Client Spotlight
Beyond the Bottle
How Three Wine Brands Turned Non-Wine Merchandise into a High-Performance Revenue Channel
Durant Vineyards Gold Ridge Organic Farms Breathless Wines
Industry • Wine / DTC Ecommerce
Services • Ecommerce Strategy · Photography · Web Design
Most winery online stores generate 85 to 90 percent of ecommerce revenue from wine alone. That is not a problem, until you recognize the opportunity hiding in plain sight: every wine buyer is already on the site, already trusts the brand, and already has their credit card out. That is precisely when a well-placed tin of chocolate almonds, a branded estate hat, or a curated gift bundle can transform a $45 transaction into a $130 one.
Three LCM clients, Durant Vineyards, Gold Ridge Organic Farms, and Breathless Wines, each approached the non-wine merchandise opportunity differently. We built ecommerce strategies, visual systems, and catalog structures tailored to each brand.
The result: merchandise categories that perform, not just exist.
01
The Challenge
Each brand had built strong wine sales online, but non-wine merchandise was underperforming relative to what their brand equity could support. The shared pain points across all three clients were consistent enough to reveal a pattern, not just individual problems.
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Merchandise Buried in Navigation Discoverable only if shoppers already knew to look for it. Most never found it. |
Inconsistent Product Photography Images did not match the premium visual standard the wine catalog had already set. |
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No Cross-Sell Architecture Nothing connected wine buyers to relevant merchandise at the moment of maximum purchase intent. |
Gift Buyers Left Without a Path The highest-value merchandise customers arrived without a clear path to curated bundles or gifting solutions. |
Primary Goal
Build merchandise programs that function as genuine second revenue streams, not afterthoughts tucked into a footer tab.
02
Our Strategy
We applied four strategic levers across all three brands, each tailored to the specific catalog, audience, and brand identity of the client.
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01 Catalog Curation: Brand Extensions, Not Tangents We audited each client’s merchandise assortment against a single filter: does this product deepen the same experience the wine delivers, or does it interrupt it? For Durant Vineyards, that meant estate olive oil, artisan food pairings, and lifestyle apparel tied to their Willamette Valley heritage. For Gold Ridge, certified organic pantry goods were the natural extension. For Breathless Wines, a sparkling-centric brand with a celebratory identity, the play was lifestyle accessories and gift-forward curated sets. |
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02 Navigation Architecture: Merchandise at Eye Level We repositioned non-wine merchandise into the primary site navigation on all three brands, at the same level as Shop Wines and Wine Club. Gift Certificates were elevated to top-level nav items on every site. A first-time visitor should find the gift shop within 15 seconds without using search. If they cannot, the navigation is organized around the business, not the buyer. |
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03 Product Photography: Premium Across Every Category Wine buyers arrive with elevated visual expectations trained by exceptional bottle photography. When they land on a merchandise page with flat or inconsistent product images, the category loses credibility before a word of copy is read. We applied the same photographic intentionality across all non-wine products: consistent lighting, lifestyle context, and editorial quality so every item signals premium, regardless of price point. |
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04 Gift Architecture and Cross-Sell Placement The highest-ROI real estate on any wine ecommerce site is the product detail page, directly below Add to Cart. We built cross-sell modules on each client’s wine PDPs surfacing two to three brand-consistent merchandise items, framed as “Complete the Gift” or “Pairs Perfectly With.” Gift bundles were priced just below round numbers and placed prominently during Q4 gifting season. Free shipping thresholds were set just above average single-bottle order value and displayed site-wide. |
03
Execution Process
Discovery and Catalog Audit
We opened each engagement with a full audit of the existing product catalog, navigation structure, and traffic patterns. This revealed where merchandise was already living, how visible it was to shoppers, and what the data said about which categories had untapped potential. For Durant and Gold Ridge, both farm-and-estate operations with access to premium food and pantry goods, the catalog gaps were immediately clear.
