UndergroundCellar.com started from a radical idea. A daily-deal website for wine that didn't use discounts. To most that sounds like an oxymoron -- "Where's the DEAL if there's no discount?!" So I set out to test my concept of using randomized free upgrades for buyers instead of discounts.

The way I did this was to throw a party. Everyone who showed up paid $15 and got a bottle of wine, which I put each in its own brown bag...some bottles were high priced ($100 bottles), others were lower priced ($15). We randomly distributed the bottles to the party-goers and it was fun to see the reaction of those who got the more expensive bottles. Everyone loved the excitement of seeing what they got; which resulted in everyone passing the bottles around and sharing.

So the point is that even before I built out the website platform to do the allocation randomization and to accept payments, I did it manually without any technology at all. Being able to test the concept without spending months and thousands of dollars was huge in terms of gathering market research.

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