When It Makes Sense To Move Your Startup Across The Country

by Bob Wilson
November 12, 2014

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Chicago is an amazing city and a great place to start a business. The community of entrepreneurs truly exemplifies the midwest traits of hard work, being humble, and just helping other people in general. When you can send an email to a friend in the community who works at a different startup that recently went public and get quick, honest feedback about things such as user experience and user interface, you know you're part of a community that'll do everything it can to help you succeed.

 
Furthermore, Chicago's culture in general continues to mature. We have arguably the best food and beverage scene in the country, incredible resources such as 1871 and Catapult, along with a growing amount of Venture Capital. There isn't much more an entrepreneur could ask for and the people are truly helpful. So why would it make sense to move your company across the country?
 
When Growth Requires It:
 
At the beginning of June, my company - Winestyr - packed up and moved our headquarters out to Sonoma County to open a new West Coast office and fulfillment center. We had launched our MVP in January of 2012 and then launched our full-blown wine marketplace in December of 2012. We always planned to head west to open a fulfillment center once we proved to ourselves that the consumer demand for our platform was heavy enough. We hit that level in Q4 of last year and immediately set plans in motion to head out to Sonoma County. Our largest source of frustration and customer churn became poor fulfillment. Other companies (Fab.com and Zappo's) have also gone through this metamorphosis and turned fulfillment into a tool to facilitate more growth.
 
To Improve your Product in ways that wouldn't otherwise be possible:
 
With the move, we had the chance to turn one of our biggest customer experience negatives into one of our biggest strengths. We painstakingly designed beautiful new packaging and now have the best fulfillment (read: fastest and cheapest) practices in the internet wine vertical. We run a robust corporate gifting business for companies of all sizes - small teams to Fortune 100 - and take a white glove approach including the option of a personalized, handwritten note in each box (shoot me an email at [email protected] for more information). We've baked virality into the product from the very start as we quickly learned that paid marketing is a dangerous game to play for a startup with no institutional backing. For more on that philosophy, you can read Andy Dunn's amazing post about "startup drugs"
 
Get closer to your customers:
 
This may seem counterintuitive, but as an inventory-less wine marketplace, the closest we had ever gotten to the vast majority of our customers was through our website. Sure, we had gotten out to wine country a few times and our winery partners are the lifeblood of our platform, but a quick meeting is a far cry from being able to stop by the winery to chat on your way into the office. Furthermore, even though we moved to rural Sonoma County, we're closer than we've ever been to consumers across the country. I'm proud to say that our founders are boots on the ground, packing boxes ourselves, and it's the best feeling in the world. Packing a box of happiness that is going straight to someone in Chicago, or New York City, or San Francisco makes my day each and every time. We're truly closer to both our winery partners, the wine itself, and the end consumer in every way imaginable. It's inspiring and energizing to get back to the basics.
 
You Can Always Come Home:
 
The same amazing people who have helped us along the way are more engaged than ever. In fact, I think I actually see important mentors, advisors, and investors more now because I'm home less often. We make it a point to see each other and catch up every few months. For others in the community, they've taken an even bigger interest in our business since we moved out to Sonoma County  because there is something intriguing about making such a big move. At the end of the day, Winestyr is still a Chicago company through and through - we're still based there and our biggest customer following is there. We're proud to have sprung roots in wine country, but Chicago is our home.

 

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