Direct Cellars Review – Sell Wine Subscriptions? Not a Chance!

Direct Cellars is a MLM or multi-level marketing company that sells wines as its business opportunity.

You get regular-sized wine bottles for purchase at retail and wholesale price, and you get to take part in their compensation plan.

The company was launched in 2014 by David DiStefano as a form of direct selling wine subscription service. Then it evolved into the a full-fledged MLM company.

As of this writing, all products are restricted to those residing in the USA.

The Direct Cellars management team boasts of a combined 200+ years of experience in the MLM industry.

Direct Cellars Product Line

As we mentioned earlier, they sell wine bottles. While you can get them at a per-piece rate, their real package comes from their Wines of the Month Club subscription, which is them sending you different bottles of wines every month.

You get different bottles, depending on the subscription that you signed up for:

• Customers – 2 bottles of wine for $69.95 per month or 4 bottles of wine for $99.95 per month.
• Affiliate Members – 2 bottles of wine for $49.95 per month or 4 bottles of wine for $79.95 per month.

Each wine is expertly chosen by their highly trained wine tasters, and these are internationally sourced wines as well.

Every bottle of wine that Direct Cellars ships to comes with what they call a Connoisseurs Tasting Notes.

This is a cheat sheet given to you so you’ll know how to store the wine, which food blends well with it, and many other tidbits of information that can help enhance your experience with Direct Cellars.

Does The Product Work?

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any review about their wine products. This would make me assume that the wines are not that spectacular in terms of taste and quality, but they’re just decent enough.

I would also like to mention that there’s no sommelier feedback about products. A sommelier is a professional trained to be a wine steward, meaning he or she knows their wines. They usually work in restaurants and hotels, and they specialize in all aspects of wine and wine tasting.

I was looking for sommelier feedback because it would’ve added some weight into their overall program review, but it seems that the absence of feedback is just as weighted as any sommelier feedback.

Direct Cellars offers you the following means to make money from:

1. Retail and sales commissions
2. Commissions from recruitment and team sales
3. Other bonuses

How To Get Started with Direct Cellars?

You have 2 options to join as a member of their program:

• Premium Wine Lover Level – This level will cost $249.95. This level offers 4 bottles of wine.
• Premium Wine Lover Elite Level – This level will cost $499.95. This level offers 12 bottles of wine.

Then you have to maintain a monthly autoship of $79.95 to stay qualified for this program.

Direct Cellars Compensation Plan

Retail Commissions

You earn about $20 per wine bottle package, and you enjoy this commission once you’re subscribed to their monthly autoship.

Referral Commissions

You get referral commissions every time a new member purchases one of the memberships below:

• When you refer a Premium Wine Lover that makes a purchase of $249.95 you will earn a $125 referral commission.
• When you refer a Premium Wine Lover Elite that makes a purchase of $499.95 you will earn a $250 referral commission.

Residual Binary Commissions

This follows a Binary compensation plan to structure out their residual commissions. This basically has you signing up members under you in two legs: right and left legs.

Every new member recruited by you or your members get placed in corresponding legs. Team sales are based on which leg sells the most.

Residual Unilevel Commissions

There are additional residual commissions paid out through a unilevel compensation structure.

#1 Lack of Information on Wines

One of the biggest gripes that members had about the subscription program is that they don’t have any information on what they get.

Sometimes, they get the same kind of wine for months. There were a few complaints that people received the same kind for a few months (same colored wine), and that beat the purpose out of the subscription.

Granted, there were no guarantees that you were going to get different wines, but it does beat out customer expectations.

#2 Expensive To Subscribe

The membership to join their business opportunity is expensive, and you’re sitting at least a couple hundred dollars that you have to recoup before you can make a profit.

Again, you could easily recoup those loses by recruiting people, but it’s not going to be as easy as recruiting someone into a different niche, like cosmetics or health care.

#3 Not Everyone's Forte

Wine is not going to be everyone’s favorite, so there’s that challenge of marketing both the products and the subscriptions to people around you.

Wine bottles aren’t meant to be finished in one go, so your customers won’t probably reorder from you for a few months.

Personally, I love beer and whiskey. And I don’t even finish an entire bottle when I do drink. If I do buy a bottle of wine, I would make sure to get the more popular brands even if it means shelling out a few extra bucks to get it.

#1 Unique Company

Direct Cellars is a unique company simply because it markets something completely different compared to the other MLM companies out there.

And we’ve reviewed quite a few MLM companies out there, and we add this company to our list.

However, just because it’s unique doesn’t mean that it’s a lucrative opportunity. That shouldn’t be your basis for signing up for this program.

Direct Cellars is a legitimate MLM company that has you selling a wine subscription service and wine bottles at retail pricing.

However, the income opportunity isn’t that lucrative because it’s difficult to market these products. The membership and the subscription services are quite expensive, so people might turn away from the company the moment they see the price tag.

I'm not a fan of MLM, not because it's illegal or not profitable, but because of all the restrictions and the expensive costs involved.

Instead, Affiliate Marketing is my top recommended business model for anyone to make money online.

The reason is simple...

• You don't have to recruit anyone to make money
• You have the freedom to promote any products you want and not being restricted to only promote the products from one MLM company
• It's Free to get started

In fact, with affiliate marketing...