Float, a wine subscription service
Float started out of the desire to solve for the problem that is glass recycling in the US, specifically focusing on the recycling of glass wine bottles. Within a design sprint centered class in USC’s Iovine and Young Academy, we assembled a team of five students to work on finding this solution. Our team was interdisciplinary and worked collaboratively throughout, each with an emphasis, mine centering around user research, product conception, user testing and marketing.
An original milk float truck from the 1970’s
While we kicked off the project planning to create wine-jug filling stations that could sit in your local grocery store, we realized quickly that the legal hurdles made this solution impossible. After much in depth ideating and research, our team pivoted to a Direct-to-Consumer solution, and more specifically to focus on a type of wine subscription service. The inspiration for our product ended up coming from the milk float’s of the late 20th century, which delivered milk to the neighborhood in glass bottles and then picked up the empty bottles at the end of the week.
Rather than putting wine in glass bottles, we chose to focus on creating our own proprietary Float bottles, made out of stainless steal. (Originally titled Tinto, we adjusted the name to Float to honor the milk float tradition and inspiration to our model.)
Initial rendering for the stainless steel bottle
Developing the bottle prototype took quite a bit of research and feedback. We realized that consumers wanted a bottle that could fit into their wine bars and wine shelves, and that still carried the identity of the winemaker and the fun character of the wine label that consumers know and love. We also chose to brush the bottle in a deep green color to mirror the look of a traditional bottle of red wine.
In moving on to branding and concepting I conducted research on the wine subscription market and focused on developing a brand identity and price point that worked to bridge the gap between the more budget-focused wine drinker and the more reputation-focused wine drinker. This affected branding and also how we priced our subscription service. We performed user research with 100+ participants to better understand wine consumption habits, desires, and dislikes, and spoke with highly acclaimed industry professionals on the customer facing side and the production side, as well as an environmental engineer to better understand the challenges we were solving for. Through our work, we developed a service that was consistently applauded and appreciated by industry and non-industry individuals as a potentially game-changing idea.
Brand guide for Float
Our proposed subscription model
As we wrapped the term within which we focused on this venture, we decided to place further pursuit of the idea on hold. The team is interested in potentially picking the idea back up in the future, but next steps are very labor and cost intensive regarding permitting, buying initial assets, and rolling out the delivery portion of the service. If we do pick the idea back up, there is still some work to do regarding tuning costs and finances as well as doing a more in depth environmental impact study on the production of the reusable bottles.
My contributions on this project centered around:
User Research
Product Conception and Design
User Testing
Marketing