When Laura Bartlett left her friends’ house after a year-end party in 2012, taking home an unfinished bottle of wine sealed with a rubber band, she had no idea it would become a million-dollar business idea!
After returning home, her 20-year-old son, Mitch Strahan, jokingly remarked that her homemade wine stopper looked like a condom. “We just laughed at that joke,” shared Bartlett (51).
It wasn’t until several months later that Strahan decided he would create a product that functioned like a condom for wine bottles. The Bartlett duo began crowdfunding on Kickstarter, and the campaign raised $10,000 in 2014.
By 2018, Bartlett and Strahan’s Wine Condom had surpassed $1 million in total revenue, being sold in many stores across the United States and was being considered for sale in a major convenience store chain.
Looking back to the beginning, Bartlett (who previously worked in marketing for a bank) and Strahan (a waiter) had no idea where to start. They just knew they wanted to create a condom product for wine bottles.
Strahan shared: “We couldn’t hire a condom manufacturing plant to make products to our specifications because their lines were not customizable. Instead, we worked with a glove manufacturer overseas to find a mold that fit the size of wine bottles. The packaging of Wine Condom was also designed to mimic that of traditional condom packaging.
Due to rising production costs, the mother-son duo faced losses in their first year, even after raising more funds from Kickstarter. However, thanks to free word-of-mouth advertising and still having supporters on Kickstarter, they decided to continue. Bartlett even had to dip into her savings to pay for a new shipment when some products were damaged and needed replacement. Reflecting on that tough time, Strahan said: “I had to convince myself a lot to keep going with the promise that we would earn back the money we had invested.
A few months later, their efforts paid off when Wine Condom was featured as a unique gift idea on The Today Show in 2014. In 2016, a video about this product went viral on Facebook, attracting over 30 million views.
In 2017, Bartlett and her son earned over $500,000 in revenue from Wine Condoms, mainly through Amazon, and this figure rose to over $750,000 in 2018.
Their business has now expanded significantly. From storing products in Strahan’s apartment, they have moved to a 3,000-square-foot warehouse near Dallas. According to their website, a box of six reusable wine bottle condoms is sold for $15.
Four years ago, if someone had said that Bartlett and Strahan’s company would thrive as it does today, they might have laughed and said that was unlikely. However, reality has proven otherwise. The business journey has made them realize that even without any startup experience, you can still do it if you’re willing to research and, most importantly, not give up.
Bartlett shared: “Don’t just sit back and wait for someone else to lay out a business plan for you. We have put in a lot of time, effort, and money into Wine Condoms, and our success today is thanks to our perseverance.”