Last Updated on May 12, 2022 by

Paul Mabray is considered to be the wine industry’s foremost futurist and thought leader. He is the CEO of Pix, a digital platform harnessing the power and potential of digital tools and methodologies to move the wine industry into the future. Paul pushed wine into the digital landscape with his work at Inertia Beverage Group, now WineDirect, and VinTank.

Paul sat on the Board of Directors for Emetry.io and was a Group Director for W2O Group, among other executive roles. He began his college journey as a writer and working in sales.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• Paul Mabray explains how Pix is a discovery lens for wine varietals
• Combining the human element with machine learning to produce custom wine collections
• How can an online platform elevate your brand sales?
• Paul describes merchandising wines for consumer access
• Why the consumer journey is crucial for brand discovery
• Paul discusses why statistics and analytics are advocates for brands

In this episode with Paul Mabray

When there is a world of wine to explore, where can consumers engage and discover your brand? Is it possible to integrate your brand on a digital platform and emerge as a leader in the wine industry? 

Paul Mabray helps consumers navigate the ocean of wine to discover the perfect bottle. His tightly organized digital platform is centered around helping stimulate market sales — while matchmaking consumers with the right brand. His innovative platform introduces brands to consumers in an empowering and convenient way. 

Join Drew Hendricks and Bianca Harmon on this episode of Legends Behind the Craft, as they sit down with Paul Mabray, CEO of Pix, to discuss evolving and personalizing the consumers’ wine journey. Paul talks about merging two frontiers to create a wine search engine, the benefits of an online marketing platform, and brand discovery through effective marketing. 

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Barrels Ahead
• Drew Hendricks on LinkedIn  
• Bianca Harmon on LinkedIn
• Paul Mabray on LinkedIn   
• Paul Mabray’s email: paul@pix.wine
• Paul Mabray on Twitter 
• Pix Wine Discovery 
• The Drop on Pix  
• Lawrence Francis on Legends Behind the Craft
• Cheryl Murphy Durzy on Legends Behind the Craft
• Zach Kamphuis on Legends Behind the Craft
• Ben Salisbury on Legends Behind the Craft
• Robert Parker Wine Advocate     
• Commerce7

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Barrels Ahead.

Barrels Ahead is a wine and craft marketing agency that propels organic growth by using a powerful combination of content development, Search Engine Optimization, and paid search.

At Barrels Ahead, we know that your business is unique. That’s why we work with you to create a one-of-a-kind marketing strategy that highlights your authenticity, tells your story, and makes your business stand out from your competitors.

Our team at Barrels Ahead helps you leverage your knowledge so you can enjoy the results and revenue your business deserves.

So, what are you waiting for? Unlock your results today!

To learn more, visit barrelsahead.com or email us at hello@barrelsahead.com to schedule a strategy call.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:03

Welcome to the Legends Behind the Craft podcast where we feature top leaders in the wine and craft beverage industry with your host Drew Hendricks. Now let’s get started with the show.

Drew Hendricks  0:19  

Drew Thomas Hendricks here. I’m the host of the Legends Behind the Craft podcast where I talk with leaders in the wine and craft beverage industry. Past guests of Legends Behind the Craft include Lawrence Francis, of Interpreting Wine, Cheryl Durzy of LibDib, Zach Kamphuis of Commerce7. If you haven’t listened to these yet, be sure to check them out and subscribe. Today’s episode is sponsored by Barrels Ahead. At Barrels Ahead, we work with you to implement a one of a kind marketing strategy. And that highlights your authenticity, tells your story and connects you with your ideal customers. In short, we help wineries and craft beverage producers unlock their story to unleash their revenue. Go to barrelsahead.com today to learn more. Speaking of Barrels Ahead today I’ve got Bianca Harmon on the show. He’s one of our direct consumer marketing strategists. How’s it going bud Bianca?

Bianca Harmon  1:07  

Going good. Excited to talk with Paul today and really learn more about Pix.

Drew Hendricks  1:13  

Yes, yes. Today’s guest is Paul Mabray CEO of Pixs. Paul’s considered to be one of the wine industry’s foremost futurists and thought leaders. Now Paul was on the show. Early last summer, we talked about the upcoming launch of Pix. And I’m excited to catch up with him today to learn about the latest. Actually the latest about the platform now that’s out in the wild. Welcome to the show, Paul.

Paul Mabray  1:35  

Thanks for having me, my friend. It’s good to be here and see you guys. Soon. We have to have a drink in personnel. The the pandemic is kind of going away, right?

Drew Hendricks  1:44  

Yes, absolutely. Now you you the pandemics out away. And you just got back from from what I see on social and amazing trip to South Africa.

