Wine is big business. If you are a California resident and a wine lover, you’ve probably visited a few wineries there. And if you really enjoy wine, you may be interested in creating a business and essentially have a wine shop at home. The Boisset Collection contains a variety of wines and other products that are sold through Ambassadors. In this Boisset Collection MLM review, I’ll take you through how it works so you can decide if it’s worth signing up. So let’s start exploring.
What is Boisset Collection
The Boisset Collection is a collection of wines created and sold by Jean-Claude and Claudine Boisset. They founded the company in Burgundy, France and now have wineries in California, France, England and India. The Boisset family is one of the top 25 wine producers in the U.S. Their main headquarters is in St. Helena, Ca. Initially, the couple started out selling wines to their family and friends. Now the company sells wines throughout the U.S. through their Ambassadors.
Ambassadors who sign up with Boisset would share a love of wine and enjoy making recommendations on which wines would pair well with certain meals and desserts. The product range is quite extensive ranging from red and white wines, glassware, wine accessories and books.
Are the Boisett Products Worth Their Price?
The wines themselves can be expensive and you can probably find comparable products in your local liquor store that are less expensive. So what are you paying for exactly? You are paying for someone who is trained by Boisett to recommend wines to you based on their use. So if you plan on having a fancy party or a formal sit-down dinner, your Ambassador can make recommendations based on food and/or the type of party or guests.
The Boisset MLM Opportunity
The way the Boisset opportunity works is that you sign up as an Ambassador in a MLM business model (multi-level marketing). You will receive training and marketing materials as well as a certain amount of wine depending on the kit you choose. You can further expand your business by recruiting team members.
How Much Does It Cost To Join Boisset?
When you sign up with Boisset, you need to purchase a kit. Each kit contains a few supplies and a free 90-day trial to the Cellar Suite. The kits and prices are listed below:
Go-Green Kit – $42.00
This is the starter kit if you want to become a “wine influencer” in order to get access to the training tools. Does not contain any wine.
The Social-Lite – $149
Contains three bottles of wine, marketing materials and Cellar Suite access. Does not include stemware or accessories.
The Enthusiast – $349
Along with training materials and the Cellar Suite, you also get six bottles of wine and stemware.
The Aspiring SOMM – $549
This kit includes enough materials for two wine tasting events. You get 12 bottles of wine, an insulate 12-bottle wine roller bag, stemware, professional tools and accessories and marketing materials.
Cellar Suite
The Cellar Suite membership includes:
- Your own personal website
- Access to the online training
- Online marketing tools
- Customer and sales reporting
After 90 days, the Cellar Suite will cost you $14 per month or $120 per year. As you can see, the kits can become quite pricey. And the very basic kit, the Go-Green kit, doesn’t even include any wine. It’s basically for wine enthusiasts.
Can You Make Money with Boisset Collection?
There’s more than one way to make money with the Boisset Collection. There are a variety of products to sell that are all associated with wine such as wine glasses and accessories, wine tasting experiences, and jewelry.
You can also earn money by creating a team of ambassadors. This is really how the MLM business model works. You start off by selling the products yourself. Then you start recruiting people to join your team. As a result, you would get a percentage of all sales made by your team.
Class Action Lawsuit
But before you start counting your money here, you should be aware that a number of California wineries, including Jean-Claude Boisset wines, were included in a class action lawsuit back in 2015.
This lawsuit states that the wines in question had unusually high levels of inorganic arsenic. In some cases, 500% higher than the legal limit of what is safely acceptable. But let’s check out the pros and cons anyway.
Pros of Boisset Collection
Variety of Training
Training includes one-on-one coaching from your Sponsor, weekly training calls, 24/7 online tools, brochures, tasting notes and guides.
Good Commission Rates
Commission rates are paid twice a month and you can earn between 15-35% on wine and merchandise.
No Inventory
You are not required to maintain an inventory of wine since it is shipped directly to your customers.
Sell Other Related Products
You can also make money by selling other wine related products such as stemware, jewelry, gifts and other accessories.
Get A Slice of Their Pie
If you decide to develop a team, you can earn between 2-8% of your team’s sales on top of the money you make from your own sales.
Cons of Boisset Collection
Buy a Kit
You must buy a kit to get started and that can run you into some serious money. The most inexpensive kit doesn’t include wine. It only includes training materials for the wine enthusiast.
You Must Join Cellar Suite
It’s free for the first 90 days. Then it’s $14 per month or $120 per year. But unfortunately, you must join this as part of your ambassadorship.
You Must Maintain Minimum Sales
In order to maintain your Ambassador level, you must have annual sales of $1,000 which works out to just under $100 a month. If you decide to build a team, you have to maintain $250 in personal sales each month.
Maintain Your Cellar Suite Membership
In order to keep your Ambassador status active, you must also maintain your membership to the Cellar Suite which will run you around $14 per month or $120 per year.
Businesses Are Out
As an Ambassador, you are not permitted to solicit small businesses or restaurants in order to sell wine.
Not Available Everywhere
There are certain states that don’t permit wine shipping direct to customers. Boisset has a map of the U.S.which indicates where wine sales and shipping is permitted. The states that do not permit wine shipping are: Utah, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island. So if your territory will include any of these states, you are out of luck. Check out the map below.
Is Boisset Collection MLM a Scam?
