YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Marisa Sergi-Schumann was happy working at Gallo Winery’s headquarters in Modesto, Calif., after interning with the company and earning her Bachelor of Science degree in enology and viticulture from Cornell University.
The third generation winemaker enjoyed developing new flavor profiles in conjunction with Gallo’s consumer research group.
But she had the entrepreneurial bug. She had developed a wine – today known as Red – as her capstone project, created a label for it and got it placed in a few area grocery stores. The wine won the top award for her class.
Today she serves as CEO of L’uva Bella Winery, which she and her then-future husband, Evan, acquired from her parents in 2020, and chief revenue officer of Brew Kettle Companies.
As much as she loved her job and living in California, Sergi-Schumann “didn’t want to be 80 years old, looking back on my life wondering,” she says.
“I just wanted to take that chance, and I went full speed ahead,” she recalls. She left Gallo in 2016 and began pursuing her dream, cold-calling retailers and distributors to get what was then branded as RedHead wine on store shelves. She developed it by mixing various wines in different ratios, the end result being what she describes as a “sweet yet subtly spicy blend of Zinfandel and Carménère.”
As a third-generation winemaker, her immediate family always had friends and relatives around the table with food and wine, something she cherished as a young girl.
She was initially unsure on what career path to pursue – psychology and fashion were options she was considering. Discovering that she could pursue a four-year degree in wine-making at several universities in the United States and Canada “opened my eyes to other possibilities.”
Her family history ultimately was the determinative factor. Wine-making was a family tradition and knowing that it was something unique that allowed her to be outdoors and part of agriculture but also part of “the sophisticated world of wine” piqued her interest.
Sergi-Schumann says her parents are her leadership role models and she adopted their best attributes.
Her father, Frank, is “a big picture person and likes to put deals together and ideas forth,” she says. Her mother, Ruth, is “very detail oriented” and “doesn’t miss a beat,” she adds.
“I don’t micromanage. I trust my team,” she says. “I encourage and I like to let people run their business units with my support.”
Accepted by Walmart
Another key mentor was John Rossi, a senior lecturer in marketing and management at Youngstown State University.
Rossi “really took me seriously when many did not,” Sergi-Schumann recalls. Though she acknowledges the value of family support, “it’s different when you have somebody that genuinely cares and sees potential without those family ties,” she remarks.
One of Rossi’s students had been interning for Sergi-Schumann and mentioned to him that she had received the opportunity to pitch to Walmart in 2017 through its Open Call program.
Rossi worked with the young entrepreneur to refine her pitch to the retail giant, and helped to get her wine placed in 20 local stores initially.
“I understood what Walmart would be seeking to identify as an entrepreneur that had what they were looking for in terms of sophistication with respect to knowing their market, how to price product, how to message to get the consumer to come to Walmart to buy the product if they were willing to take her on as a supplier,” Rossi says. Sergi-Schumann’s background at Cornell was “specifically oriented toward that” and she was raised in the industry, he adds.
She acknowledges she was “terrified” and “didn’t know what to expect,” but says the Walmart representatives were kind and welcoming to her.
“I was able to not only get a ‘yes’ but I was able to convey through my presentation why this was a good opportunity for Walmart,” she says.
Rossi says she just needed a little bit of help.
“All I did was give her the encouragement, and some of the resources and point her in the direction that she wanted to go, such that if she was willing to put in the work, make the presentations and commit to doing it, she was going to be successful,” he says. The practical leap from family business to corporate supplier would terrify anyone, but she “had the confidence that was necessary to pull it off because of her academic experience and her years of experience just being around the business.”
Red’s performance at Walmart eventually led to the opportunity for the retailer to place L’uva Bella’s Purple and Passion brands at its stores in six states. The winery’s products now are carried by outlets including Meijer, Target and Buc-ee’s, the Texas-based travel center chain.
“It’s really exciting to have Buc-ee’s as a partner,” Sergi-Schumann says. “We added Trader Joe’s through our Hartzler cocktail line and we are in the process of adding more retailers” because of the line’s popularity.
The Hartzler line, a collaboration with Hartzler Family Dairy in Wooster, includes an eggnog and an Irish cream.
L’uva Bella distributes in eight states overall, is preparing to get back into Virginia and is in discussions to expand to an additional 30 states, “if not the entire country,” Sergi-Schumann says.
She also entered a new space in 2023, when L’uva Bella purchased a 10% stake in Brew Kettle, which also took a 10% stake in the winery. Sergi-Schumann, who met Brew Kettle majority owner Bryan Weber through northeastern Ohio’s network of entrepreneurs, says he saw what she did for the winery’s sales, distribution and overall rebrand and overhaul of the company, and “really needed that support at the Brew Kettle.”
Sergi-Schumann has “an amazing amount of energy and tenacity” and is good at managing relationships, Weber says.
“She’s able to multitask at a very high level,” he adds.
Helping Others
In addition to remaining a supplier, Sergi-Schumann has been “a valued advocate” to Walmart through her early participation in Open Call and continued support of its U.S. Manufacturing initiative, Mark Espinoza, senior director of public affairs at Walmart, says.
“After successfully pitching her product, she returned to mentor other entrepreneurs – sharing first-hand insights on how to prepare, present and make the most of the opportunity,” he continues. “She has often shared her Walmart experience in forums with local stakeholders, helping highlight the impact and value of investing in U.S. manufacturing.”
Reilly Berk, president and CEO of Berk Enterprises Inc. in Warren, recalls meeting Sergi-Schumann at a 2023 Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber event during which the L’uva Bella owners were being recognized as Entrepreneurs of the Year.
Like her, Sergi-Schumann was taking over a family business from her parents.
“She took what she was given and has run with it to take the company to the next level. She works super hard, and that inspires me to want to do the same with my business,” she says. She also has a “unique perspective” from being from a different generation than her parents, providing different insights and perspectives.
In addition to her roles with L’uva Bella and Brew Kettle, Sergi-Schumann mentors students as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Cornell. It is mostly entrepreneurs in the food and beverage fields who engage her for advice, but ones in other fields occasionally do as well, sometimes just for career guidance, she says.
Some will ask how she succeeded or seek advice on building a brand that is relevant in today’s market. In these cases, she often will ask the entrepreneur about the intention for the brand, what space he or she is trying to innovate in or what competing products there might be.
“I try to reverse engineer the question so it creates more of a deeper thought and conversation, because you can’t just slap a brand on something and hope it works,” she says. “There needs to be authenticity or a deep-rooted story that resonates with an audience that hasn’t been capitalized on before. Sometimes it’s just a matter of luck, but really it’s mostly strategy when it comes to today’s brands.”