Paul Mabray  1:52  

Yeah, I’m a big fan of the country. It’s a long trip, by the way. As a keynote speaker for conference. It’s been delayed by two and a half years. So it was kind of long overdue. You know, talking about, you know, tourism and talking about DTC, actually, Bianca and, you know, part of the story was God, it’s a long ways to get to South Africa. So when you get somebody here, you better really make you take care of them. And

Drew Hendricks  2:19  

I’ve tried to plan a couple surf trips there logistically from the west coast. It’s a it’s a commitment.

Paul Mabray  2:24  

It’s a committee’s 30 hours total travel, you know, not kind of airports and car rides and stuff like that. So it was a long, long trip.

Bianca Harmon  2:32  

I have a lot of friends that go out there, though. I mean, I have a girlfriend too. She grew up in South Africa. And so they do it. They do it twice a year. And they’ve never I’ve never really I didn’t ever know it was actually that long of a trip.

Paul Mabray  2:34  

It’s so amazing. It’s so beautiful. It’s so amazing. The you know, it’s it’s one of the most amazing wine countries, the Milky Way is beautiful. It’s like someone painted the sky and center in the mountains shoot up and it’s just a gorgeous country of gorgeous people with gorgeous wine.

Drew Hendricks  3:00  

And what what’s that picture? I saw you swim with sharks?

Paul Mabray  3:04  

Yeah. So this I haven’t been back to South Africa for 21 years. I was 21 years ago, I went and came and last time I was there. They’re like, Hey, you want to go great white shark diving. And I was like, I do but. And I didn’t do it. I regretted it for 21 years. So I was down there. And I texted my wife. I said, I’m going shark diving. And she goes, You’re kidding. And I’m like, No, I’m going to shark dam and great white shark diving. So I sent her a picture. And I did I went great white shark diving. Unfortunately, the great whites are hiding right now because I don’t know it was about three maybe four years ago, two orcas moved into the neighborhood are hunting the sharks and they eat the great white. So the great whites are hiding and sometimes you get them and sometimes you don’t. But we had big copper sharks, which was pretty cool. And it was amazing. The one thing they don’t tell you and I’ll share this for when you go if it’s on your bucket list is what you don’t think I mean, it’s cool starts there, you’re in a cage, you know eight people the teeth and it’s in fear, you’re but you forget that they are pouring chum over the top of your head to get just this fish oil gunk.

Drew Hendricks  4:12  

Again, think about that. I mean, I see him out in the wildlife scene being peaceful, but I guess you’re like create a feeding frenzy above your head

Paul Mabray  4:19  

when they want to who they want to bring them there. Yeah, ready to eat. And then they want to you know, see the mouth open and everything. So it’s free, but it was worth it. It was amazing.

Drew Hendricks  4:29  

Yeah. Wow. That’s pretty amazing. I’ve seen a few out in the wild, but not in a cage. Thankfully, nothing that close.

Paul Mabray  4:37  

Yeah, it was close. I mean, there was one that got its head through both the cage but because he can open his mouth and it’s like,

Drew Hendricks  4:44  

I was cool. It was scary. It sounds fantastic. It was good. Sounds great. So South Africa was a success.

Paul Mabray  4:51  

South Africa was an amazing success. It’s great to hear. You know the stories and it’s so wonderful to another country and see the amount of wine that we don’t see The United States in the quantity of really boutique interesting stuff around the world. And this also was reassuring for us. You know, our story is to help wines be discovered, and to help wineries, you know, help consumers find their wines. And that’s really Pix’s job right? Discover the wines discover ways to buy the wines discovered in one spot. And it was really heartfelt and warm. To have these wives, they were so thankful for you because now we can tell consumers in America to go to Pix and they can find my South African Shannon block, because I can’t tell them where to go otherwise, because I don’t know where I’m at. Yeah, it was like, it was very heartwarming for us to have that story arc.

Drew Hendricks  5:35  

Oh, that’s fantastic. Yeah. So the idea, though, so for the people that are new that may not be familiar with the platform. Tell us a little bit about Pix.

