Archive for Members
Tasting Room Merchandise – Building Your Brand and Boosting Profits.
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Kool Vino Bag
These days, companies that are marketing to a younger crowd often employ something called “street teams.” These teams are made up of groups of young people in the company’s target demographic that are paid to take a product out on the streets or any place where their customers are, and show it, use it, and talk about it to others in an attempt to stir up interest and sales.
Wineries can take advantage of this same tactic to help promote their brands to potential new customers. It’s as simple as effectively offering branded merchandise to visitors in tasting rooms.
“Once the wine is drunk and the bottle recycled, your customers could easily forget you,” said Vanessa Topper of TopNest Designs in Northern California. “If they take home a decanter or corkscrew with your winery’s name on it, chances are they’ll remember you.”
Most tasting rooms today sell merchandise along with Read More→
7 Ways to Grow your Facebook Fans
Posted by: | CommentsGuest Blogger: Winery Advisor
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More Fans – More Interactions – More Sales
Why do we want more fans?
Every time a fan comments, “likes” or interacts with your fan page there is a good chance it will be broadcasted to the News Feed of all of their Facebook Friends. Lots of interactions will signal to Facebook that this is important information and it will be included on a fan’s News Feed. Each fan can have hundreds or even thousands of Friends. If only 10 of your fans interact with an event notice, photo, video or simple text type message, that information can show up on thousands of peoples Facebook News Feeds — and can be furthered shared with multiple levels of additional friends. This is how your information, special offer or call to action, can go “viral” spreading quickly to many people.
Seven Ways to Grow Your Facebook Fans
- Have multiple influential users invite all of their friends to become fans of the page. If you can get 20 people each to invite 100 users, and encourage these users to invite their own friends, your fans will quickly grow. Use incentives if necessary – contests, rewards for joining, etc.
- Leverage your other online resources including email lists, websites, blogs and any other place you have a digital presence. Start to call them to action to join your fan page. Add Facebook links to the homepage of your websites, add a link in employee emails, place links in your email and newsletter marketing. The key is to funnel enough subscribers to the page where a natural cycle of growth begins by virtue of more people becoming fans.
- Leverage your “offline” media. Include promotions and Read More→
People: Robert Merletti
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There are people in the Wine Industry that don’t own vineyards or make wine, yet their impact on our business is indisputable. They are the people behind our winery associations, our media and our trade and they’re making a difference. “People” was created to acknowledge their role and celebrate their successes.
Writer: Jim Brumm
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Vineyard and Winery Management Magazine publisher Robert Merletti brings experience, knowledge, and integrity to the industry he loves.
Robert Merletti, CEO and publisher of Vineyard and Winery Management Magazine, is arguably one of the most influential people in the wine industry today.
Merletti grew up in the wine producing Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. His stepfather, Bill Moffett, was a grape grower who started the publication (under a different name) in 1974 to help highlight the region and bring information and news about grape growing and the wine industry to others in the business.
After high school Merletti attended the Rochester Institute of Technology, earning a degree in business management. He wanted to join the family publishing business but he was initially discouraged by his parents. “They told me to get a real job,” he said, laughing.
For a while he entertained the idea of going to law school, but ended up working as a broker on Wall Street, and later in the banking industry. Eventually his parents did offer him a job with the magazine and in 1995 he packed up his belongings and moved to Sonoma County, California to begin “two years of isolation,” working alone in a small office selling ads and growing the business. As time went by he was able to hire an assistant and move into larger offices. He became the magazine’s sales manager and eventually purchased the business from his folks.
Under his leadership the business thrived and expanded. Today Vineyard and Winery Management occupies 4300 square feet of office space in Santa Rosa, CA and has a staff of 15. It has become the leading wine trade magazine in Read More→
Crop Insurance: The deadline for insuring this year’s crop is approaching!
Posted by: | CommentsWriter: Jim Brumm
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“Would you pay a few hundred bucks an acre for a spray that would guarantee you seventy-five percent of your grape production every year?”
So asks Michael Applegate of St. Helena Insurance Associates, in Napa Valley, California. Unfortunately there is no such spray, but he reminds us that good crop insurance can do the same thing, and that the deadline for purchasing insurance for next year’s crop—January 31, 2012—is fast approaching. Crop insurance is potentially the best investment a grower can make.
Crop insurance offers protection from losses caused by natural events, such as frost, drought, wind, rain, hail—pretty much anything Mother Nature throws our way that can damage grapes on the vine. In addition, damage to irrigation systems can be covered if caused by acts of nature.
Grape growers, like all farmers, face many perils each year, and these perils vary depending on location and climate. “In Napa Valley, for example, there are lots of different micro-climates,” said Chris Maloney, owner of Chris Maloney Crop insurance, LLC, in Petaluma, California. “There are different vineyards at different elevations; they all have different risk exposures.”
Maloney pointed out that there were losses from adverse weather conditions in Read More→
People: A Wine-Drenched Life: Sue Straight, AKA, The Wine Wench®
Posted by: | CommentsThere are people in the Wine Industry that don’t own vineyards or make wine, yet their impact on our business is indisputable. They are the people behind our winery associations, our media and our trade and they’re making a difference. “People” was created to acknowledge their role and celebrate their successes.
