Building a Facebook for Wine

Michael Stajer bet big on his idea to start an eBay-style (EBAY)Web site for buying and selling wines in 1999. The Bay Area attorney sold his personal wine collection for $25,000 to finance the site, called WineCommune. At the time, he hoped to get venture or angel funding early on. “My original plan was, ‘Hey, I’ll get this product up and then I’ll shop it around and see if I can get some money, hire some people, and then take it to the next level,’” Stajer says.

That didn’t happen. The dot-com collapse came a year after he started WineCommune, and investors were wary of the regulated market of alcohol sales. Stajer kept his day job and gradually developed the site. He amassed more than $40,000 in credit-card debt to finance the business. But despite the time he spent wondering how he would ever pay the bills, Stajer says he’s glad he never got funded. The company expanded by launching online retailer J.J. Buckley and WineZap, a price comparison site with a social network. He expects WineCommune to have $17 million in revenues this year from a mix of advertising, paid referrals, and retail wine sales across the three sites. “Now, of course, [the credit-card debt is] paid off, and I got my wine collection back,” he says.

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Advertise on Napkins

Now US-based NapAd has picked up on the same theme but played it in bars and nightclubs instead. NapAd, which just launched this fall, uses what it calls high-definition napkins to bring marketers’ messages directly into the hands of urban consumers when they’re relaxed and uninterrupted by other media. The photorealistic, 5-by-5-inch cocktail napkins are distributed free to NapAd’s network of bars, nightclubs and lounges; in exchange, the venues serve them with drinks to their patrons, who can then be exposed to the messages printed on them for hours at a time.Targeting is customizable within NapAd’s network, so that if an advertiser wants to reach males aged 18 to 34 in Garden City, Kansas, for example, NapAd might tap into a network of sports bars in the area. The company is currently focusing its program on Manhattan, but it’s planning to add five more markets in 2008 and can serve areas requested by clients as well. A typical New York City campaign with 1 million NapAds starts at about USD 27,500.

NapAds is part of Maryland-based guerilla marketing firm JI Worldwide, which was founded by 28-year-old Jay Jaber, a finalist in the 2007 Wall Street Journal’s Creative Leaders Challenge. The company (which also sells its napkins under the name HDN—High Definition Napkin) is now seeking distribution partnerships with major airlines, cruise ships, bars and lounges, and is also interested in hearing about other collaborative opportunities, Jaber says. It’s a big world out there—so many bars, so many patrons, so little time…

Website: www.napads.com