From boutique curation to seamless automation, The Wine Fellas journey with NOAN reveals how a small wine shop scaled its signature personal touch—using AI to deliver handpicked experiences to every member, every month. The Wine Fellas is a boutique e-commerce wine shop specializing in curated, small-batch Portuguese wines. Their flagship product is a monthly wine club subscription, where members receive handpicked selections tailored to their tastes. The brand’s core value lies in delivering a highly personalized, “local wine shop” experience—knowing each customer’s preferences and building trust through expert curation and personal service.

The Challenge

As The Wine Fellas grew, founder Marlowe Fawcett faced a classic scaling dilemma:  

• Low Margins, High Touch: Margins per bottle were slim, so growth depended on acquiring more club members—without sacrificing the personal touch that set them apart.
• Complex Data Management: With 150+ wines, each with multiple price points, types, and descriptions, and a matrix of customer profiles, managing selections and custom boxes became increasingly complex.
• Manual Processes: Early attempts to automate using spreadsheets, Google Docs, and even generic AI tools like ChatGPT proved clumsy and error-prone, especially when trying to avoid repeat selections and maintain quality curation.

The NOAN Solution

1. Centralizing Customer Knowledge

• The team uploaded all customer profiles into NOAN’s Network, tagging each with detailed wine preferences.
• Subscription models and tiers were structured as “facts” within NOAN, giving the assistant instant context on the business model and value proposition.

2. Structuring Product Data as Living Facts

• Instead of relying on unwieldy CSV uploads, The Wine Fellas used NOAN’s “facts” system to create dynamic, easily updatable lists for red, white, and miscellaneous wines.
• This allowed the assistant to access, update, and reason over inventory in real time, with full awareness of pricing, types, and recent box history.

3. AI-Native Box Curation

• Marlowe could now simply ask the NOAN assistant to build a custom box (e.g., “Tier 1 six-pack for red wine lovers, within these price parameters, no repeats from last month”).
• The assistant would instantly generate a selection, flagging any constraints (such as unavailable inventory or repeat avoidance) and prompting for manual intervention only when necessary.

4. Iterative Improvement

• The process was refined through quick feedback loops—updating facts, testing outputs, and adjusting prompts—resulting in a system that was both robust and flexible.

Results

• Time Savings: Building monthly subscription boxes, once a manual and error-prone process, is now automated and completed in minutes.
• Scalability: The Wine Fellas can confidently grow their club membership without losing the personal touch or curation quality that defines their brand.
• Data Integrity: All customer and product data is centralized, up-to-date, and easily accessible for both AI-driven and manual processes.
• Personalization at Scale: The assistant “knows” each customer’s preferences, ensuring every box feels handpicked—no matter how large the subscriber base grows.

Founder’s Perspective

“What NOAN has—the way these facts work—is fantastic. We’re excited to keep building our wine lists through facts and work with the assistant to automate all of our processes, but still deliver our customer value.”
— Marlowe Fawcett, Co-Founder

Key Takeaways

• NOAN’s fact-based knowledge system enables true personalization at scale, even for complex, high-touch businesses.
• Automation doesn’t have to mean losing the human element—NOAN’s assistant preserves the “local wine shop” feel while unlocking efficiency.
• Iterative, collaborative onboarding ensures the platform adapts to unique business needs, not the other way around.

The Wine Fellas’ journey with NOAN demonstrates how AI-native knowledge management can transform a boutique, high-service business into a scalable, data-driven operation—without sacrificing what makes it special. Ready to experience curated wine like never before? Discover The Wine Fellas at thewinefellas.pt.