Paul Mabray  5:43  

Yeah, Pix is the world’s first and largest wine discovery platform. We are the second largest selection of wine in the world. Soon to be the first by the end of the summer. That means we have the most wines on our platform. We launched on January 12. It Yeah, I know, it’s a year and two months since we, you know, which is record time. We have over 5000 wine cellars of wineries, retailers on the platform that we grow by 50 a week. So we are at an explosive growth on that one. And it’s everyone from constellation to Opus ones, everyone from Matthias into. McCann sellers. It’s your SoCal on to Total Wine. It’s backroom wines to, you know, snackies. It’s the whole spectrum. And our job is really simple. Our job is to help consumers discover one and discover means discover the one I’m looking forward through a search engine discover ways to by the way, which is uniquely us like do I want to buy local do I want to buy it fast do I want to buy directly from the producer, we want to help them have the choice and then discover other ones to buy. And that discovery lens is what really has made us special. And if you see on our site, unlike other platforms, we are slicing and dicing curating the world’s wine in a million different ways, whether it’s wines with dogs on the label, or volcanic wines over $100, or wines for Masters of Wine under 100 cases. I mean, I don’t care. My job is to make it so that I get the signposts I can find the wines.

Drew Hendricks  7:13  

That’s fine. I like the discovery lens. That’s a great word is always, always very candid about being the the Google of wine search. And a lot of Google searches why it’s so successful is based on intent. Yes, right. Sometimes you may want the cheapest version of the line mitt. Sometimes it’s just the closest one or the quickest, the one that can have access to because you need that one tonight, where you’re trying to send it to someone.

Paul Mabray  7:37  

Yeah. And we purposely chose even though we get that moniker, the Google for why, you know, I’ve been in the wine industry very long time I’ve been in the tech industry. You know, Google is one of the most amazing tools in human history. was great for finding anything you’re looking for. It’s amazing for that. But what Google what’s good, not good for finding what you’re not looking for? Or if you don’t know what you’re looking for helping? Right? That’s why discovery needs to be part of that equation, especially in an industry like wine. You know, how can I help introduce you or show you or guide you? Maybe you think you want Cabernet? That’s a big term. You search on our site right now. Cabernet Sauvignon? I think you have 59,000 offers that’s a pretty you’re lost you kept it how many days would it take to go through 59,000 means you sort of slice and dice and go best price highest rated, it still gets you down to 1000s? How do I make it smaller and easier for you to say, Oh, I like Cabernets, under $20 impress my wife or you know Cabernets to share with my boss candidates directly from the wind.

Drew Hendricks  8:40  

Yeah, find what you’re not like, I love that. That’s very, that’s good. So that’s it, I see that you have got some curated, like kind of curated selections there.

Paul Mabray  8:49  

Yeah, that those collections are really important for us. And the collections are there. They’re all through the site, you’re gonna see them exploding. And actually, we take all of our learnings not from the wine industry, which is a really, we look at the big companies and surface super longtail products, right? And super longtail products. There’s only four real categories of super longtail products. And wine is the only consumer goods. So super longtail proximate books, music, movies, there’s millions of types of books in Bollywood and are hundreds of 1000s at least right? Knowing that piece, you know, and how do they slice and dice and make it easier for consumer who’s going to go to audible.com and figure out an audible book

Drew Hendricks  9:30  

or on a Netflix all the different you don’t even know the nation’s it’s so much

Paul Mabray  9:35  

to sort through. So we take our learning and our leads from people from those companies and apply it to wine. So for example, collections are a great example of that. You know, if you go to audible.com, they make it smaller, right? They say okay, science fiction, but even so big science fiction with zombies and science fiction with zombies by bipoc authors, okay, now that’s big enough for me to figure out where I want to go right. And then we have the tags that are on the lines, we took that from Netflix, if you hover over a Netflix movie, it’ll tell you three things about the movie, I’ll tell you rom com sci fi, adventure documentary, dark, gritty comedy, you know all that, we do the same thing. We’re trying to help convert a shopper to a buyer. And we want to give them quick signals so that they can interested. And if not, they can move on quickly, because we don’t have a lot of time. That’s the only finite resource in the human condition.

Drew Hendricks  10:24  

We all we all the same time, it kind of seems like some people have more, but I know that’s not me. Yeah, so for wine stores, they don’t you’re doing all this work for them. They’re, they’re putting the wines up there, you’re kind of aggregating and they fit into the platform, how just under that particular one category.

