REthink Wine Blog

Recently, I was asking a luxury brand winery about their distribution in key states. The winery pulled up their order history with a various distributors and noticed the impressive dollar amount that was sold in a key market place we were inquiring about.  The winery replied; I have great distribution.  With a closer look, the owner noticed that the distributor had not taken their allocation this year. After I left, he phoned the distributor and learned that only a small percentage had actually been sold of the PREVIOUS allocation. In fact, the distributor went into detail about the economy, they needed sample bottles and extra enticements to help push the wine and possible discounts applied. 

The next phone call I received from the owner, was “let’s talk about your direct to trade program.” The particular state is a top wine consumtion state and the owner learned that he was only in very few locations and not in the ”on premise” locations he had been promised. There is a difference between distribution and effective distribution and it’s time wineries pose the questions and take more control. I am not suggesting that all distributors are not effective; however, at the very least, wineries need to examine the options that are now available.

The North Bay Business Journal had this article yesterday and it spoke well to my recent experience and Inertia’s direct to trade offering; here is a portion of the article to share:

Napa-based Inertia, which has developed a system for automating order handling and regulatory compliance through the three-tier system, now is more actively promoting its program for direct-to-trade shipping, commonly called self-distribution, to a dozen U.S. markets with seven pending, according to Kristi Taaffe, vice president of marketing.

Previously, Inertia offered wineries that use its REThink system for direct-to-consumer shipping the ability to ship wine directly to trade accounts that place orders online, starting with New York in December 2006. Later, the company invited certain wineries to participate.

Now, Inertia has bolstered its salesforce to promote automated self-distribution.

Currently, Inertia offers direct-to-trade shipments to Arizona, California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wyoming.

This entry was posted by angela.duerr on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 10:18 am and is filed under Direct-To-Trade, Inertia Products and Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.