Writer: Jim Brumm
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A woman sits across from me at a local coffee shop in Santa Rosa, California. She is animated and upbeat. As usual, she is talking about wine, and as usual, her story ends with a laugh and I can’t help laughing along.
“I think people take wine way too seriously,” she is saying. “I think that wine should be fun.” She goes on to tell a story of filling her bathtub with red wine and bathing in it. I form a mental picture of this . . .
Meet Sue Straight, AKA the Wine Wench®. Sue is not your typical wine reviewer/writer/taster. Sue is not your typical person.
Born in Santa Monica, California, Sue grew up in the San Fernando Valley (and she does a mean “valley girl” imitation). Living on a small ranch with her family, she said she was “riding before I was born.” As a girl she wanted to be a horse veterinarian when she grew up, but that was not to be.
“I’m a failed Jewish American Princess,” she said, laughing. “I was always too bohemian to fit into that world.”
After high school she worked for a while at a veterinarian hospital in southern California and met and married a man who was both a farrier and a musician. Sue trained horses during the day and waitressed at night. She would roller skate down Ventura Boulevard to work each day. (At one point she was offered a chance to try out for the Los Angeles Thunderbirds roller derby team, but that’s another story.)
In 1981 Sue moved to Healdsburg, in northern California’s Sonoma County. One evening, while working as a waitress, a regular customer who managed a nearby tasting room offered Sue a job at her winery. “I thought, okay . . . I like wine,” said Sue, with a smile. She accepted the Read More→
Direct-to-Consumer Sales
Posted by: | CommentsWriter Jim Brumm
Are you getting all you can from your tasting room?
The most profitable way to sell wine has always been to sell it directly to the consumer. When you add middlemen such as distributors and retailers, the margins shrink as each takes their share of the profit off the top. For most wineries, especially smaller ones, this means that their primary hub of profitability is the tasting room.
For visitors wandering through wine country, whether in California, Virginia, Oregon of some of the other emerging wine regions across the country, the tasting room is often their first exposure to your winery. They come in because Read More→
Why Choosing the Right Attorney is Critical for Winery Owners
Posted by: | CommentsWriter: Jim Brumm
While few non-lawyers want to deal with the often scary and nearly always confusing world of law, a winery owner may find that a good lawyer who is well versed in winery law may be his or her best friend.
If you are part of a large, well-established winery, it’s likely that you have a good team of lawyers in your corner already. If you are a small, family winery, or just starting out, there are some important legal issues to consider before you make large decisions about your business. The dream of having a vineyard and bottling your very own wine for sale to the public is one many of us can relate to, but making it happen takes more than coming up with a clever name and designing a label. Read More→
Wine Industry Associations…Helping Members Thrive in Today’s Economy
Posted by: | Commentsby Jim Brumm
Making great wine is hard enough, but layer on the marketing, compliance, employees, taxes, permits, distribution, vendors, receivables, etc…it’s easy to see how overwhelming it can get. There is much to take care of and often not enough time to learn what you need to know before you have to make a decision. Sometimes a little help is called for.
For many grape growers and winery owners, joining an association is the answer. In California alone there are nearly 60 winery and grape grower associations, each helping its members support and promote their region with pooled marketing efforts, training, continuing education, industry updates, and government lobbying.
Tapping the power of the collective, winery and grower associations coast to coast are proving the old adage that there is Read More→
Solar Power Growing in Wine Industry
Posted by: | Commentsby Brian Wright
It’s no surprise that wineries are pioneers in a green industry like solar as the success of the grape grower can be measured by how well they interact with the environment. Clean energy and agriculture go hand in hand… and solar is proving to be more than the “vintage du jour” in the wine industry, it has taken hold and is here to stay. Read More→
Nick Young Joins Wine Industry Network as Membership Operations Manager
Posted by: | CommentsGeorge Christie, President of The Wine Industry Network (WIN) is pleased to announce the appointment of Nick Young as their new Membership Operations Manager who will be key support for the rapidly expanding industry resource and marketing platform. “Nick has extensive experience with membership retention and customer management. His technical knowledge and proven track record in direct marketing, web design and management will add value to our organization and push our level of customer service over the top,” said George Christie.
Young brings with him a versatile background in marketing, database management and design. He has spent his past five years working as Information Services Director for the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce, an organization that has experienced tremendous growth and success in recent years. His contributions to the chamber have been numerous including the migration to digital communications, maintenance of database systems, and implementation and maintenance of social networking channels. Additionally, Young is a local Healdsburg native with a rich wine industry heritage as the grandson of Robert Young, renowned winegrower and industry icon.
Young’s ability to build and maintain customer relationships along with his versatility and resourcefulness were the deciding factors for Christie. “His entrepreneurial spirit was a big plus for me,” says Christie. “I’m looking forward to Nick bringing his strong interpersonal skills, fresh perspective, and energy to WIN.”
“The Wine Industry Network is breaking new ground in the industry,” said Nick Young. “Their model is extremely exciting and innovative and is a perfect fit for my interest and experience. I am eager to be a part of such a dedicated group of people.”
About the Wine Industry Network :
The Wine Industry Network (www.wineindustrynetwork.com) is a comprehensive business-to-business (B2B) Internet marketplace and resource site specifically created to help wine industry professionals more effectively and efficiently locate and connect with suppliers and service providers, regardless of region or category of interest.WIN is dedicated to the business of wine and to providing information crucial to the success of the entire wine industry.
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