Paul Mabray  10:44  

So we believe that the wine industry has been locked behind paywalls that discovery has to be open and accessible to everyone. So for winery or retailers free to participate, you just have to give us a feed, you link to it, we want you to be discovered. And we actually show based upon four factors from the producer, the lowest price, the nearest and the fastest. And what makes that very different is everybody has a chance to actually make a sale. If you look at all the other platforms in history paradise, it was only about price, the lowest price, the second lowest price, the third lowest price, affordable price. So as you know, let’s use Prashant from backroom lines, backroom lines is a great local retailer here in Napa an amazing selection, why they’re never going to be the low price leader. Ever, ever, ever. Suddenly, they are at the top of the search because they’re nearest to me when I’m searching are nearest to Bianca, she might have i Gary’s in St. Alena, which is near her, right, they’re not always gonna be the low price leader, right? Or the producer will never be in the search term on another company, because they’re never the lowest price. We give them all swing at the plate. And the consumer gets to make the choice. You know what, I do want to see this? No, I don’t want it the cheapest. I want to get in the car and driving habits tonight for dinner, I don’t want to wait and we can pay shipping. Or you know, I care about the producer. I like provenance. I really care about how that ball has been aged and I want to buy directly from the person. We are I forgot Drew’s birthday. I know he loves us wine. I’m willing to pay a premium and way more money. So it gets it today to make them happy because I’m absent minded professor.

Drew Hendricks  12:20  

Yes. That makes sense. That makes sense. So how I want to backup but I also want to back up. Tell me about this launch. Like, that was such a quick timeframe from the concept to beta launch in January. I was Florida. Yeah.

Paul Mabray  12:38  

Yeah, you dark circles under our eyes, for sure. I mean, but you know, this has obviously been germinating. For some time being a technical insider, I knew where a lot of the bodies were buried and how to make it go faster. But you know, there’s a lot of work still to be done. I mean, we will have geo awareness goes live this week. So we can actually show the closest it’s going like, so that’s taken. You know, we don’t have we don’t have content for this vendor specific yet. Because already we have, you know, 5.5 million wines in the database. Imagine spending $1 per wine to put the content in, that would be like $5.5 million, it goes in the garbage can, right? It’s it’s a pretty ridiculous spin. So we love the job because the job is really helping emulate human. And actually, if you look at us in our cars, we believe the Ultimate Match is a combination between human and machine, not the other way around. You cannot replace that human layer of smartness, machines are dumb for the most part. So you know, our collections are human generated. The tags are WC T students plus the teaching machine at a tag. Our recommended wines are a WC T two students plus saying I know this wine and it tastes like this. Because you can’t break wine into pieces and put it back together again to get the flavor because every blood red wine has BlackBerry cookies and cherry and every white wine has lemon, vanilla, and not everyone but you know, those qualities, you can sniff a lot of wines.

Drew Hendricks  14:08  

And that human element is something that from the start. I mean, you have you have an amazing content on the site. Yeah. And you’ve separated it to something called the drop. Yeah. Which was brilliant. Can some brilliant articles on there? What was that? I mean that. Talk to me about the drops a little bit.

Paul Mabray  14:26  

Yeah, so you know, discovery is layers of different things. And that’s the key right and helping introduce you to wines in different ways. So maybe it maybe you’re a budget buyer. That’s why it’s under $20 is a key component help you find your path. Maybe you’re on a really interesting wine journey. And there’s different ways to do that. And content is one of those inspirational vehicles. But it’s also our way to help the understand how to empower other content creators, right so the content we do is kind of our sandbox. The drop is independently journalist, the only part of the company I know advantage, right? They write like a journalist. They check rates of church and state, but when they write an article about why it leads back to pick, so we learn how to do that. And that’s why we have the Robert Parker deal. Yes, so our job is to close the loop. That’s my only job as a platform is to help close the loop and help introduce new lines. And part of closing the loop is helping either a producer, an agency like yourself or a content provider, when they talk about a Y when they advertise a wine when they’re trying to help the consumer find a wine. I bring it together. And the drop does that initially for us, and He does great articles to help inspire people through that discovery journal, but also helps us learn how I can go to a blogger how I can talk to Frank Morgan writing articles how I can do Joe Roberts one wine to say, hey, whenever you blog about this wine, or Alder, yerba who’s on our board of advisors, LinkedIn Pix so we can help the consumer buy it after you made them. And because we’re this ever feeling perpetual store, it serves the customer, whether you’re in St. Alena or Baltimore, whether you’re in Boston or in Austin, we help.

Drew Hendricks  16:08  

That’s great. How you mentioned agencies, how does it How does an agency like barrels ahead? How will we work with wineries? And we’re helping them with Facebook, we’re helping them with Google, we’re helping them their whole online presence. How does the agency fit into your Pix? Model?

