Listen to Episode 02:

Jade Interviews the Founders of Côtes de Femme

Highlights: 

• A message to all aspiring business owners – JUST GET STARTED!
• Introducing a specific flavor profile to the wine market – as a couple & family. 
• Marketing the  Côtes de Femme brand differently from other wine brands led to their success
• Unique packaging they have a patent on now
• A fun promo for listeners of The Brand Files

 

Description: 

Welcome back to The Brand Files podcast! In this episode we are getting a sneak peek into the life of a business driven couple and their journey with building a successful wine company. 

Kristen is the founder and CEO of Côtes de Femme. She has a BS in human environmental sciences and she studied communications in education. She’s a lifestyle guru and fitness innovator, problem solver, and has a proven ability to put ideas into action.

Andy, her husband, is the COO of Côtes de Femme, and has a BS in civil engineering. He’s been a lifelong engineer, competitive Division I athlete, and innovator in green and sustainable business practices. They are both published authors of athletic books and have started other small businesses as well.

This is not their first rodeo, so we are so lucky to have them on the podcast today to tell us about their journey specifically with Côtes de Femme. Listen now to hear more about how Côtes de Femme came about, what it means, and many more captivating details! 

 

The Beginning of Côtes de Femme

When their girls were young, Kristen and Andy fell in love with wine doing at home date nights after they put their babies to bed.  These date nights sparked a fascination with wine tasting and the wine industry as a whole. Kristin explains in the episode, “We would go visit vineyards and these wine companies in different places and just be like “I would love to do this one day” and I think sort of like Andy, I was a little limited in my thinking that we had to own a vineyard, we had to grow grapes and we’re not farmers. That is not our gift but the more I learned about wine and the more research I did, I learned that there are a lot of brands out there that are not actually the ones that physically grow the grapes. What we need to do is find a partnership in a winery that will allow us to partner with them and allow us to create that flavor profile that was only made for us. Something we do right now in our brand is we fly over to France once a year, we go over every November they harvest in September, and we’re a part of the blending we’re a part of that whole tasting process of all the grapes and all the juices basically that they’ve created from that harvest to create the blend for next year’s vintage of rose that it is going to come out.  

Jade was actually a huge part of our journey. We contacted her obviously immediately when we started getting everything together for what we wanted to do with the brand. She and I connected on a Facebook group that we were both a part of and immediately when I saw her work I knew that she would get us like she would get me. She understood the brand and everything she did was beautiful. I knew that she could create something for us that would really speak our hearts when people got on our website so, thank you for everything that you’ve done for us and continue to do for us” – Kristin

 

The Marketing Content Hustle 

Andy talks about the hard work they put into marketing in their early days.  They knew they needed to highlight the beautiful bottle in their marketing images.  Andy says, “I ordered plain glass bottles of this bottle design from Europe, and had it shipped to a printer that could do silk screens in Fort Lauderdale. We flew from Birmingham to Miami and the silk screener drove those finished bottles to the Miami hotel. We picked them up from the hotel and went to a liquor store next door, bought someone else’s rosé, and put it in the bottle. I put a foil capsule on the top and then painted it rose gold so it would match our final product better. We took 7,000 photos in four days and I can tell you that that was one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. It was such a trip but the content that we took back then is still used today on our website and social media and it’s just what you do – it’s the hustle. – Andy

 

Give Us All The Wine! 

This man calls me and says “Hey what are you doing?” and we tell him that we’re doing he’s like “well you’re like seven hours ahead, but when you get done today I would love to talk to you about your wines for more than just Huntsville.” “Yes sir, no problem” and so we hung up the phone and I said “Sweetie, get off that wall the Eiffel tower will be there tomorrow.” I was like we got to go to the hotel now and have an important conversation, so then we went back. We called and he said “I’ve only seen your bottle, a texted picture from Scott… How many do you have? I’ll take them all now.” and we are like WHAT! So we didn’t realize that the distribution model for wine and for alcohol, we didn’t realize some of those things and so you know his next question of who are your distributors in the states and so then we were blessed to be in 95 fresh market stores in five states just coming out of the gate. The wine was basically sold out before ever being imported to the US. It just changed that whole trip, I mean it just made it so magical. – Andy

 

Bring The Bling 

It was actually Andy that said it would be a shame if we designed a beautiful bottle and everyone just threw it in the trash. So, we came up with the idea of this bling that comes on every single bottle that you actually remove and you can use to decorate your stemware so this is something that we actually have a patent on now. We started one unique thing that people are starting to recognize our brand by this bling. They’ll actually call up a store and say do you guys carry Côtes de Femme and if the person answering the phone doesn’t recognize the name, the person calling you can say it’s the one with the diamonds and they’re like oh yeah we have that! So that’s kind of a neat way that our brand is getting recognized. -Kristin

 

 

To hear Andy and Kristin share their story about Côtes de Femme, LISTEN NOW!

All listeners can get 10% off their first order from Côtes de Femme with promo code BRANDFILES

 

Did you love hearing about Andy and Kristen’s business journey?  To see more from Côtes de Femme, visit their website or follow them on social.  Thanks so much to those of you who listened or read this post to learn more about them!  

 

 

Want to hear more of The Brand Files? Click Here for Episode 01!