We recently sat down with WineDirect’s Vice President of Partnership and Compliance—Jeff Carroll. Jeff joined the team in March 2023 and has been focused on WineDirect’s partner and compliance strategy as wineries upgrade to the All-New WineDirect. Let’s get to know him a little better!
Thank you! I’m really excited to be here. I started working in the wine industry in May of 2005 when I joined Six88 Solutions, the company that created ShipCompliant. Coincidentally, that was the exact same month that the Granholm v. Heald Supreme Court decision was delivered, and the ensuing years were quite dramatic in terms of change in the direct-to-consumer landscape. I spent 11 years at Six88 working on ShipCompliant with an awesome team. Following that, I took some time off before joining Compli, where I led product, engineering, sales and marketing. Not too long after I joined Compli, we sold the company to Avalara, where I spent the last four years. Compli became Avalara for Beverage Alcohol, and I became the General Manager of Avalara for Beverage Alcohol role following Rachel Dumas Rey’s retirement in 2019. Although my roles have had different titles through the different adventures, the responsibilities have been similar in that I’ve helped with product, partnerships, strategy, compliance, and go-to-market initiatives.
It’s been great! I’ve received such a warm welcome here at WineDirect and am thrilled to be on the team. I’ve known many people on the team here for quite a long time, which has made the transition much easier.
I’ll lead partnerships and compliance efforts here at WineDirect. Maintaining and growing partner relationships will be crucial to our success here as well as a critical part of our go-to-market strategy. I’m excited about working with both existing partners and new partners alike. We believe that creating mutually beneficial partnerships will help WineDirect succeed and help our clients, our partner network, and the industry at large.
Some of my first priorities are focused on compliance and fulfillment. We want to ensure clients launching on the All-New WineDirect have the tools to put them in control of their compliance programs. In addition, we want clients to have amazing capabilities to create a delightful shipping experience for their DTC programs, whether they’re shipping in-house or through a third party.
The All-New WineDirect opens up so many possibilities for partnerships that will give our clients best-of-breed tools. The sky is the limit regarding what we can bring to our clients through partnerships with product companies and third-party developers to help their businesses succeed. We’ll obviously have marketing, fulfillment, compliance, and other key components, but we’ll also be able to open our extremely powerful dataset to partners that want to help clients create dashboards, analytics, and insights to give their businesses a boost.
Well, I will be honest here and say that even though I’ve been in the industry for a long time now, I am far from an expert. I enjoy drinking pretty much any type of wine, but if I had to pick one type, I would say Oregon Pinot Noir. There are so many great wines out there and I want to try them all!
We are super excited to have Jeff join the WineDirect team. Strong partnerships and complete compliance solutions are at the core of WineDirect and will help us continue to offer an all-in-one solution that is flexible, scalable, and connected. Interested in learning more about the All-New WineDirect platform? Check out our Landing Page for the latest updates.