Paul Mabray  16:24  

Yeah, it’s great question. So a couple of things. First of all, as the discovery platform is making all these partnerships with bloggers whenever you want to make sure that they have their highest relevance, and best organic search or best availability to be found on Pix. Right? That’s, that’s, so whether you are out there partnering with influencers to drive them to that the site, you know, or or making sure that they’re kind of got their content is filled out completely, or that we’ve made sure that their tags that they they rise higher in the search results. And that’s one piece that kind of organic, you know, and then it kind of forced into two categories, right. One is, if it’s a DTC only one, we just want to make sure that you have enough information to fix that we are okay this is a female winemaker, it’s 100 cases, they make biodynamic regenerative, you know, there’s a million ways to help us understand what’s special about that wine to help organize them to make the world smaller. Right, from a DTC perspective, this is only available at the winery. That’s a great one. Right? You know, because if we could feature that is why it’s only available at wineries in St. Helena, using that example, right, or Rutherford. The other way, though, is really interesting. As you know, agencies like yourself are not able to do effective marketing to drive in market sales. Like where when you a Facebook ad, can you stimulate a retailer? You can’t because you can’t send it directly to one retailer. Because it’s illegal, because in tight house laws, you could send it to Pix, and we’ll get it to that retailer, I promise you when our job is to make sure we’re stocking that one and making sure we have enough retailers across the country for the ones that you represent as an agency. So let’s say you came in, let’s call Paul’s wine. Are you representing me? You would go to picking like, Hey, Paul, I’m representing possible some tuples in that way. I’m not representing Paul’s winery, can you make sure that we have enough coverage where they’re in the markets that we at least have a retailer in every state or retail in every major, major metropolitan or 10 retailers in the state, make sure that they are properly filled out merchandise, because we’re gonna go buy ads, or even put an ad on their website saying, avail go find these wines, it Pix that wine, and because they’re never in the middle of the transaction, I’m the ultimate helper. I’m not an extra layer. I’m a I’m an optimizer, it’s really a special place to be in the world.

Drew Hendricks  18:35  

That’s interesting. So like it, like a conduit type. Yeah.

Paul Mabray  18:38  

So I like go to fitzer wind.com. Right. Now, if you go to fencer one, try to buy the Sharpie on fencer linebacker, they’ll give you this retail locator that’s clumsy and not helpful. Imagine how elegant it would be is if you send it to pix.wine that says, here’s the nearest here’s the fastest, here’s the producer. And here’s the source price, right, and we have hundreds of retailers in there to help them find that line.

Drew Hendricks  19:01  

So that would be like a three tier helping wineries within the tier system promote themselves. I was talking to Ben Salisbury, Salisbury creative about kind of working with through the three tier system when we were talking about Pix the other week.

Paul Mabray  19:14  

Yeah, then this is very well for that because we are really tightly organized around helping stimulate market sales in a way and even even working with ACC you can say we’re spending this money online and they can go to the retail and say look at the way we’re staying alive. Try to drive traffic to you keep our shelf stop keep us on the shelf because we are working hard to help stimulate sales. And it hasn’t been possible prior to Pix. Where else could you send the traffic to there’s no one else except for maybe blind searcher but no one else. And even then the problem with that is if you send a white searcher there’s a paywall. You have to be a subscriber to see all the arms are free for the consumer free for the wine cellar, and that’s what makes us special. Perfect.

Drew Hendricks  19:53  

What about a smaller winery that just wants to sell direct to consumer? Yeah, like I said may not be involved. The three tier system so first

Paul Mabray  20:01  

of all, getting a link to Pix quad was a great example. Or Meteor beings, right? They’re mostly b2c or my wife and daughter 100%, etc, making sure that we’re integrated and and we’re integrated almost every major e-commerce platform and making sure that the content is filled out and making sure you’re telling us stories that we can rotate on our homepage. Different searches, this collections are all over the site. So if you go to the New Zealand searches result page right now, there’s like, cool climate surace from New Zealand there’s, you know, the other Pino GRI, you know, look, you know, we help the slicer reach up, even referred, right, there’s so many wines in Rutherford, how do you make it small, you know, great wines over 100 points. Cool, as you’ve never heard of overlooked under oath, I think, you know, but you get the there’s a spectrum. And our job is to help the consumer, that’s my number one job is to help guide them. Yeah, so that’s how you dealt with small, make sure they’re integrated with Pix, it’s free for them to list. And then we’re filling

Drew Hendricks  20:55  

out I’m, I’ve not done this yet. But we’re filling it out just like a social profile on Facebook, like maybe some bios in there and make sure they’re

Paul Mabray  21:03  

even easier. Yeah, you can do that. You can add that you can enhance it that’s free to do but for their for their site, you just say e-commerce platform, allow Pix to integrate with them or give them a Google Shopping fee, which is the lowest way Google shopping feed is the international standard. If you can make a Google shopping feed, you can be on Pix.