Photography Production
Our studio photography team shot non-wine merchandise across all three clients using the same production standards as their wine catalogs: controlled lighting, brand-appropriate surface textures and props, multiple angles, and lifestyle context where relevant. Every product image had to earn its place alongside the reserve Cabernet. No phone photos. No white-background stock substitutes.
Ecommerce Build and UX Implementation
With catalog and photography in place, we built out the merchandising architecture on each platform: category restructuring, navigation updates, PDP cross-sell module implementation, bundle product creation, and free shipping threshold configuration. All changes were built around the shopper’s mental model: gift-buyer-first architecture with occasion-based labels such as “Gifts Under $75” and “Complete the Gift” over warehouse-style category names.
Copywriting and Story-Driven Product Descriptions
“Estate-grown, cold-pressed olive oil from our Willamette Valley farm” outperforms “500ml olive oil” every time, because it sells the experience the product extends, not just what it physically is. We wrote new product copy for each client’s merchandise catalog anchored in their brand world: the land, the craft, and the experience that brought the customer to their site in the first place.
04
The Results
2.4x
AOV multiplier on gift-identified purchases with merchandise cross-sell
3
Brands with merchandise elevated into primary site navigation
15s
Target discovery time for non-wine merchandise, achieved on all three sites
38+
Non-wine SKUs cataloged, photographed, and merchandised
Performance Summary
Across Durant Vineyards, Gold Ridge Organic Farms, and Breathless Wines, non-wine merchandise moved from buried navigation items to active revenue contributors. Each brand now has a merchandise program built to scale with the catalog, not against it.
05
Why It Worked
The results across all three brands came down to the same core principles, applied consistently and without shortcuts.
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Curation Over Catalog Size Each brand carried only products that felt like a natural extension of the wine experience. Nothing was included because it was easy to source. |
Photography at Parity Non-wine products were shot with the same visual quality as the wine collection. The conditioner bottle received the same photographic care as the reserve Cabernet. |
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Gift-First Architecture Navigation, bundles, and cross-sell placement were all designed around the gift buyer, who represents the highest AOV opportunity in the store. |
Friction Removal Free shipping thresholds, occasion-based labels, and one-click bundles reduced every barrier between discovery and purchase. |
06
Client Testimonial
“Left Coast Marketing didn’t just help us photograph our merchandise. They helped us understand how to sell it. The catalog strategy, the navigation changes, the way they connected our estate story to every product description: it changed how our customers experience the shop entirely.”
Winery Principal, LCM Client
Durant Vineyards · Gold Ridge Organic Farms · Breathless Wines
07
What This Means for Your Brand
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If your merchandise lives three clicks deep in a dropdown, it is invisible to the majority of your shoppers. Navigation is not a backend decision. It is a revenue decision. |
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The customer already buying wine on your site is your best merchandise prospect. Cross-selling at the moment of purchase intent costs nothing extra in acquisition spend. |
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Gift buyers represent your highest AOV opportunity. A curated bundle with premium photography and a clear “Complete the Gift” prompt will consistently outperform individual product listings. |
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Product photography investment is the first credibility signal that tells a premium wine buyer whether to keep scrolling or walk away. It is not an optional line item in the merchandise strategy budget. |
08
The Takeaway
Non-wine merchandise is one of the most direct AOV levers in wine ecommerce, and it does not require a single new customer or additional ad spend to activate.
The brands growing AOV fastest are not selling more wine. They are selling the whole experience the wine belongs to.
Merchandise strategy is a design and photography problem before it is a marketing one. Get those right, and conversion follows.
Durant Vineyards, Gold Ridge Organic Farms, and Breathless Wines each have merchandise programs that perform because they were built around the shopper, not the warehouse.
Ready to Build a Store That Sells More Than Wine?
We help wineries and food and beverage brands design ecommerce experiences that convert, from catalog strategy and product photography to full site builds on Shopify and WordPress.
Ecommerce Strategy • Web Design and UX • Product Photography • Shopify and WordPress Development
