One of alcohol industry’s most successful leaders, Abbott Wolfe, has joined GrapeStars as President of their newly created division, GrapeStars Brands.
Having spent virtually his entire career with some of the largest and most successful alcohol beverage companies, Wolfe now brings his global experience of creating and growing wine, spirits, and beer brands to GrapeStars. Most recently he was the CEO of Avaline, the celebrity brand founded by Cameron Diaz and Katherine Power. He built Avaline into one of the fastest growing and well-known new wine brands to enter the US retail and DTC market in the last 2 years.
Prior to Avaline, Abbott Wolfe led the massive growth of the Napa luxury wine company, Copper Cane and spent time at global companies like Gallo, Diageo, and Constellation. Over his career he has successfully launched over 100 new brands whose value today is worth more than $500 Million.
The Rise of Celebrity Backed Brands
Celebrities have their hands in just about everything these days, from beauty and fashion products to wines and spirits. And consumers can’t get enough, with celebrity-backed items largely out performing some more traditional brands, particularly thanks to the rise of immense influence these celebrities wield.
As more celebrities venture into the alcohol space, fans can find it difficult to purchase these brands in their local stores, and celebrities can also be frustrated by the constant jockeying for the limited and highly competitive retail shelf space. Which is why when it comes to getting today’s hottest celebrity produced wines and spirits in front of consumers, over 200 celebrity-based brands turn to GrapeStars to help sell and market their products.
GrapeStars’ proprietary app, available on the App Store and Google Play, allows for a direct-to-consumer sales channel to help celebrities monetize their brand — no need to drive from store-to-store just to track down the hottest celebrity releases.
And Wolfe’s experience on how to create and bring a new brand to market — or help accelerate the growth of an existing brand — will be invaluable to both celebrities and GrapeStars. This new division will help celebrities immensely, providing a one-stop shop for branding, marketing, sourcing and production, route-to-market guidance and a path to quickly monetizing their brand. Besides leading this newly created division, Wolfe is also a strategic advisor to GrapeStars Entertainment.
“Celebrities have played a very important role in creating new and exciting brands in the alcohol space. With the success at Avaline, I could not be more excited to now join GrapeStars and help celebrities create, support and sell their brand,” Abbott Wolfe.
High Praise For The Industry Vet
“As an early investor and marketing partner since its inception, I’m thrilled to learn that Abbott Wolfe is joining GrapeStars. His experience aligns perfectly with our business priorities, and that will allow him to focus his efforts, with great clarity, on the taking GrapeStars to the next level. I’m looking forward to working with Abbott on very successful campaigns soon.” – Gonzalo J. Gonzalez, Managing Partner at BVK
“Over my career, I’ve invested in numerous companies and the most important thing fueling success are the brilliant minds leading the growth behind the brand. I’ve always believed in the vision of JJ and his partners, and now with the addition of Abbott Wolfe I’m proud and excited to see the brand’s exponential growth.” – Kevin Harrington, Inventor of the Infomercial, Shark on Shark Tank, Fortune 100 Investor and Philanthropist
Kevin Harrington is one of the principal pioneers of the “As Seen On TV” Industry. As the owner of AsSeenOnTV Inc. and AsSeenOnTv.com, Kevin has launched over 1,000 products in over 100 countries in dozens of languages, creating over $6 billion in global sales. Here Harrington talks about why he is bullish on the success of GrapeStars.
“As entrepreneurs, we have a vision to continuously add growth. To have a quality person with the experience in the alcohol industry like Abbott is a cherry on top for GrapeStars. On behalf of our investors and the entire GrapeStars team we’re proud to have Abbott push our company to new heights.” — Brothers Jean Jean and Robert Pelletier, co-Founders of GrapeStars
“GrapeStars has been a tremendous partner for a360media (parent company of In Touch) and continues to make strides in connecting celebrities and their products with the consumers that adore them. We look forward to continuing to help bring their marketplace-leading innovations to the forefront as the celebrity-based product industry continues its unprecedented growth” — a360media
Stay tuned for more exciting developments from GrapeStars as they continue to revolutionize the way celebrities market their brands to consumers.