future features (https://youtu.be/QdDrdu00QY8), they are truly in pole position from an innovation and enterprise customer view point. Also strongly joining them in 2018 was Truvi as Stephen Mutch rebranded after partnering with some of the most seasoned professionals in winery DTC commerce also putting them in the front of the pack from a support and services position. This was especially relevant since other major incumbents had outages and other problems throughout the year (Recent WineDirect Incident & 2018 outage history, Recent Sovos Incident).
6. The total vendors in the DTC Commerce arena (On Premise POS, Ecom & Club, Full Stack solutions) has gone up to 28 vendors. That’s up only 4 from last year. We’ve seen no movement on vendor consolidation in 2018.
7. There was ZERO vendor additions in the accounting or the pure play POS vendors. These are stagnant categories in the DTC Vendor Matrix.
8. The dearth of software choices in the compliance category is still a pain point.
9. We’re seeing growth in the DTC Services arena but it is still lean for the industry’s need for those expert execution of services. This dearth of vendors poses a real problem for the industry.

Next year this chart will be updated at www.dtcmatrix.com where the team plan’s to add objective context about the vendors and tools for actual customers to rate them.

Regarding the very busy and clustered category of DTC software vendors (commerce), a group of major wineries or a winery association like Napa Valley Vintners should meet, agree on the three key features they need for the year, and consolidate their business to one or two vendors with the understanding that if they have poor service, don’t build those features, and don’t work, they will move to another solution. This collective bargaining will bring them more innovation versus balkanizing their dollars across so many small vendors.

Complete Listing Of DTC Vendors

Accounting

1. AMS
2. Quickbooks
3. Navision (ERP)
4. JD Edwards (ERP)
5. WIMS (ERP)

On Premise (POS)

1. Revel
2. Square
3. Quickbooks
4. RMS
5. Microworks

Ecom & Club

1. VineSpring
2. Cultivate Systems
3. Figure Commerce
4. Vines OS

Full Stack DTC Solutions (Ecom-Club-POS)

1. AMS
2. WineDirect
3. VinSuite
4. Truvi
5. Orderport
6. eCellars
7. bLoyal
8. Captina
9. GrapeGears
10. Active Club Solutions
11. VinNow
12. Blackboxx
13. Cru
14. Xudle
15. Orion
16. Troly
17. Bloom
18. TrueCommerce
19. Commerce7

Compliance

1. Shipcompliant
2. DH Compliance Services
3. Compli
4. Holtzclaw Compliance

Fulfillment

1. WineDirect
2. Copper Peak
3. Wine Shipping
4. Pack N Ship
5. VinGo
6. WineCo
7. Vinoshipper
8. Winelogistics

Specialty Fulfillment

1. Premium Wine Delivery
2. VinDelivery
3. Gliding Eagle
4. Vinum 55

Email Service Providers

1. Constant Contact
2. Vertical Response
3. MailChimp
4. Campaign Monitor
5. Emma
6. Active Campaign
7. Kajabi

Social Media Management

1. HootSuite
2. Brand24
3. Sprout Social
4. Falcon
5. AgoraPulse
6. Sendible

Reservation Systems

1. Tock
2. CellarPass
3. Vinovisit
4. Wine Routes

DTC Full Service Agencies

1. Wine Glass Marketing
2. Virtual Vines
3. Tin Sheets
4. Virtual Vines
5. Ensemble Marketing Group
6. Lunabean Media

DTC Specialty Agencies

Digital Marketing

1. Cork and Fork
2. AngelSmith
3. VinBound

DTC Strategy

1. Vingdirect

DTC Coaching

1. Napa Valley Wine Academy
2. Wise Academy
3. DTC Wine Workshops
4. In short DTC
5. Success Strategies

Website Design and Tools

1. Wine Works
2. Outshinery
3. Kreck Design
4. Offset
5. Wine & the Web

Full Stack Marketing Agencies that do DTC

1. R/West.com
2. Benson Marketing
3. Balzac Marketing
4. Colangelo PR
5. 5Forests
6. Gradient

Business Intelligence

1. Emetry
2. Enolytics
3. Customer Vineyard
4. Dash

*Disclosure — I know and have worked with almost everyone on this list and will probably do so at Emetry and in the future. Many of them are friends and/or colleagues.