As the coronavirus pandemic forced bars and restaurants across the country to shut down, Gary Vaynerchuk's Empathy Wines is making a big splash in the online wine business. Now, the startup has been acquired by alcohol giant Constellation Brands.
After just 18 months in production, founder and media personality Vaynerchuk told Cheddar it was the perfect time to sell Empathy.
"The reality is, Constellation's infrastructure allows me to deliver on my dream of making the best $20 wine in the world," he said.
Empathy Wines sold 15,000 cases in its first year, raking in more than $3.5 million. Now it joins an umbrella of brands under Constellation including Corona and Svedka. Robert Hanson, president of wine and spirits at Constellation Brands, said the company wants to capitalize on Empathy's strength in the digital wine sales space.
"Empathy is an incredible brand," he said. "They balance art and science in terms of how they build the brand in the marketplace."
The company's online success is not only attributable to "the deep understanding of how to do marketing in 2020," Vaynerchuk said, but also from his experience understanding customers' wants and needs regarding wines.
"I literally grew up in the wine business and stood on the wine store floor for almost two decades and interacted with people and really just had a real sense of where the palate was these days," he added. As a young man, Vaynerchuk worked in his family's wine shop.
The new deal, according to Hanson, will bring opportunities for both companies to collaborate without impeding Empathy's successful approach to marketing in the digital space.
"We'll keep Empathy as a standalone brand, obviously, to drive the growth that we think is possible with the Empathy Brand specifically. On the same score, leveraging Gary's partnership with me. We've known each other a long time and think quite similarly about business development," he said.
As more states pull back on reopening plans due to a surge in U.S. coronavirus cases, Constellation Brands' priorities remain online, Hanson noted.
"We're very much focused on making sure that we win in digital commerce. That's why this investment with Empathy was so critical," he said.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
It’s an annual tradition: the Fed’s banking ‘stress test.’ A year after the regional banking crisis, there are good reasons to make sure they’re prepped.
Summer is upon us, which means weddings, trips overseas, and trips to see Taylor Swift. Avoid a “Cruel Summer” with these budget-friendly tips and tricks.
While Nvidia's meteoric rise led it to briefly dethrone Microsoft as the world's biggest public company, there's a lot more going on in this market than A.I.