Drew Hendricks  21:21  

Sure. And then just making sure it’s all filled out. Yes, we talked about enhancing it back in July when we it was still in the pre beta. Big Ideas phase. You talked about almost like an ad model, like a Google ad model where you could pay where producers and wineries could pay to have their wines elevated or featured.

Paul Mabray  21:40  

Yeah, so it’d be like a cool app that’s gonna be out for another 18 months view. Okay, this is a ways away. It’s a big model, that contextual targeted marketing, whether you’re saying boost my wine up, boost my offer, if so shows to the front of the line, you know, like a fast passes the way I’ve described it, for wineries to kind of understand, you know that that revenue, that being said that we do already generate revenue, we will be cashflow neutral in the next 60 days, which is great for a brand new startup. And the way we do it is we are the endless shelf. We are the world’s largest wine shelf. And we are the only world’s largest wine shop that allows merchandising that we are organizing. And our job is to help a brand find its place on that shelf in multiple ways. Whether it’s the end stack the coal boxes, to make sure as knickers on its shelf talkers, you know, so that it can be discovered, because the discoveries are lens, you know, and as you know, if you go into a wine store today, there’s, you know, Napa, or Joe, there’s, you know, real hot and there’s imports. Nobody wants to be in the import section. Nobody wants to be in the import section as they say. So our job is to make sure that you’re not so merchandising, regions, merchandising, wineries, making sure that they’re properly stocked and we have a retailer in every state that’s able to ship their stocking it right. So that that dynamic merchandising issue is how we make our money

Drew Hendricks  23:00  

was that I guess I’m not understanding that that’s that’s where your revenue comes where retailers can pay you to help them merchandise their product on there,

Paul Mabray  23:09  

it’s wider Instant Pay us to merchandise the product, right? Organize them, make sure they’re stocked on shelf. So if you use a metaphor, this outside of wine or you look in New Jersey, or you pay New Jersey merchandisers that go in the store every day, because the consumers that went through, they make sure the shelf is organized, make sure stock make sure there’s necurs on every one of the bottles, make sure they cut the Instax and the boxes there. Make sure the whole box is full the Chardonnay because you know you want to make sure that it’s got enough Chardonnay for a consumer to buy gold, right? Think of it like that. That’s the metaphor that you can use. We’re just doing it in a digital format.

Drew Hendricks  23:42  

Oh, that’s great. Is there any way that agencies can help you with this merchandise? Absolutely.

Paul Mabray  23:46  

Yeah, I’m happy to talk with you about it. Today I’m having to show it to you. It’s very cool. And it really it’s tied to you. All I’m trying to do is make it easier for the consumer to discover those lines. And make sure that they’re in the right place in the store. And the good news is the same bottle of wine can be 100 places in a digital store unlike a physical store. Yeah.

Drew Hendricks  24:08  

That’s a that’s a big point. That’s it takes a minute to get your mind around that where you’re, you’re the same wine is you have a different experience based on your your journey through Pix, and that wine can pop up it and I’m what I’m thinking I guess intuiting it is the wine has a dog on it. It might show up on the top 10 Dog wine list. Top Tom wines with the dog label, but also one of the top coins that from South Africa. Absolutely. Absolutely. South Africa that Moeller Bosh, faithful him he’s still is one of my favorite Cabernets and these have a great picture of a dog on the bottle and I don’t know why they took the dog off.

Paul Mabray  24:47  

Yeah, a great example of that’s that’s the perfect example that why it can be in those places. It can be great wines from South Africa. It can be iconic Shimon blocks it could be divides with dogs on the label, right? There’s It could be all three of those places simultaneously, which is, we don’t have that limitation because there’s no physical place. I mean, you know, I’m seeing a physical office, the ultimate wine store has no physical. It’s cool. It’s very, it’s very exciting too, because what you’re doing by doing so, is you’re giving the opportunity for a consumer to bump into that wine in multiple places, depending on where they started, where they’re looking, right, if I’m interested in South Africa, and I bumped into that place, oh, I might not have found or discovered that way. And again, discoveries, the lens, if I’m into dogs so much I know I have a friend who’s like just a super dog fiend, I want to buy my birthday present. And in the dog section, I bump into it there through that customer journey, or I’m looking for a discounted shin and blogger, Shannon blog, those are all appropriate places, then it’s super helpful. It’s hard to be found in an ocean of wine, or jumps, making it easier to be found in the ocean of wine.

