GETNAKED: The New Online Wine Shop You Need To Know About

Words: Katrina Rose Wind

GETNAKED

Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves?

We are a team of three entrepreneurs, Wesley Du Plessis, Ryan Lloyd and Neil Matthews, who have a strong passion not only for business but for wine. Ryan and Neil have been in business together for a couple years and run their own import business out of Cape Town, one of the companies being, EatLean. While Wesley is the COO of a group of companies, which currently has a wine farm as part of their portfolio.

It was through that import business and Wesley’s wine operation that the trio met last year while at a food industry product launch. They hit it off business wise and after a couple of meetings decided to join forces. With Wesley having years of experience in the wine industry, including a Bachelor of Science Degree in Wine Production (Oenology: The Study of Wine). It was a perfect fit for Ryan and Neil, who had experience in marketing/brand building and online retail businesses. They decided to join forces to build an online wine business with a twist.

What was the driving force behind starting GETNAKED?

COVID19 was a massive part of starting GETNAKED. All three of us recognised that there was a seriously large amount of top-quality wines that weren’t going to make it to market because of the alcohol ban. We realised that there was an opportunity there and we began to explore the idea of starting a company that could eventually sell these top-tier wines.

We had multiple meetings with various wine farms and wine makers and realised that they needed to move their wines in order to survive. We decided to come up with a way to make that happen and thus GETNAKED was born.

The name GETNAKED is quirky and fun, what’s the story behind the name?

We wanted to create a brand that stripped the wine sales process down to it’s bare minimum in terms of costs. The label making and branding is not only time consuming but also quite expensive, so we figured that by making the bottle ‘NAKED’ or as ‘NAKED’ as is legally allowed. No expensive labels, no expensive boxes and branding, no marketing costs other than our streamlined digital presence.

Everything is pretty much done in-house, the marketing, the website, you name it. By cutting out the middle man we were able to cut the price of the wine even further down. We wanted to supply South African wine drinkers with great wines at a fraction of their cellar door and restaurant/bar prices. Selling the wine strictly online is the cheapest way to market to the customer, in other words, we wanted the consumer to have more bang for their buck.

By having the bottle stripped to its bare minimum or ‘naked’ it only made logical sense to have that part of the name and so GETNAKED wines was born.

GETNAKED
GETNAKED

You say you can’t tell us where these wines are being sourced but can you tell us more about the quality, the farms, or the areas that these wines are sourced from?

Currently all of the wines are from the Western Cape. We may bring in unlabelled famous wines from around the world next year but for now we are focusing on growing our local selection. We have to put the wine region on the bottle by law, so the customer will always know the region but the wine farm will always remain anonymous.

A lot of the wines we sell are much cheaper than the price you would pay at the wine farm and if we told people where they were from, it would lessen the wines brand value of the farm it’s from. Wesley spends a lot of time going to the farms and tasting wines to make sure that we only source the highest quality wine possible. We then strike a deal with the farm, put the wines on our site and get it to our clients. In most cases the wine farms we source from want to stay anonymous for the reason stated above and we are happy to adhere to that.

How does unlabelled wine come about; what are some of the reasons that this would be available?

COVID has had a tremendous amount to do with the current overflow of good South African wines being available. For a while there was no exporting and of course, no drinking, no transporting of alcohol and through that many wines were not labelled.

There is also the issue of wines getting overproduced and not all of them reaching the market. We swoop in to not only “save” these wines but to help the producers make more money. The GETNAKED business model assists the farmers in getting more for their unlabelled wines and we enter into an agreement with every wine on its merits.

What goes behind the selection process of picking the right wines for your customers?

Value, value, value! We visit a lot of farms and taste a lot of wine. Wesley is a great wine taster and buyer, he knows good wines and what the market wants. We ideally want to buy a wine that would sell for twice the price in a bottle store and three times the price at a restaurant.

Branding is so much a part of any product and how it sells – it’s what builds trust, integrity, aspiration and connection. How do you get around this with no branding and no label?

Building trust is a game of patience and that’s what we are doing. With every bottle sold, we know that the client will say, “Wow, that’s an amazing wine for the price.” If we can do that every time, it means we are doing our job correctly. We also have the smallest label allowed by law in South Africa which has turned out to look clean, fresh, and really nice if we say so ourselves. We also think this will help our wines stand out even more.

GETNAKED

There is a certain amount of trust (and risk) that goes into buying a product with no label; how do you ensure that that customers are happy with what they purchase?

Again, it’s about being patient and building trust over time with our clients. We will do promotions and hold tastings, etc to get new customers but we are very confident that once you have bought from us, we will be your new go-to online wine store.

Why should people buy these wines as opposed to labelled, is it purely just a money saver?

At the end of the day, yes it’s a money saver. It’s almost like all our wines are on constant ‘sale’ and everybody loves a deal, so it really is a win-win. If you are the kind of wine drinker who only cares about the label, then we may not be the wine shop for you. However, if you are the kind of wine drinker who cares more about what’s in the bottle, then we can say with full confidence we will be your new favourite online wine providers.

How do you think GETNAKED will stand out amongst its various wine competitors?

We think our very subtle and small wine labels will help us stand out and compete with other wine brands. The truth is, most people probably have already had the wines we are selling, the only difference is that it most likely had the label.

We pride ourselves in over-delivering on the value of the wine in the bottle, it is the only way we will gain any market share. With us, the guarantee that the wine you’re getting will be top-notch. We also feel that our ‘have fun’ approach to selling wine will appeal to consumers. Our Instagram page is more wine jokes and fun content than a sell, sell, sell approach.

We are also in the process of producing our first line of GETNAKED WINES merchandise, which we will launch in the summer. Loads of fun graphic t-shirts, tie-dye sweatshirts, a wine glass that can take an entire bottle of wine. Fun things along those lines. We will also be rolling out the GETNAKED Golden Ticket. Yes, like Willy Wonka. We will randomly drop these into cases of wine, and the lucky winner will receive a case of wine every month for a year.

How can people order wine from GETNAKED?

We are a strictly online business, so you can find and order our wines on our website.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give someone trying to become a distributor?

It’s a competitive market, so some key ingredients would be:

– Find the right partners
– Team up with trustworthy stakeholders.
– Make sure you dot your I ‘s and cross your T’s.
– Find a new approach to the product you are distributing

The wine industry in South Africa is quite outdated and ‘stuck in their way’ if you will. We are looking for ways to disrupt and change the industry for the better. Our agreement alone with the wine farms and wine farmers, allows them to share in the upside of the additional revenue we make.

It’s a unique way of doing the business for the farmers, they are usually offered a price per bottle and that’s that. This way there is more in it for them and this allows us to also purchase higher quality wines because they know they will be getting what the wine is worth in the sales process.

*You stand a chance to win a case of their wine! Enter the competition on our Instagram page before it’s too late. 

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