The Boisset MLM business model may not necessarily be a scam but it could prove to be difficult to make money here. Afterall, wines are not a necessity. They are more of a luxury product and could be difficult to sell especially if the wines are at inflated prices. You’ll probably have no problem selling a few bottles of wine here and there but to get people to commit to a monthly consignment of a product that they don’t really need sounds almost impossible. And the accessories are also more like one-time purchases.
And don’t forget about the lawsuit. The lawsuit may have left the company with a stain on its reputation and anyone who knows anything about good wine may be reluctant to buy this wine in bulk.
Final Thoughts
No matter how much you love wine, signing up to be an Ambassador for the Boisset Collection could cost you a fortune before you make a penny. The Social-Lite kit comes with three bottles of wine to get you started but that will be gone in your first tasting. There’s also those hidden costs that you need to keep in mind like the Cellar Suite monthly subscription that will eat into your profits and stemware you may want to have on hand for your tastings.
MLM business models can sound great and they are designed to look fun and create a feeling of community by selling to your family and friends. But once those prospects dry up your commissions will as well. That will leave you scrambling to create a team and trying to expand your reach to new clientele.
It really shouldn’t be that hard, right? If you really wanted to sell wine online you could create your own business with a website promoting wine and accessories. There would be no minimum sales requirement and you could work on your business whenever it suits you. If this sounds like a better deal to you, check out my #1 recommended method to building your own online business. You’ll get all the training you need,hosting , two websites and tons of great tools.
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I generally work hard to avoid anything connected to a MLM marketing practice, and appreciate you pointing this out. However – as noted by several others here, some of your comments are misleading at best. Wine sales of any kind is *not* as easy as creating your own website or putting something up on Etsy, EBay or the like. It requires special licensing, approvals, purchasing only from a licensed distributor (you can’t just purchase bottles at Costco and then sell with a markup. Even implying that it is possible to do so seems even more potentially harmful than their MLM can ever be.
There are some inaccuracies here. We have been a wine club member for a few years and yet to have a bad wine. We also have memberships at some other great vineyards such as Cakebread.
Last January right before the pandemic we took our daughter and her boyfriend to Raymond for her graduation. Coincidentally, JCB himself was there and was so friendly. He talked with us , took pics, and even took care of our bill later at his wine bar down the street. Yes, he is wealthy and flamboyant, but he’s also really nice and generous.
Arsenic in California wines affected all of the vineyards in the area.
JCB wines can also be found in stores. Our local liquor store has Raymond and we live in South Dakota!
There are so many errors in this article, and misleading statements I don’t even know where to begin. BTW the class action suit against nearly every winery in Napa Valley was dismissed.
The first fallacy has to be “just get a website of your own and you can sell wine yourself” and “It really shouldn’t be that hard, right? If you really wanted to sell wine online you could create your own business with a website promoting wine and accessories. There would be no minimum sales requirement and you could work on your business whenever it suits you.”
Do you know anything about the alcohol industry? Did you know you have to apply for a state license to “sell wine yourself” and it’s very, very expensive? In some states it’s more difficult than others? Where do you find the wines? You need a distributor. Or you have to pound the pavement to find some to represent. And negotiate. How about invest in and carry hundreds of bottles of inventory to fulfill orders? Pay for a website and e-commerce shopping platform even if you could get a license? Pack and ship the wines to your customers? Please do your research before you make such erroneous claims.
For our program, it is essentially free to join if you pay the $42 for your 1st 3 mos.
If you think $14/mo. or $120/year is too much dough to lay out to have your own wine business representing an authentic collection of historic wineries, have a full-blown e-commerce website, marketing and social media support, ongoing professional wine education, dedicated customer care, fulfillment and shipping to your customers, and with no quotas or minimums (yes REALLY) then we are surely not for you.
Anyone who starts a business has to build it from the ground up and true entrepreneurs know how to grow a business and a client base. Boisset Ambassadors do not need to build a sales team, it is purely optional, we make the most $$ on our own sales.
Our program suits those who are passionate about wine, and want to be in the industry w/o having to be hired. They get it. And we’re having more fun than most!
Wow, didn’t realise that wines even had MLM programs. MLMs are hard to make money in so it is good to be in the know.
Thanks for your post
the name boisset has always been ringing a bell when it comes to wines and i can say that the quality of their wines are great. although i would not give a full recommendation into their MLM program as it requires much more than just resources. thank you for this post
Really don’t know what you are talking about Benny, resources? We’re not an MLM either, we are a direct-to-consumer division of a global wine company, whose name and brands you should recognize: Raymond, DeLoach, Buena Vista, LVE by John Legend and more. And yes, the quality is indeed great. Many of our wines have critic ratings 90 to 100 pts. (Parker, Dunnuck, Wine Spectator, etc.)
Hello Neil,
I have read some of your articles and I must say I love the way you review this subject, very objective.
You rightly pointed it out, if one will sell wine, you can do it with a website of your own. Own your business and market it properly.
I was fast to check your recommendation and I saw it is Wealthy Affiliate again, with the training on wealthy affiliate, you can run any online business, I came to the platform as a newbie, knowing nothing. Within 3 months I was able to put up my site and all of my articles are indexed and ranked on Google.
Top of it is the support you get from the team in charge of hosting, I had a challenge with my website, the team was very responsive and they ensured my issue was resolved
Looks like I will whine if I have this wine :( Thanks for the honest review Jay