Sarah Jessica Parker’s Wine Business Success Story | Entrepreneur

This week on How Success Happens, I spoke with award-winning actress and entrepreneur Sarah Jessica Parker and one of her business partners, Tim Lightbourne.

During the conversation, we discussed their wine brand Invivo X, SJP, produced under New Zealand-based parent company Invivo Wines. The company has had an incredible journey from massive crowdfunding to enlisting Parker as its partner, and it now makes one of the fastest-growing Sauvignon Blancs in the U.S. I wanted to sit down with Parker and Lightbourne to find out how it all happened.

You can listen to our entire conversation above, and below, I’ve pulled out three key takeaways.

1. Create an honor-bonded relationship with your community and customers

From a young age, Parker learned the importance of building lasting relationships and treating the people around her with respect and kindness. Customer service is all about building actual relationships, and she’s learned that although the product is essential, in business, you need consumers, clients and a team that will work with and like you. Parker says they frequently meet with distributors, buyers, factories and customers, and that is how they forge new relationships for the brand.

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2. Have the desire to work hard

Parker learned the importance of discipline at a young age as an actor and ballerina. If you are serious about something, you must invest and take it seriously. Because this has been so embedded in her life, she couldn’t help but approach business the same way. Doing the hard stuff is how you learn the business and gain opportunity. There are no shortcuts. The best way to be the boss is to be willing to work hard and learn how to become one. She was not deeply versed in wine but had the drive to be, and she did it.

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3. Make a product that speaks for itself

Any celebrity and anyone can make a brand, but what really puts a product on the map is when you invest in its quality. Parker says part of this is working with the experts and learning to develop something award-winning. It is the sweat equity that is impossible to oversell. At Invivo, blending sessions allow the team to taste various wines, and Parker says they’re proud to have developed their own serious yet affordable, approachable and delicious wine. To get customers, you need the trade industry to support you. She says quality is how Invivo X, SJP has gained industry acclaim.

The 2022 vintage of Parker’s Sauvignon Blanc received 93 points in a Wine Spectator blind taste test. The brand is also now carried on Delta Airlines because its team loved the wine in another blind test. Parker says she doesn’t think of good wine brands as “celebrity brands” when the wine is of quality, and she believes Invivo X, SJP is thought of in that way.

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