Introducing “gamification” concepts to wine selling sounds almost outlandish, but AI e-commerce startup Underground Cellar has made a serious profit off of the process. Built from the ground up using proprietary AI, the startup is a community marketplace for wine lovers. The site offers free upgrades to private-stash and rare bottles from all across the nation, while their state-of-the-art “CloudCellar” lets them buy up to 500 bottles of wine and store them for later shipping.
“After seeing the harm that discounts were causing to wine brands I knew that the solution would be to drive excitement by upgrading customers’ purchases to more expensive, rare, and large-format bottles,” explains Underground Cellar’s CEO and Founder Jeffrey Shaw. “We bridged the gap between the way people purchase and experience wine through Underground Cellar’s innovative gamified bottle upgrade technology. Not only does this create an exciting customer experience, but it allows wineries of luxury brands to sell bottles online to influential tech-savvy buyers without resorting to brand-damaging discounts.”
“Gamification” refers to the use of elements traditionally used for game-playing like point-scoring in other areas of activity, in this case a wine marketplace. In Underground Cellar’s system they use a panel of wine experts to curate entire collections of wine, and group them based on themes, variety, and region. The startup’s data engines and AI models further build the experience by rewarding customers with valuable upgrades and rare bottle awards.
The site and system show immense promise, selling their millionth bottle at the tail end of a Series A funding round worth $12.5 million. This round had participation from Bling Capital and Golden Ventures with Ryan Moore, Co-Founder of round-leading company Accomplice, stating, “Our physical and digital worlds are colliding together like never before, changing commerce forever. I invested in Underground Cellar because they are on the forefront of this change, and are well-equipped to become the catalyst that drives it to new levels.”
Having moved past the millionth bottle sold milestone, one can only wonder what the founders will do next. Cleverly combining AI e-commerce of a consumer product with gamification was quite innovative—achieving a Series A puts the startup on a firm course that competitors for now may only be able to watch.
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