When Whitney and Chaz Gates’ annual sales more than quadrupled in less than a year, they credited their lead investor: Mark Cuban.
On Friday’s episode of ABC’s “Shark Tank,” the husband-and-wife duo said that Wondry, their Black-owned wine label, brought in $1.1 million in revenue over the previous 11 months.
That’s a noticeable jump from their last appearance on the show in November 2022, when they told investors that Wondry had $250,000 in 11 months of lifetime sales, including about $60,000 in profit. At the time, the couple’s pitch landed them $225,000 of Cuban’s money in exchange for 15% of the Dallas-based company.
Less than a year later, the results speak for themselves, they said on Friday’s episode.
“Before ‘Shark Tank,’ we were just a local Texas business,” said Whitney, Wondry’s CEO. “But after, we became a nationally recognized brand overnight.”
That exposure was only part of the formula, which also included an infrastructure investment and a networking connection that paid off. Here’s how Cuban’s $225,000 turned into $1.1 million in sales, according to the Gateses.
Investment, infrastructure and networking
Originally, Whitney and Chaz sought out an investor on “Shark Tank” because they were performing more manual labor than they preferred in their 1,400-square-foot facility. They wanted money to buy an automated bottling line, they said.
But then, two weeks after Cuban invested, he connected the co-founders to national alcohol distributor Southern Glazer’s, Chaz said. That helped Wondry land shelf space in restaurants, retailers and airlines across the country — meaning its production facility needed more than just a technology upgrade.
Today, Wondry operates from a 10,000 square-foot space, Chaz said. Its products appear in more than 400 stores nationwide, up from 50 retailers at the time of last year’s “Shark Tank” episode.
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In a sense, that’s a far cry from the company’s humble beginnings. The couple spent $100,000 of their own money, mostly from their savings, to launch Wondry in August 2021. They wanted to make a less pretentious wine that prioritized high-quality ingredients, they said last year.
On the other hand, the Gateses seemed well-positioned for a breakthrough. Only 1% of wine labels in the U.S. are owned by Black entrepreneurs, according to Wine Business Analytics. But Whitney, whose uncle was an amateur winemaker, did marketing for major beverage brands like The Coca-Cola Company. Chaz served as in-house counsel for a major tech company.
It all contributed to Cuban’s investment, he said on Friday’s episode.
“When you’re a Black winemaker, you’re a rarity,” said Cuban. “And as a rarity, their community looks up to them. And you compound that with them being successful and growing so quickly, they’re going to be encouraging entrepreneurs across the country.”
Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.”
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