STACKED Wines, LLC

Get hip in a sip with STACKED: it's wine in a glass of its own!

Get that just-opened taste with every sip – it's ready to drink and easy to dispose.

STACKED Wine is designed on ingenious convenience. You don’t want to open a fresh bottle and search for a glass every time you want some wine. Serve wine by the glass, fresh and self-contained, and let the party clean-up itself.

Whether you’re hosting at home, throwing a gala or running a restaurant, take a glass off the top and top off everyone’s expectations. STACKED Wine is designed for vertical storage, similar to a wine bottle. Just peel and sip in an instant.

Matt Zimmer – President & CEO - MSE - Mechanical Engineering, MBA Candidate (2011) - Strategy.  With 6 years experience in the plastics & bottling industry and running the capital expansion for one of the largest bottlers in the United States, Matt brings his experience in product design and manufacturing equipment selection to STACKED.  Matt is the brains behind the wheel and invented the unique STACKED bottle design.  Matt manages all aspects of technology and production for the organization.

Jodi Wynn – VP, Marketing & Business Development - MBA Candidate (2011) - Marketing & Entrepreneurship. With 8 years experience running sophisticated portfolios of commercial real estate for a fast growing REIT in Southern California, Jodi brings her background in customer retention, vendor sourcing, budget preparation/execution, capital planning, and general management to the STACKED team.  Jodi is devoted full-time to STACKED and focuses on marketing, sales, and all the little details required to start a business.

Doug Pennington (Lead Advisor) – Executive Director, Private Capital Network.  With extensive entrepreneurial experience, Doug will lead the STACKED team with business strategy, sales tactics, financing and investments.  Doug created and distributed a top ten beverage in the highly competitive spirits marketplace, Savannah Vodka, and sold it off before turning to Aurum Technology where he led a committee that structured its sale to Fidelity Information Systems. In 2006 Doug founded Private Capital Network (PCN), an angel investor group specializing in early stage and startup businesses.

Douglas Allan - Advisor (Wine) - MBA Candidate (2011) -  Douglas Allan has spent his entire career in the food and beverage industry.  His formal education in wine started at Cornell University where he earned a B.S. in Hotel Administration. After spending a few years in restaurant operations in Los Angeles, he immersed himself into the wine business at Chateau Montelena Winery in Napa Valley.  For the past three years, Douglas worked as the Retail Sales & Hospitality Manager.  This allowed Douglas to learn the wine business from the ground up and also offered him a chance to teach thousands of people about wine on a daily basis.  Douglas brings his extensive background  in the wine industry to the STACKED team to aid in strategic sourcing and, most importantly, taste testing.

Michael Kajdasz - Advisor (Sales) - MBA Candidate (2011) - Mike brings his 9 years of business-to-consumer, consultative technical sales experience to the STACKED team.  His background is in the sales trenches, closing deals while fighting off the competition, and he has emerged victorious, wiser and mostly intact.  For the company, he will bring practical sales advice, direction, charm and volunteers himself to be the official wine taster.     

Jennifer Aronson - Advisor (Finance) - MBA Candidate (2011) -  Jennifer brings 8 years of hospitality financial management to the STACKED team. As a finance leader with Marriott International she understands how to manage execution and deliver results. She has the accounting background and knowledge to forecast STACKED's future performance and expectations. Jennifer also has a personal interest in STACKED since she lived outside of Sonoma Country for three years and is a wine lover at heart!

Howard Lee - Advisor (Accounting) - MBA Candidate (2011) -  Howard Lee is a practiced finance and accounting professional.  Howard obtained his BSc in Finance and received his MBA from University of California Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business.  Howard’s experience ranges from acquisitions and accounting in the real estate industry and more recently for the Jonathan Club, an exclusive non-profit social club in Los Angeles. He is currently managing accounting and operations as part of the Casa Automotive Group in Los Angeles.  Howard brings his financial expertise to STACKED and will oversee the financial projections and analysis for the team.

STACKED will use a basic product-sales business model.  The three sales channels that STACKED will target include retail, entertainment, and travel. In order to prove the concept and establish a track record, STACKED will initially target small retailers and locally based entertainment venues.  Once STACKED has gained traction after an estimated three years, STACKED will target national retailers, distributors and the travel industry.

STACKED’s competitive advantage includes both the unique brand positioning as well as intellectual property protections.

The single-serve wine industry primarily competes on the following factors: convenience, quality, trendiness, and wine experience.  Traditional companies have stuck with mini bottles, which closely resemble the traditional wine experience, but do not offer the convenience increasingly desired by wine drinkers as discovered in AC Nielson’s 2007 survey, which found that the number one factor in consumer’s food and beverage purchasing decisions is “speed of life.”  The survey stated that new products “must provide convenient consumer solutions: portability, ease of use, & preparation time.”  Aluminum cans and paper/Tetrapak boxes simplify the packaging process and offer very high convenience, however they lack the sophistication most consumers expect to accompany wine.  Therefore, despite the flood of new entrants to the alternative wine packaging market, STACKED has developed a unique product that achieves all four competing factors: STACKED is convenient and trendy, while providing quality wine and a sophisticated wine experience.