Inspiring Conversations with Amy Mason of Wallet Buckle

Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Mason.

Hi Amy, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My Fiance and I always wanted to start a wine bar for a fun project. Being from close to Napa Valley, we are wine fans and have been to so many wine bars across the country. None have ever fit the vibe we were always wanting to enjoy. When we decided to make the jump into the bar industry, we had no idea the disaster that lied ahead. We signed our lease in August 2019 and set out on our journey to build our lovely space. Fast forward six months and we were getting ready for our final inspections. End of February to mid-March we started calling for our final inspections as we were eager to get open. We had already put every penny we had and every penny we didn’t have into this gamble and we’re quickly finding out, as Covid started to unfold, that we were in for a very bumpy future. We were finally granted our certificate to open around the middle of April. The governor had already mandated all bar sales to go operations only. We were pretty devastated that we spent all this time and money and couldn’t open and share our dream with everyone. May 11th then rolled around and we were able to finally open and allow patrons in. It was a hit from the start!

Then, fast forward another three weeks, the riots in Old Town hit and a curfew was put out for almost a week and a half. We were blessed that no vandals ruined our brand new space but we did have to board up a few different nights and they were very stressful! Right when we finally thought we made it through those bumps, 6/29 rolled around and bang, the Governor, out of nowhere, closed all bars indefinitely. We were back to freaking out, wondering what our future held. With no end in sight, the funds we saved from being open five weeks started to dwindle away. A lot of sleepless nights later and 8/28 came and our Governor open us again! At 50% capacity that is. We were still ecstatic to even be able to have anyone in our doors. We quickly realized, even with our limited capacity, we had already outgrown our space! People loved our concept and our social media has been a huge blessing for us. We now are one of the number one bachelorette destination spaces in all of Scottsdale which we are so proud of. We are now branching out and looking at other cities to bring our fun and vibrant concept to! We have our eyes on Austin, Napa Valley, San Diego and Palm Springs! We want to bring Wine Girl to as many people as we can!

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Wallet Buckle?
We were actually on Shark Tank. My fiance invented a belt buckle that allows wearers the ability to carry their ID and bank cards right inside their buckle. We’ve traveled the country selling at live events which gave us a unique way to learn a lot about creating fun and vibrant sales environments. We’ve learned that no matter what you’re selling, people want to enjoy the transaction. Through in a little fun and you’ve got a winning recipe! This is why we pride ourselves on the experience our guests have inside our space. We could’ve easily redone our floor plan to maximize the seating we could stuff into our space but we felt if we maximize the patron’s experience, we’d be much better off and it has worked!

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Once again, a few slides back I touched on this. We took a HUGE risk with Wine Girl. We put every dollar we had and every dollar we didn’t have into this concept. Maxed out every credit card and line of credit we could access personally. We knew we had a vision of a type of space that didn’t exist. It all came together nicely!

Contact Info:

• Email: info@winegirlscottsdale.com
• Website: www.winegirlscottsdale.com
• Instagram: @winegirlscottsdale
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/winegirlscottsdale
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/wine-girl-scottsdale