REthink Wine Blog

2 weeks ago I attended my third WITS (Wine Industry Technology Symposium). Though I have yet to earn my badge of ‘seasoned industry veteran’, I feel able to reflect on the impressive in-roads technology has made in the wine industry. Only now am I able to catch a glimpse of the huge transformative effect information technology can have on the industry.

On display at WITS was a lot of cool technology, all with great potential. Yet there was little evidence of truly transformative technology – the kind that radically changes an industry and captures the attention of non-wine folk.

It’s no secret that the wine industry lags far behind others when it comes to living the great economic revolutions information technology is capable of unleashing. IT has completely changed the game in so many other industries, yet for most wine industry vets, that change still remains elusive.

“Technology does not drive change — it enables change”

New technology has already greatly changed the way wine brands are marketed and the traditional function of wine marketing has been revolutionized. For brand building and consumer engagement as key functions of the wine industry, technology has indeed enabled change.

When it comes to the sales function, new technology has revolutionized the way direct sales are conducted. Yet it is worth noting that while the direct sales channel and online sales have risen greatly in the past few years, it still remains a marginal portion of all the wine that is sold in the US. Whereas new technology has already altered the wine marketing function, it has yet to enable dramatic change for the wine sales function.

Contrary to what I once believed, “direct” is no clear salvation, or at least not in the next decade. It will be a long while before the US wine market will ever resemble a free market – there is no realistic mid-term alternative to the 3-tier system, not with what’s currently preoccupying state legislatures…

The “Wine 2.0” movement and the emerging ecosphere of wine marketing agents still face an uphill battle to change the way the industry operates outside of the direct channel. Even as direct sales grow with the astute combination of cool technology and clever marketing, this trend does not yet really change ‘business as usual’ for most of the industry.

Large retailers and large distributors are themselves working through intense and expensive technology projects to create even more efficiencies for the “traditional” system. Believe it or not, the established wine world is not immune to new technology; it’s just not sexy new technology like facebook (think dour SAP). So the big boys integrate large solutions to sell more and better, while the “new tech” folks upstream battle it out on the web to find a way to convert buzz into sales.

If a bridge is built to seamlessly integrate all these new tools into the 3-tier system, only then can the visions of so many wine tech entrepreneurs really take flight. The brave new world of wine technology will come about when the new world of wine tech meets the old 3-tier world.

To paraphrase the great W&S article summarizing WITS (zoom in on the ‘Tech and the three tiers paragraph), I want you to imagine a world where any small winery can participate in the 3-tier EDI (Electronic Data Interchange: the process of connecting trading partners on the same systems so they can communicate seamlessly).

• I want you to imagine a world where it will actually make economic sense for the regional wine buyer of a large retailer or restaurant chain to actually pay attention to wine social networks and blogs to increase sales.
• I want you to imagine a world where wholesalers of all stripes will feel comfortable in sourcing new brands whilst following the hum of online demand and user-generated content.
• I want you to imagine a world where it will make economic sense for large distributors to care about suppliers with no deep pocket and for them to find profit in catering to niche markets. 
• I want you to imagine a world where wine suppliers of all sizes can build elements of control over the whole wine supply chain.
• I want you to imagine a world were a Kafkaesque regulatory maze and a severely oligopolous distribution system will not severely hinder entry to market for new suppliers.
• I want you to imagine a world where the long tail can actually work in wine.

Why has this bridge not been built yet? For those familiar with our industry, just ponder this concept and how it relates to 3-tier: path dependence. The barriers guarding the wine market are so complex that until those barriers are tackled effectively, all other efforts will be hobbled in their potential.

On a strictly operational level, this bridge will require a strong foundation of streamlined compliance tools and clearing models, optimized logistics and standardized dynamic product data systems. On these pillars a road will be built: it will be the multitude of plug-ins and APIs that will allow supply from any tier to connect to demand from any tier. The smooth asphalt will be an array of online tools to facilitate wine marketplaces. On that bridge you will see pedestrians, cars, semi-trailers and trains alike, easily go from one side to the other… you get the analogy: selling wine today is like trying to get around the Bay Area with no bridges.

