The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2011–2023
Winc built a modern wine subscription — then filed Chapter 11 a year after going public
The LA wine club raised tens of millions to personalize bottle recommendations, grew fast, then went bankrupt just over a year after its public listing.
Winc · 2022-12-01
What happened
Winc was a Los Angeles-based direct-to-consumer wine club founded in 2011. Customers took a palate-profile quiz and received tailored bottles delivered to their door, and the company built its own brands on top of the subscription. It raised tens of millions of dollars and became a certified B Corp, one of the most visible names in the D2C wine subscription space.
The model spent heavily on marketing and on personalizing each member's experience, but the cost of acquiring and serving a subscriber is hard to beat with a wine bottle's margin. Emphasizing growth over unit economics meant the subscription only worked while new money kept covering the shortfall.
Winc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2022, just over a year after going public, listing just over $50 million in assets against roughly $3.4 million in principal debt. Its assets were acquired in early 2023 by Project Crush, LLC, an affiliate of AMASS Brands, and the subscription business later continued under new ownership within the Full Glass Wine Co. roll-up.
Why it happened
- Customer acquisition outpaced customer value: heavy marketing on a wine margin that could not cover the cost of winning each member.
- Personalization is expensive to run: tailoring recommendations and logistics for a low-margin product stacked costs on every order.
- Going public did not fix the model: the listing added scrutiny and debt but the subscription still lost money on its own economics.
The lesson
A subscription that spends more to acquire each member than the member pays is a machine for shrinking. Personalization was a promise that cost tens of millions to keep.
Aftermath
Winc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2022, just over a year after its public listing, holding just over $50 million in assets and about $3.4 million in principal debt. In early 2023 its operating assets were acquired by Project Crush, LLC, an affiliate of AMASS Brands, and the brand and its subscription service continued under the new ownership, later folded into the Full Glass Wine Co. roll-up alongside Wine Insiders.
Sources
- VinePair, 2022 — Winc Wine Club Files for Bankruptcy One Year After Going Public (wine club Winc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday, just over a year after the online wine club went public; in the voluntary filing Winc is listed as holding just over $50 million in assets)
- Retail Dive, 2023 — Amass Brands acquires operating assets of wine company Winc (the deal came less than two months after Winc filed for bankruptcy; the wine-delivery-subscription company filed with $3.4 million due in principal debt)
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