Marisa China wasn't prepared for the flood of emails that deluged her inbox on Sunday afternoon, let alone the waves of visitors that caused her website, BellaVitaBags.com, to crash. Twice. As the co-founder of the wine accessory brand, she was excited about her latest launch — a purse with a secret compartment that stores two bottles of vino — but had no idea that it'd become a viral phenomenon.
"I was getting all of these emails from the contact form on my site: 'How do I buy this?' 'Your website's not working!' 'How do I get a bag?'" she explained. "I called our office manager, and he said, 'you've got to check out this video.'"
The video she's referring to is our video, above, and while we had an inkling it'd be popular with readers, we had no idea what a hit it'd become. Within an hour, it'd raked in more than 1 million views and was showing no signs of slowing down. Even more powerful, though, was the engagement from people; normally, likes outpace comments (after all, how easy is it to click "like" and keep scrolling your feed?), but for every thumbs up, somebody tagged a friend, shared their thoughts, or launched into a debate about the bag. Within five days, it'd climbed to almost 45 million views on Facebook, with 734,479 shares and more than 219,000 comments.
As a small business owner, China felt the impact of those views immediately. Bella Vita typically gets a couple hundred visitors a day; within two hours of the video going live, they'd hit 11,000 visitors, causing the site to crash. China and her team had to scramble to streamline the site so it could handle all of the traffic.
"Our SEO company called on Monday and they were like, 'we're looking at your analytics, and we've never seen anything like this'," she said. "We've had trendy products before, but this was off the charts."
Within 48 hours, her entire inventory of handbags was gone. The design featured, PortoVino, was brand new; they were taking a chance on the style, ordering 1,800 bags as an initial run. Some had been purchased by wholesalers, but the majority went to individual orders that poured in on Sunday and Monday.
"We started conservatively, since this was the first time we'd gotten the product in, but when we saw the response, we amped things up to 15 times the production," said China, adding that the company's started taking preorders, using that to gauge how many to make going forward.
The factory's already working on the next batch, though they may not be back in stock until mid-April or early May. Until then, people who need a wine bag right this second will have to go through any retail sites that ordered in the two-week window before the video aired, like Chef's Resource.
China's already started planning a more casual style, to debut in June, and is talking to distributors overseas, after fielding requests from people in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, Israel, China, New Zealand, Australia and Latin America.
"The biggest thing, right now, is revamping and thinking, 'how do we make the most of our opportunities?'" China said. "You always hear about things going viral, but to experience it is incredible."
Once her business manager shared the Delish video with her, China couldn't help but start scrolling the comments, taking in the feedback, both good and bad. In fact, some concerns that the bag promoted alcoholism inspired her to include a disclaimer on her website, urging people to drink responsibly.
Initially, the PortoVino bag had been designed to hold two bottles of wine, with the idea that it'd be shared with friends.
"One bottle goes quick when you're out with friends, and making wine that can hold an entire wine box gets too heavy to carry, but 1.5 liters seemed just right," China explained. "We wanted to create something useful and functional, that's not too big, and that isn't too expensive. First and foremost, though, it had to be a purse that you could put your wallet and whatever else you needed in it."
Though the purse was designed with wine in mind, China and her husband (the company's co-founder) look forward to see what, um, unconventional uses people may have for the bag.
"I wouldn't have thought of ranch, but you know, it worked," she laughed. "It was hilarious."
Hey, we can't be the only ones who don't want to be caught at a Nickelback concert (or PTA meeting, for that matter) without the sauce.
Follow Delish on Instagram.
