Building Gallo’s Direct-to-Consumer Wine Business from Ground Up

The Challenge

Gallo Wines wanted to establish a direct-to-consumer sales channel but lacked clarity on target audience, market positioning, logistics infrastructure, and brand identity for this new venture. Their existing small-volume website had minimal marketing support and was trapped with 2003-era functionality and design.

Strategic Approach

I led rapid research, brand strategy, and comprehensive business and software design to create an entirely new business in approximately nine months. Working closely with Gallo marketing, business leaders, technology teams, and winemakers, we rebuilt from the ground up while developing design and business strategy in tandem.

Business Impact

An entirely new channel for sales and consumer engagement, featuring direct-to-consumer sales, subscription boxes, advanced recommendation systems, and supporting logistics and operations infrastructure.

Leadership & Execultion

Comprehensive Business Foundation Development Gallo’s existing direct-to-consumer store suffered from limited product assortment, complex shipping rules, unclear brand positioning, and no defined goals. I worked across multiple Gallo divisions—marketing, business leadership, technology, and winemakers—to define target audience, audience needs, revenue goals, and the relationship between the new site, individual wine brands, and the overall Gallo brand.

We developed a subscription model and implemented an innovative wine categorization system based on criteria used by Gallo’s food science division, moving beyond typical algorithmic matching to create meaningful recommendations grounded in actual taste mapping and scientific research.

Integrated Design and Business Development Rather than following a traditional sequential approach, I began the design process as we defined the business strategy, allowing both to develop together. At each stage, we examined the implications of our decisions, tested concepts with users, and ensured what we were building provided real value and functioned as intended.

Design evolved from simple hand-drawn sketches and paper prototypes through wireframes and clickable experiences to the final designed and programmed site. We soft-launched the platform as a real-world test, managing complex technology and operations challenges while validating our approach with actual customer behavior and feedback.