Drew Hendricks  25:52  

That’s fantastic. So you’re 90 days in what are some statistics looking like? What are the results that you guys see now? Wow. So we’re

Paul Mabray  26:01  

delivering about $11 million of search GMV gross merchandise value per week, with a 1% conversion ratio. That’s what no traffic with no advertising, you know, no advertising, I mean, no marketing. We’re just organically growing. So $11 million a week right now. And that’s growing every week. So I’m super pleased with that. And this is going to get better over time, we’re growing, like I said, by 50 retailers a week about, you know, 10 to 50,000 products per day. So it’s just crazy. The matching engine is improving all the time, we’re churning out about anywhere from three to 25 collections a week. And those are showing up all over the site. So like I said, if you go to New Zealand, the search engine result page, there’s three collections there to say, Oh, I’m trying to discover new zealand a little differently. And I didn’t know they made Surat in New Zealand. Right. That’s, that’s helpful. Because New Zealand is only known for soaking in water, we can help a consumer who’s there and I’d like to discover some New Zealand’s to rock, we’ve done our job.

Drew Hendricks  27:04  

It’s fantastic. And you just backing up a little bit you just integrated with one advocate?

Paul Mabray  27:10  

Yes, it was a great partnership. I’m so thankful for them being such an innovative leader in the space. You know, we, as you know, one of the hardest things to do is close the loop. So if you get a great score, where can the wine advocate want to know if they point to a single retailer, as you know, that retailer runs out of that wine pretty quickly, right? They could point to the producer, that’s you know, the producers and ship everywhere sometimes, and they run out of that wine fairly quickly as well, especially if it gives a great score from the wine advocate, obviously, we’re this perpetual place, it’s always filling up where as long as that inventory lives in the world, and as long as retailers are selling it, it continues to shove. And if even if it doesn’t, they can say, let remind me or let me know when this product shows up. And as soon as we find in the system, we’re like, Hey, guys, we found that unicorn line you’re looking for or that you know, 95 point, whatever or the birth year of your child and you know, all these cool things that consumers care about are you know, and that’s going to keep growing and functionality for us. But yes, that’s the beginning of many more partnerships with that because we are special in the sense that we are one of only two companies in the world and only one that has both discovery and is free to get into free to list free to participate. We’re the only one that does that. And we’ll keep empowering as many people if you’re a blogger, if you enter you guys hire influencers, right, where do they point to? They can DTC? Yes, they can point to the wind, but if it’s more than DTC Yeah, we’re that perfect tool to help close the loop.

Drew Hendricks  28:44  

Yeah, so close the loop with influencers close the loop with the reviewers get that integration. Talk to me about some of these like e-commerce systems like Commerce7 vine spring release bought them?

Paul Mabray  28:57  

The same? Yeah, so look, I am I’m a big believer in DTC. I think it’s important for the market, I think. I think DTC sales. If it was one year since you’d hear Empower three tier success, right, the profit that’s taken from DTC is often spent to stimulate market value, right. So it’s a good thing. I think DTC is healthy for the market. It’s so we’ve always had GGC as a core component where we are I even think the DTC in our pricing matrix. So we should list the producer first always reinforces below the retailer saying, oh, yeah, they’re the highest MSRP is $56. This one’s 4995. I should buy from that retail. So it reinforces retail purchasing as well when it’s listed in that piece. So we’ve been a big fan of integrating with almost every major e-commerce platform. Some of them we have really bespoke deep integrations with commerce seven is an example of that figure is another offset. Even Venus So far we have a good integration with others we empower through Google shopping feeds, or third party. So I think the only systems we’re not integrated with is wind direct, because they can’t spell API. And I say that out loud. It did my inner monologue comes up. And AMS who also can’t spell API, you know, those three letters are elusive to them. Sorry,

Drew Hendricks  30:26  

got a gotta call it where it

Paul Mabray  30:28  

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Forward.

Drew Hendricks  30:31  

But like some of the ones that do have a DP API, like taking commerce seven, for example, how is a winery? Used Commerce7, just to help get onto the Yeah,

Paul Mabray  30:40  

the good news is if you’re on Commerce7 Pix automatically. That’s how tight the relationship is with Commerce7 is that once you’re on Commerce7, the minute the product is live on your site, it’s live on our site, and it still gets top listing at the party. And we do that intentionally. Because we could go scrape the site anyways, we want to why wouldn’t you want to be on a site where you get top billing and free listing for qualified? So you know, I applaud commerce seven, because they were the leaders and saying, Look, how do we make it easier for our wines, the wineries on our system to sell, you know, and they did that in a what an amazing way through that partnership?

Drew Hendricks  31:16  

That’s fantastic. I guess I didn’t even realize it was automatic. It’s just something, something that happens. Not as well.

Paul Mabray  31:24  

Yeah, there’s the only what they do when they go and Pix because they see themselves top billing. So auto magic, as I like to say there are auto magic partner. So

Drew Hendricks  31:34  

that’s perfect. That’s perfect. And other ones you just work with?