Only once this bridge is (or bridges are) built, will the wine industry live to the full potential that is on display at WITS. The pillars supporting this bridge are still discreet, but the technology, the knowledge, the plans and the vision are in place. It’s just a matter of time.

If you’ve not done so already, you need to watch Tina Caputo’s brilliant “Robert Parker’s Bitch”. Setting aside the controversy, one of the many great points of the documentary is that wineries should not let voices other than their own dominate the message about their wines and brand.

At about minute 8:40, Paul Wagner, one of the many very smart people interviewed in this documentary, says:
“We have a distribution system in this country that puts the winery at one end; and any message, any marketing materials that that winery creates needs to work their way through a distributor, a distributor sales person, a retailer, a retail sales person and eventually get to the consumer (…) the wineries don’t have the leverage to communicate directly through the consumer.” - Now that really struck me.

So much of my day is spent thinking about more efficient ways for wineries to directly reach demand and control their sales. Our creed at Inertia has long been to help wineries sell more and better by enabling their online direct-to-consumer channel. But no matter how great your wines are, you better make sure to write some relevant things about your wine and let the words and facts read like the voice of your best salesperson (particularly if that’s your winemaker). So to Paul Wagner’s point, the first conclusion I hear is ‘have something good to communicate’. The second conclusion is ‘think about how to get the message out; don’t rely on others to do it’.

If the message is to say your wine should be successfully summarized to a pseudo-scientific 100-point scale so as to reflect the personal tastes and palate of a minority (hum…) - then maybe you don’t care so much about doing the talking…
Now, if you don’t want to be “Parker’s bitch”, find ways to spread YOUR story. To follow Wagner’s message about the message - getting from the winery, through 3-tier, and to the consumer - you need marketing materials (I mean this as a concept, not just as paper tasting sheet or a press book).

Paul Wagner is a successful PR man (owner and president of Balzac Communications), so he knows about marketing materials. Thanks to some great technology wineries are now able to reach consumers outside the tasting room, through their website and the cool platform powering it, and syndication of their content to marketing agents.

The reality is that some 90% of all the wine sold in the US is not sold directly to consumers. It must first be sold to those (wholesalers) who can legally sell your wine to those (retailers) who will sell your wine to the end consumer. Wineries need to get in/through the 3-tier system. Then they need to get their marketing materials through that 3-tier system to adorn the shelves of fine retailers and help sommeliers support their wine lists.

The message about the message struck me because I live and breathe is Direct-To-Trade. I’m quite obsessive about transferring the lessons of direct-to-consumer sales to the byzantine halls of the 3-tier system. Inertia’s DTT technology now gives wineries direct access to the trade, bypassing or supplementing the “find a wholesaler” hurdle. There is exciting technology in Inertia’s pipeline that will also give wineries, and importers, a very efficient way to get their unadulterated message to the trade in order to sell to a wider audience of industry buyers.

So the best way to control what is said about your wine, or to better influence wine buyers, is to take control of your content first. And when it comes to online trade marketing, you need “clean” wine data, because downloading tasting sheets just doesn’t quite cut it. After all, you would not expect Wine.com to try to sell wine online by sharing .pdf files, right?.. A brave new world of online winery trade marketing awaits…

In determining your Sales and Marketing strategy, there are many reasons to take a fresh look at the Direct-to-Trade channel. Regardless of your goals, your size, your current distribution or your brand’s standing, winery sales and marketing managers should always strive to exercise more control over how, where and to whom their wines are sold.

When you sell a pallet of wine at FOB, you rarely get a chance to know where each of the cases ends up. What percentage goes into on- and off-premise accounts? Are your wines being sold at MSRP or significantly under-priced? How can count on repeat purchases from trade accounts? With Direct-to-Consumer sales, a great benefit of selling direct is getting the opportunity to better understand the identity and needs of the end-buyer. The same rationale applies to trade sales.

When your pallet is sold at FOB, you can lose sight of where you wines is going – kind of like bowling blind (see above). Your ball is ready to fly, but you can’t control where it goes. If you are lucky and your distributor rocks, you will get a strike, but you might not even see it… and how can you be sure you will get a strike next time? Selling Direct-to-Trade gives you full visibility into your trade sales, enabling you to better control them.

