Zipz Wine: Here's What Happened After Appearing On Shark Tank

Some people contend that entrepreneurs are born and not made, and Andrew McMurray may fit that conclusion. He fell into the wine business when his father-in-law offered him a job working with the family company Zachys, a fine wine shop in Scarsdale, New York, and he fell in love with the industry. Another wine-related opportunity eventually came knocking on his door when a Zachys regular who worked with the NY Mets wanted to pick his brain about how to upgrade the wine-drinking experience of fans who would soon attend games at the yet-to-be-opened Citi Field.

Many folks are not enthused about drinking vino from a can, partly because canned wine can give off an awful smell, and serving it in small plastic cups isn't something people generally get excited about either. McMurray landed on a product from New Zealand that he thought might work, but after running into another Zachys customer, J. Henry Scott, he realized it needed some improvement. The two worked to create the ideal single-serve wine receptacle and ultimately created Zipz: a goblet-shaped vessel with the heft and feel of a traditional wine glass that also lengthened the shelf life of the alcohol with a protective plastic cover.

McMurray locked in investments from 25 investors totaling $8.5 million in capital, but in the wine business, having someone to open some doors for you is priceless. He needed someone who knew how to facilitate deals, and he knew the venture capitalists on ABC's "Shark Tank" could make that happen for Zipz.

McMurray appeared on Season 6, Episode 11 of "Shark Tank" and got straight down to business by stating his ask (something the founder of ENERGYbits forgot to mention during her pitch on the show). He was seeking $2.5 million for 10% of his company, and he began testifying how his patented packaging was more valuable than the wine it was housing. Plastic on the outside prevented UV rays from ruining the wine inside, and a twist-off lid could be fixed to the bottom of the glass while enjoying the drink. Demonstrating how durable the container was, he stood on it while the sharks watched in awe.

Still, not everyone liked his business model — or branding. Mark Cuban was the first to jump ship because he didn't like the zipper on the logo. Daymond John thought the business was too risky. Lori Greiner argued that McMurray had too many partners already, and Robert Herjavec couldn't understand why he was going to all the trouble of making wine when he could simply license the packaging to other winemakers. That left "Mr. Wonderful" Kevin O'Leary as the only shark remaining.

As a wine connoisseur, O'Leary was intrigued by the product, but he had a problem with the price of $2.99 per glass. McMurray assured O'Leary that by scaling the business, the cost would come down. O'Leary offered McMurray the $2.5 million for 10% but wanted the option to buy another 10% for the same amount of money should the company be sold. McMurray made a quick phone call to his partner J. Henry Scott before reentering the tank to accept O'Leary's offer.

One of O'Leary's biggest hopes for Zipz was getting the product into Costco because it was the "largest buyer of wine on Earth" (per Hulu). Not long after making a deal, O'Leary decided to call the lead wine buyer at the membership warehouse, Annette Alvarez-Peters, to set up a meeting about the possibility of putting this product on its shelves. Just 20 minutes after he left a voicemail, he got a return call and scheduled a meeting at a nearby airport.

Unfortunately, the meeting did not go as he had hoped. In an interview with Wine Spectator, O'Leary described the travesty that ended any hope of Zipz being the newest addition to Costco's wine section. "She took the sample of the single-serve wine, and she was holding it over her purse and she tipped it [...] and it leaked right into her purse."

However, Zipz wasn't done quite yet. The company still had a patented design for its packaging, and McMurray saw that as an opportunity to shift the focus of the business from making wine to merely housing it.

Sales for Zipz weren't growing, and as O'Leary once said in an interview with Gazette Review, "If you don't make money within three years of operations, you're a hobby. You're not a business." Something needed to change, and McMurray took a step back to see where Zipz had gone wrong. He quickly realized that producing wine was taking up too much time and capital, proving that Herjavec was right to admonish him for trying to wear too many hats in the wine business.

The company switched from a B2C to a B2B business model, focusing on licensing royalties to other winemakers. As McMurray put it in an interview with Small Business Journal, "Not only did it change our model, it turned our competition into endorsers of our product." The company even rebranded, becoming Zipz Packaging. That allowed Zipz to shift towards licensing royalties as a primary source of revenue, and if there is one thing fans of "Shark Tank" know about Mr. Wonderful, it is that he loves a good royalty deal.

However, all the pivoting and shifting of the business model wasn't enough to keep Zipz afloat. The Zipz Wine website is no longer functional, and its social media accounts have been inactive for years. For whatever reason, McMurray wasn't able to successfully promote the packaging deal to secure enough revenue to keep Zipz afloat, and today, Zipz is just a memory from a 2014 episode of "Shark Tank."

Zipz's social media accounts have been dormant for some time, but McMurray's LinkedIn account shows that he is still working at Zachys as the vice president of the company. He gives credit to his father-in-law for taking a chance on him and showing him the ropes of the business early on, saying of the man in an interview with Westchester, "He's an icon in the fine-wine industry." Today, he has over 32 years under his belt in that position, and with everything Zipz going dark by 2018 at the latest, it seems he is content enjoying his career in the fine wine industry these days.

His personal Facebook account is updated with new posts regularly, promoting Zachys and sharing the details of his further exploration of the business he fell in love with decades ago. Securing a deal with a shark doesn't always guarantee success, as illustrated by Bee D'Vine's appearance on "Shark Tank," but McMurray demonstrated resilient tenacity in trying to make Zipz work any way he could. His entrepreneurial days may be over, but judging by his enthusiastic posts about all things wine, McMurray is living his best life working in an industry he is passionate about.