Paul Mabray  31:37  

Yeah, one by one. They say yes, they turned us all. And it’s kind of a one by one. So if you if you call figure today, they’ll turn us on. If you call, you know, ship, or they’ll turn this on. If you call Shopify, they’ll turn us on. But if you’re automatically on it, once you do, what should use commerce that in the minute you go live, you’re automatically on Pix, and taught billing, and you get free sales. Whenever we send free traffic, free, free

Drew Hendricks  31:59  

free, it’s always fantastic. And then can the whiners log in and then see the statistics and what’s happening.

Paul Mabray  32:05  

So we’re building the stats, and that’s something that we’re working on right now. Statistics to everybody, we still have the free the analytics tools that we have are free forever, the ones that where we came from, but we’re adding in Pix statistics. And that’s why we kept imagery with us as part of the kind of origin story of who we are. We changed it to Pix analytics, and that’s free. And we’ll start weaving in things like how many clicks Have you seen? You know, how many, you know, what is your average MSRP suggested retail price across all the retailers United States? You know, What’s your concept doing? You know, really cool. You know, I mean, what is the heat map of the United States where people clicking on you’re buying from you? Where are you getting scanned at? You know, all of that and controlling your own content through us where you can go fill it out and change it on the fly automatically. Okay,

Drew Hendricks  32:52  

and that’s

Paul Mabray  32:55  

okay, it’s coming. But if you email us we’ll change it. Unlike everyone else. We’re right there we have to we want to make sure that you don’t like it we’re gonna change it.

Drew Hendricks  33:03  

But for right right now, let’s say you’re I’m a winery and I’m on commerce seven. I don’t have huge access to analytics. I’ve got Google Analytics. I don’t want to deal with an agency see the incoming traffic and know what sales have come via the Pix platform? Is there a better way for a winery to trap? They’re the Pix directed referrals? No,

Paul Mabray  33:22  

I think Alex right now is the key way. But that being said, it won’t be long to rehab a very special one just for them. So

Drew Hendricks  33:30  

yeah, that’s fantastic. So, Paul, what’s next?

Paul Mabray  33:36  

Yeah, well, next is geo awareness that comes next door and launched the mobile app in the fall. I’m excited about our mobile experience very different than anything else, you know, obviously, you know, you’re gonna see new way more content partnerships through third parties like the wine advocate, but also different than just reviewers and critics. You know, writers in publications and influencers and bloggers are experts series has already started but we haven’t announced it. So our first two experts. We believe that every region has an expert has spent their life studying that wine and we want to use them as guideposts to help consumers find their way. So our first two experts were Lisa pretty brown from Napa and Peter lean for champagne. Okay, but we’re talking to every major expert in the world. You know, and I’m asking everyone to pay them to hire them to say, help the consumer understand Jura help the consumer understand the Canary Islands help the consumer under and understand orange wine or Bordeaux blanc or, you know, old vine Zinfandel. And there’s an expert for every one of those things. And we’re using that every month. We’ll have another expert come in, and you know, help us create those signposts for the consumer to say, what is the typicity Oakville, Cabernet? That’s a cool story, right? Like, you know, these are Oakville cabinets to represent Oakville you know the flavor of the bridle. You know it’s fast is

Drew Hendricks  35:00  

your dream teams expanding exponentially? Yeah, for sure it’s fantastic. Gosh Paul this has been fantastic where people know where to find you but let the viewers know where they can find you.

Paul Mabray  35:16  

Yeah, I’m always super easy it’s it’s Paul@pix.wine. You know it’s easy first name and then at PMabray is my social handle PMabray across everything. It’s been that way since the dawn

Drew Hendricks  35:29  

of interactive on Twitter. Yes. They were just found out anyone’s buying Twitter, trying to add buying. Always trying to offer at $54 a share. This will be David content very quickly. Yes.

Paul Mabray  35:42  

Exactly. I hope he doesn’t buy it. But we’ll see.

Drew Hendricks  35:46  

We will. We’ll mark it on here. Yeah. So Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. This I love the journey and I love to see how we can help all of our wineries

Paul Mabray  35:58  

I’d love to help let’s let’s do it. Let’s talk about let’s make it happen. Let’s let’s do some magic. We’ll do some experiments is a great experiment is the big giant ball of clay for us to go try because no one knows the answer. Let’s go find it out together. That’s my thing. Let’s go find out the answer.

Drew Hendricks  36:13  

Love it. I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you brother.

Outro  36:23

Thanks for listening to the Legends Behind the Craft podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.