Control is Owning the Relationship
We all know that the wine industry is a relationship-driven business. When you are selling Direct-To-Trade, you take control of the relationship and are no longer dependent on someone else to forge and foster those vital connections. When a restaurant purchases a lot of your wine, by knowing the buyer directly, you will have a much better chance of getting a repeat sales or of pushing your new label to them. Sure, it’s more work, but it will pay off in the long run.

Control Who Buys Your Wine
When selling direct, you own the relationship - you can say “Yes!”.. or “No!”. If you do not want your brand to be on display in certain stores, you can make sure it is not. If you think your brand should only be available in fine restaurants, by selling direct, you can make sure this happens. If a retailer drastically under-prices your wines, you can elect not to sell to them anymore. When you do not own the customer, this is much harder.

By enabling wineries to sell Direct-to-Trade, Inertia aims to give them access to new markets but also to give their more freedom and control over their business. In providing cost-efficient ways to better monitor and control the down-stream sale of wine to trade accounts, Inertia is adding another weapon to a National Sales Manager’s arsenal as well as giving more power and knowledge to Brand Managers.
Take control of your destiny and don’t bowl blind!

You may have heard this already: Inertia is pioneering the enablement of wine producers to reach trade buyers directly, in an easy, efficient and fully compliant online fashion. As we ramp up our efforts to empower more wineries to sell more wine Direct-To-Trade, I want to take a closer look at the big-picture question of why direct trade sales must inexorably grow.

By now, the message is clear: the American system of wine economics is rapidly mutating. Not only have consumer habits made wine a much more popular consumer good and increased demand and supply, ongoing regulatory changes have made the marketing and distribution of wine a much more creative and competitive sport.

Innovation arises when things stop working. In our industry, innovation needs to answer many a winery’s dilemma: “I can’t find a distributor who’ll carry my wine; how can I get it to market?”. Whatever the answer may be, it also needs to answer the challenges facing wine buyers: “How can I buy this rare gem if none of my distributors carry it?”

The situation is familiar:
> There are more and more wine products hitting the market (both foreign and domestic).
> There are fewer and fewer distributors as they rapidly consolidate.
> Warehouses are full of inventory that is slow to move.
> Margins are rapidly being eroded by rising fuel costs.
> Traditional distribution systems have less incentive to build brands.

The American 3-tier system has been tremendously successful and continues to be. Yet it is currently not capable of efficiently absorbing all the new-comers to the market. A small number of brands represents a huge portion of what is actually consumed today and it is the 3-tier system that makes this possible. But how can smaller, high-end, boutique brands catch the attention of giants? How can a 10,000-case winery, making stellar wine (though not yet blessed with a sacred 94point rating), possibly catch the attention of large, bottom-line focused, distributors? Fortunately, many still do for the benefit of the consumer; but not all.

As Angela remarked in her recent post: there is distribution and then there is effective distribution. This is my central argument: going direct is about filling the gaps of the 3-tier system. Wine producers need to ask of their distributor: “are you the most effective way to get my wine to market?”. Most often, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” , but in certain situations or for certain brands, the 3-tier system will not work. Here is a short list of situations many wineries will recognize:

> I have a restaurant in Florida who wants my wine, but I can’t get a distributor to carry me because it’s not enough volume.
> My distributor in New-York does not service up-state, how can I get my wine to a buyer in Rochester?
> I have a retailer who really wants my Syrah, but my distributor only carries my Cabernet and Merlot.

All these recognizable barriers to sell are about one thing: Access
- State access: getting to certain states
- Geographic access: reaching all areas of a state
- Product access: getting all your products in a state
- Buyer Access:making your products easily accessible to all potential buyers

So how can innovation help solve some of these issues? A minority of producers is currently selling directly to trade, but technology hasn’t been fully leveraged yet and the scope of current direct trade sales is still geographically narrow. While I will not go in the details of our ‘secret sauce’, Inertia’s DTT program enables bonded wineries to transact sales to these 12 states:

Arizona
California
Connecticut
District of Columbia
Florida
Illinois
Ohio
Oregon
New-York
Vermont
Washington
Wyoming

As Corey commented, these sates represents a huge swath of American wine consumption. If any one of the above states, or portions thereof, have been closed-off to you, or if your distribution in any of those states isn’t as effiective as it should be, then you should take a hard analytical look at the opportunities and implications of DTT.

