The mission is clear at Full Glass Wine Co.: keep growing.

This month, the Redondo Beach-based direct-to-consumer wine brand management company made its sixth and seventh brand acquisitions. The firm also brought in $14 million in funding this year and is projecting at least $200 million in revenue next year. All of this has been achieved in the roughly 18 months since the company was formed.

Chief Operating Officer Neha Kumar said as much as she’d like to say this level of success was serendipitous, it actually boils down to focused strategic planning with co-founder and Chief Executive Louis Amoroso. Part of that planning has been to take advantage of a post-Covid retail market that has more people ordering deliveries than ever.

“The thing that was really great for us was that there was a lot of people exposed to a shift in purchasing behavior,” Kumar said. “A lot of people realized that instead of going to the store and picking up three bottles of wine – which can get really heavy – they can have them shipped to their house and have the curation.”

A veteran of so-called “bevtech,” Amoroso indicated the company would remain active in building up the brands under its control in its mission to bring wine to more homes. And for seasoned winos, Full Glass is a company that can introduce them to new varieties and styles, he added.

“Wine is a unique beverage in that people have their favorites but they’re also very adventuresome in trying new things, and you find a lot less of that on the spirits side,” Amoroso said. “What we’re building is a whole lifestyle from entry point to high level, where people can learn about wine from this level and either move up or stay at this level. We are sourcing great product that we’re selling at a great price point.”

History in beverage

Full Glass is not Amoroso’s first rodeo in the direct-to-consumer beverage market.

In 1991, he founded and ran Beverage Solutions Inc., which through its Beer Across America Club introduced mail-order craft beer shipping to a national customer base.

“This was when you couldn’t get Sierra Nevada outside of California. We brought it to our warehouse and shipped it all over the country,” he said. “Then we got into wine and expanded the company.”

Beverage Solutions came to also include coffee and cigars in its mail-order offerings. The company also bought a stake of Goose Island Beer Co. back when it was a small Chicago brewpub and helped build it into a signature Illinois brand. (After trading hands a few times, Goose Island is now owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev.)

Beverage Solutions was ultimately acquired by Direct Wines in 2006 and Amoroso got into the digital marketing space. But the allure of beverages never faded, and in 2023 he co-founded DRINKS, a Glendale-based software platform that optimizes alcoholic beverage sales for retailers.

Kumar’s background is in banking, finance and operations. She was chief operating officer at Create & Cultivate, a Chinatown-based women’s media company that in 2021 sold to Brentwood private equity firm Corridor Capital. (Create & Cultivate founder Jaclyn Johnson was bought back to the company this year.)

While there, Kumar helped oversee the launch of a fund to invest in companies founded by other women. This was during the era of historically low interest rates and thus, Kumar said, there was a lot of excess capital in the marketplace – meaning that a lot of smaller operations that got funding early on might struggle to scale up revenue beyond a certain point. Consolidation, she said, would be a wise entrepreneurial decision.

Thus, when the industry-agnostic Kumar met beverage-minded Amoroso, the idea was born.

“When you look at the wine industry, there’s so much room for consolidation and improvement in terms of operational efficiencies. All of the companies we have acquired have done a really good job from brand and marketing standpoints. When you look at these companies, you see that at a certain point they start to tap out” in terms of revenue growth, Kumar said. “For us, it was opportunistic. We see the wine market. It makes sense and the industry itself, we’re very excited about some of the technology and things we have that we’re working on to really give the end customer an enhanced experience.”

Adding one after another

Full Glass got its start with two October 2023 acquisitions of wine subscription platforms – Wine Insiders, which was owned by DRINKS, and Winc, based in Playa Vista. It then added a third service, Milwaukee-based Bright Cellars, in April, and secured $14 million in series A funding from Shea Ventures, a portfolio company of Walnut-based J.F. Shea Co.

In September, Full Glass acquired Eagle, Idaho-based winemaker and retailer Splash Wines as well as Dallas winemaker Scout & Cellar. And this month, it made its two latest purchases – Wine Access, an online curation platform based in Napa, and Cameron Hughes Wine, a San Francisco winemaker. (Terms were not disclosed for any of the acquisitions.)

Though at a glance this portfolio would appear redundant, each service caters to different stages of wine culture and the whole collection covers a wide variety of price points.

“If somebody comes in and they’re a new wine drinker, they might want to try Wine Insiders,” Kumar explained. “Now if you want to move to something that’s subscription based, you might like Winc. But let’s say you’re me and have a mother-in-law who’s very picky with wine. On a special occasion, I might want a little extra help and get something more exclusive” – say, from Wine Access.

The company expects to eclipse $150 million in revenue for the 2024 fiscal year and eyes a benchmark of $200 million for 2025. And while neither founder would indicate whether they were actively courting any new deals, Kumar again emphasized there remain many smaller direct-to-consumer platforms that will likely pitch themselves to buyers like Full Glass.

“I see a lot of consolidation” in the future, she added. “I think that has a lot to do with there being a lot of cash floating around in ’21 and ’22, and people just love to be in beverages. It’s a shared community experience and it’s doing fine. I think that beverage (as a market) is not going anywhere.”

Staying power

Alcoholic beverage consumption has undergone major shifts in recent years – younger people have driven low-calorie hard seltzers into popularity, while craft cocktails are also having a moment – but Amoroso and Kumar are confident wine is essentially here to stay.

“People want to do things together. Beer, if you think about it, is very individualistic. A lot of the things that these younger generations are into are things that are community based,” Kumar said. “There’s all the business reasons for wine, but what I personally love about wine is that you’re sharing the experience of that product with other people. It creates community and brings people together.”

For Amoroso, he said he’s seen all of the trends of the past 35 years, and while to some extent they maintain customer bases, none can really dislodge the cultural and culinary significance of wines.

“You’re not going to go out to a steak dinner with your boss and order a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler,” he said. “You’re not going to go out and order a White Claw at a nice Italian restaurant.”