Imagine combining your favourite type of wine with a special occasion or event. Now imagine personalising this wine to make this occasion more memorable.
That’s what It’s Your Bottle does for you. They provide handmade personalised high-quality wine to suit any occasion. Personalised wine bottles can also work as an excellent way of introducing your business to clients.
The company founded by Briony Beckerley and Daniel Cope started focusing on wedding celebrations, but nowadays they cater for all types of events.
Whether you are celebrating a wedding, birthday or even providing a gift to a loved one, It’s Your Bottle will provide exceptional wines at affordable prices. We talked to Daniel to know a bit more about the service and its products.
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Midlands Traveller: To start with, I’d like to know a little bit about your professional background.
Daniel Cope: It’s Your Bottle is a business run by Briony and me, Daniel. Briony worked in a variety of roles from Finance to Corporate Sales.
While I began as a Production Manager but then moved on to a Programme Manager within the Aviation Industry. It’s Your Bottle started as a part-time business that they worked on during their spare time.
MT: How and when did you come up with the idea of business?
DC: The idea for personalised wine began when we started to plan our own wedding, as any other couple would do, we started researching venues and decor.
But we wanted our day to be different so began to explore the market of personalised and unique favours. After coming across personalised wine glasses we had the idea of creating personalised wine bottles, bringing us to the final conclusion of personalised wine.
Briony has always been creative and so decided to start designing. Although It’s Your Bottle was originally created for the wedding industry, it has since grown to specialise in all events and occasions.
MT: What is the concept of your business?
DC: It’s Your Bottle is built on the concept that each bottle of wine is as individual as the Person or Business purchasing it and therefore, we make sure that each request is catered for.
We want every customer to have a great wine with a beautiful logo, we have had amazing feedback from each of our customers.
MT: What is the biggest challenge of a business like yours?
DC: As we are a gifting company, the demand is VERY seasonal. Both individuals and businesses looking to purchase Personalised Wine at Christmas time and on other special occasions throughout the year.
We are also constantly creating new designs, trying to ensure that each design will appeal to different types of customers, so customer research is important to ensure that people will love our designs!
MT: What is the type of clientele you usually reach with this kind of service?
DC: We have found that the typical demographic is women aged between 25 – 50, although this didn’t come as a surprise!
We have found that future brides make up a high percentage of the customer base.
When it comes to business clients, we have found that businesses that sell large value items such as Estate Agents and Car dealers are some of the best companies to approach for our type of service.
We are still in the early days with our approach to corporate wine but have found that we have received a lot of interest so far.
MT: What is unique about your service?
DC: We believe that the quality of the product and customer service is of utmost importance, and this philosophy has served us well due to the high percentage of repeat customers 🙂
The personalised wine has been created to allow our customers to adapt all wording to suit their needs.
MT: How is e-commerce important to the success of your business?
DC: E-Commerce serves as the foundation of our Business, we have found that we can reach the largest audience through the internet. Being able to funnel potential customers through Google, Facebook and other social media platforms is highly effective.
Instagram has been very successful for us due to the visually appealing aspect of our products.
MT: Do you think about expanding your business internationally? Please, explain.
DC: We do sell Personalised labels through the Etsy Platform, which exposes us to an international audience. During Christmas, we sell up to 70% of our labels internationally.
Etsy has a no-sell of alcohol policy, so we are unable to send our personalised wine through this platform although our labels are still popular with international customers. We would ideally look to expand further within the UK before we try to set a base internationally.
MT: What is your advice for someone who wants to start a business?
DC: In our view, the hardest part of starting a business is getting the first paying customer. 80% of the effort is required up front to get your products to market.
The most important (and daunting) step is getting your idea from a concept in your mind to an actual product or service.
MT: What are the new plans for It’s Your Bottle?
DC: Our short-term plans are to gain exposure and expand within the Personalised Wine market, for both individuals and businesses. In the longer term, we will be looking into offering a larger selection of alcohol and drinks, such as beers and spirits.
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