Meet Hala Shamas of Sipsy Inc.

Today we’d like to introduce you to Hala Shamas.

Hi Hala, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My family has been in the liquor retail business for over 40 years, however, I was never involved. I had my own path. After graduating from USC, I worked for a post-production company and climbed the corporate ladder. I eventually left and started working for startups and really discovered my passion for launching businesses. In 2019, I saw an opportunity to take my family’s liquor business digital. So much was happening in the on-demand space from on-demand taxis (uber/lyft) to on-demand food deliveries so I thought “why can’t we do this for liquor?”

I was initially going to partner with a larger tech company that already had the tech but were just missing the liquor connects (which I had). But that didn’t go as planned and they essentially ghosted me. It didn’t matter to me, I was going to do it anyway. I had a few connections in the tech space that gave me guidance on how to go about building out the tech – we started with a simple website. That’s all we really needed and within a few weeks, we started getting orders.

A few months later, Covid hit and then we were really rolling. We were very unprepared. Our order volume 10xed overnight and really forced us to get our staffing, operations, and tech in order. Covid was a wild time but it really put us on the map.

Soon, Uber, Doordash and all the big delivery apps started to get into the alcohol game. But we were still able to compete becuase we offered something they couldn’t…unmatched customer service and real humans you can talk to on the phone or via chat. If you couldn’t find your favorite drink on our website, we would try to special order it for you. That is something the big guys couldn’t do.

Over time, demand grew outside of our local delivery area so we launched nation-wide shipping. And today, we ship to 41 states. Companies use Sipsy for gifting and virtual happy hours and others just use Sipsy to get their favorite wine, and spirits delivered to their door.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
In business, the road is never smooth. But the key is to keep going, despite all the defeats, you have to wake up everyday and chug along. We had a lot of tech challenges early on and I remember one Friday (which is our busiest day), our website completely went down. Customers calling, emailing, texting, etc and I went into full panic mode. We didn’t have enough cash early on to have an engineer on the team so it was up to me to figure this out. I started frantically googling “how to fix a broken website”. There was an overwhelming amount of info online and I didn’t know where to start, but after a few hours of research and trial and error, I found a youtube video that showed the exact error our website had. YES! So I followed the instructions and within a few hours, our website was back. Sure, we lost some sales, but this was a great was for me to gain some tech skills that I couldn’t afford to pay someone else for.

There were many times when we were so short staffed, where not only I was making deliveries, but my mom, dad, and neighbor were helping make deliveries.

We also had our fair share of legal battles. A few years after launching and investing a lot of our personal money into the business and the brand, the big beverage giant, Pepsi challenged us on our Sipsy trademark. That was one of the lowest points for me. Giving up the Sipsy name and rebranding meant spending hundreds of thousands of dollars we didn’t have. It felt like I was losing everything we had worked so hard to build over the last few years. But I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t give up, but we also didn’t have the money to fight the giant nor did we have the money to rebrand. We had to get creative, we had to come up with a compromise that would give Pepsi what they wanted but allow us to use our Sipsy brand to operate. It took us two years of negotiating with Pepsi to come up with a solution that worked for both.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Sipsy Inc.?
Sipsy is a wine and spirits retailer both online and in physical brick-and mortar. We offer same-day delivery in Los Angeles and nation-wide shipping. We have over 5,000 well-known spirits brands but we really specialize in small-batch, authentic, boutique products. Specifically in the agave (tequila and mezcal) and natural wine space.

We are really proud of our brand’s customer focus both online and in-store. Our customers can reach out to us for any special requests, events, hard-t0-find bottles and we make it happen! We collaborate with a lot of emerging brands so we are always brining new and innovative products to our customers – from small batch additive-free tequilas to organically-made orange wines.

We also have fun cocktail kits that people love gifting and companies love using for hosting virtual happy hours.

Sipsy makes spirits shopping explorative and fun. Our stores have been described as “the Apple Stores of Liquor”. We have a clean, modern aesthetic that is coupled with new and innovative products our customers can experience.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
When a customer walks in and says “I love Sipsy” or “this is my favorite store”.

Success also means having a Sipsy location in every major LA area so that every person in LA can have the opportunity to experience Sipsy in-person.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Sipsy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sipsydelivery/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SipsyDelivery
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sipsy
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sipsydelivery
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@sipsydelivery