Happiness Quotient Wine Shop

What raises your Happiness Quotient more than wine? What's even better than that? Doing it while simultaneously saving the planet and your own body.

 

Happiness Quotient Wine Shop, or HQ Wine Shop, for short, is an online-only wine retailer serving the state of CA that is comprised of vegan-only wines, that are small-production, limited-quantity, with a focus on organic and biodynamic farming. It is woman-founded and woman-run. Most people don't even know that wine can NOT be vegan! A lot of vegans don't even know that. But many are fined and/or filtered with either animal products or egg whites. By picking products that are farmed organically, you also aren't getting pesticides and other chemicals into your body- a huge reason why many people get hangovers.

 With most Californians working from home, and all-around staying home to stay safe, online e-commerce is the way of the foreseeable future. However, online sales from wine were ALREADY booming, even before the coronavirus hit the US. Wine Sales from online retailers were $2.6 billion last year and have risen 22% each year, according to Bloomberg News. Wine.com had revenue of $150 million in 2019 alone.

 

During the pandemic, sales were seen to jump 62% in that second week of March 2020 alone and local stores saw a 300% increase in delivery orders.

 With everyone staying home, it is anticipated that more and more people will be continuing to order their favorite items online. We anticipate to increase wine club memberships by 15% each month and by the 10th month of being business to be selling 75% on our online inventory, which includes 10 rotating selections. In this 10th month in business, we anticipate starting to make revenue after expenses, by selling 75% of our inventory and having 50 wine club subscriptions. And it will only increase from there.

 We mark-up wines for retail at 1.5 times the wholesale cost. We always factor in packaging and shipping costs. If we happen to receive a case discount from the vendor, we will pass this savings on to the consumer. Wine Clubs are a fixed price so that does not change, whether we have a less expensive wine for that month, or a more expensive wine. We will make sure that no wine exceeds the wine club price, so the membership will constantly make us revenue.

We are not launched yet, as we need funding for licensing, initial start-up inventory, and marketing. What we do have is the domain name, a website, and Instagram/Twitter/Facebook handles (@hqwineshop). We are looking forward to the marketing of our brand!

Shawn has 27 years of experience in the hospitality industry, with a large part of that focused on the beverage industry, most notably wine. She was in wine sales, where she took fledgling territories and has provable rapid growth of sales for each company she worked for. She has been a wine steward, a wine buyer and every other position in a restaurant. She has worked for some of the most celebrated chefs and restauranteurs in Los Angeles and opened twelve restaurants that were on the 101 Best Restaurant List by Jonathan Gold. She is no stranger to creating revenue.

Happiness Quotient Wine Shop, with its monthly wine club and monthly rotating selections, will be a fun and exciting way for either people who are already well-versed in wine or people who are brand new to it and want to learn about new varietals and geeky selections to pair with their local takeout or to wow their friends. It will be a place that people will be eager to see what the new month brings as we refresh the site at the first of the month with new wines. We believe that the site will be a hit with women 25-55 years old, with its bright, happy sunflower packaging and fun bottle hangtags with handwritten notes about what the wine is and what to pair it with. We also believe men will be loving the wine club as a cool gift for their wives and girlfriends for holidays and birthdays! Obviously, the site is not just for women! We think men also want to be cautious about what they put in their bodies and will be looking for great, obscure vegan wines as well.

The end goal here is to, in addition to our online business, have a brick-and-mortar where we will be a small storefront with a rustic, bright, welcoming vibe that has a small tasting bar where a couple of times a week, people can come for tasting events that will feature different wines from all over the world, that are also paired with small bites from local, notable vegan chefs, e.g. Chef Tara Panzone of Pura Vita. This is what we will be headed towards in the next few years, after establishing a solid online presence.

HQ is committed to giving back to the community once we start making a profit. We are committed to giving to different charities and will post them on our site when we are finally in a position to do so.

We are looking forward to starting our shop! We thank you in advance for your time and look forward to working with you!