Original CellarThief website design - we won multiple awards for this

[Jahangir655]

With our concept, a name, and a logo, it was time to build our website. We asked a friend to create a unique design and partnered with a small development shop to build our site on a CMS/e-commerce platform that was soon acquired by Adobe. We wanted the site to be cool, inspiring, and fun.

Original CellarThief website design - we won multiple awards for this
Finally, we needed to determine the wine's provenance. Fortunately, our team had contacts in the wine industry, both with wineries and distributors. The idea was simple: if we could sell a significant quantity of a certain wine in a single day, we would receive a significant discount that we could then pass on to our customers.

Wineries and distributors embraced the concept, and we were quickly spam database able to offer a range of quality wines at a competitive price. We gave them an estimate of the number of cases we would sell, and they kept them. We then collected and shipped them to our customers.

We felt storytelling would be the most important part of our work, so we were excited to interview winemakers, tell the winery's story, and help our customers connect with the people behind the wines we sold.

Once most of the pieces of the puzzle were solved, CellarThief was born. It was a small company, with no outside funding. It was simply a few friends trying to create a small, friendly business that helped people drink good wine at an affordable price. And make a big difference.

The first wine we offered was a huge success: a Robert Mondavi Cabernet Reserve.

First wine offered by CellarThief
It was then time to figure out how to attract customers. We knew we had to find a balance between taking care of our existing customers and finding new ones.