Our fourth installment of LibDib's multi-part series on the topic of E-Premise features Barcart, a company focused on powering alcohol brands by enabling compliant DTC sales with geo-targeted marketing capabilities. As you know by now, E-Premise is an important part of the evolution of three-tier distribution. LibDib is honored that so many great partners have joined us in this quest to bring exciting new products to market. Interested? Read LibDIb’s other E-Premise features with partners including Big Thirst, LiquorStorefront.com and Speakeasy.
What’s your company’s origin story?
A: Barcart is a technology company transforming the beverage alcohol industry and providing unprecedented transparency across the three-tier system for suppliers, distributors, and retailers. Our solutions generate new revenue streams, increase product reach with industry-compliant online sales, and help reach new audiences using buying intelligence from our award winning, consumer-facing marketplace - Mash&Grape.
Our origin goes back to 2014 when our founders started Mash&Grape as an online marketplace focused on craft spirits. Mash&Grape grew rapidly to become a leading destination for uncommon spirits, leading to an award for Best Online Retailer in the Americas by Icons of Whisky. The same year, all the backend infrastructure developed to support Mash&Grape and the sale of over 3500+ SKUs online was packaged into a plug and play e-commerce solution for any brand or publisher looking to sell alcohol online. And Barcart was born.
Today, over 200 brands and online publishers rely on Barcart for compliant and best-in-class e-commerce services and the story continues.
Can you share with us your progress?
A: Barcart has grown tremendously since its debut. Here are some numbers:
And finally, 0 – the number of sales people we employ! The majority of our partners come to us via word of mouth referral or competitive research.
What’s the best way for a LibDib Maker to work with you?
A: The best way to work with Barcart is to bring us your existing platforms, products and pain points. From there, we provide flexible, compliant solutions, enhanced insights and access to marketing integrations that work within a client’s framework.
And we understand the need for speed sometimes. We can enable e-commerce solutions in as little as 24 hours. Our solution plugs into any website to enable e-commerce, removing the need for custom websites, subdomains or generic templates.
Fun fact - our personal on-boarding record is 4 hours, to accommodate a celebrity who wanted to get e-commerce live ahead of an Instagram post!
Can you share a Maker success story with us?
A: Providing a direct channel for customers and fans to support the brands they love has completely reshaped the alcohol industry. Barcart allows partners to fully lean into this additional revenue stream while also streamlining the standard three-tier model by offering a best-in-class platform and a powerful lifeline for craft spirits, wine and alcohol brands of all sizes.
One of the company’s most successful partnerships is with Black Button Distilling. Powered by Barcart, the New York Distiller saw a 16x increase in direct-to-consumer sales from 2019 to 2020 which represented nearly 5 percent of the craft distillery’s overall sales. We have also worked with them to launch some online-exclusive products and test out some innovative selling strategies.
If you could give one piece of brand advice what would it be?
A: Know your value proposition and commit to being the best in your area of expertise.
There are several companies that operate in a similar vein to Barcart, but our technology, approach and transparency to data truly allows us to provide best-in-class service. We focus on building the best e-commerce platform out there, driven by our experience selling online for 7 years now. And being experts in this area has opened new doors of opportunity, allowing us to join the developing conversations in the alcohol e-commerce industry and contribute to its overall growth.
We focus on meeting the needs of our customers and exceeding their expectations, not what the newest competitor is doing – and that has made all the difference.