Inertia’s DTT program will allow wineries to transact sales from trade buyers in any of the above states (or a sub-set for 17/20s and importers). Inertia’s DTT program allows you to pick what you want to sell, where you want to sell it and whom you wish to sell it to, in a fully-streamlined way, all on-line. DTT also implies minimal over-head that frees up staff resources (that would otherwise be spent on order management, invoicing, collections, etc.) to do what is most important: selling.

Access is the first and most obvious reason for going Direct. This is why DTT can be an incremental distribution channel, supplementing the 3-tier system if and where it is not efficient.

Upcoming posts will shed more light on the other two compelling reasons for going Direct-to-Trade: Control and Sales.
Stay tuned.

Before joining Inertia, I was roaming wine country roads; I would hit tasting rooms and meet wonderful people, hug the vines and taste wines on all ends of the spectrum. Being on the road brings you closer to the actual consumer experience and reminds you of what selling direct is all about. As I’ve been diving deeper into the virtual world of wine2.0 and the challenges of creating a wine experience online, I’d almost forgotten the joys of being in wine country and tasting and connecting.

Sure, you can taste and connect at trade tastings and such events also really make the process efficient – 300 brands in one afternoon! OK, we can all admit that with the exception of the most prolific wine writers – or avid swillers – it’s not easy to see, hear and taste all at trade tastings. They are great, much like Costco, but you might miss a little something. So is there a middle ground? Can you find a single place where you can get the wine country feel, while at the same time go through the serious work of tasting dozen of wines?

The answer of course is, Yes - it’s in the multi-brand tasting rooms. As I was on a little tour of the Napa Valley with my crew to taste some of our client’s wines, we decided to go for efficiency. We hit the following tasting spots:

Folio Winemaker’s Studio: is home to many great brands, several being Folio brands of course. The studio artfully blends different experiences and is a great wine country concept from Michael Mondavi.

Silenus Vintners: also a custom crush facility for artisan winemakers, this beautiful tasting room is home to 13 boutique wineries that you may not have heard of before, but that you will surely remember.

Cult Wine Central: as the name says, this is where you go for the big guns. As all the wines go for a certain status – the odd effect in having them altogether is one of democratization – no single wine has a pedestal here so the wines are much more approachable.

In all 3, the staff was extremely knowledgeable on all the brands presented and very friendly – everything was perfect for an afternoon of serious tasting. Thanks again!

While technically we were in multiple tasting rooms of 18 inches in width, these felt a bit like a cozy farmer’s market. They were all extremely comfortable, while each had its own distinct personality, which, consciously or unconsciously, infused the wines. As a wine guy, I believe such wine venues are great for the industry and the consumer. They allow small brands to coalesce and reach economies of scale in order to create a space for a precious and crucial moment to happen: the direct connection between a wine lover, your brand, your message and your wine.

For wineries without a tasting room or for those dreaming of getting their own – finding a spot on that multi-brand bar is a great go-between. The most effective way to create a direct relationship with customers is to meet them while they are meeting your wine in a glass. From that initial contact, a relationship must be nurtured so it may flourish into lasting sales. As we focus a lot on managing your existing customers here at Inertia – it’s great to go out and be reminded how such relationships are created in the first place.

Hey - it’s Friday and it’s time for a little business speculation. So how would high gas prices and Federal Tax rebates affect online wine sales? Can’t read the tea leaves yet, but there’s an interesting study from Harris Interactive for iCongo that provides some clues.

According to the study: “One third (33 percent) of online U.S. adults indicated they are more likely to shop online rather than in-person at a store due to the high price of gasoline.”

Sounds like good news for online wine sales to me. If sales are steady, this would translate to a shift of channels, from off-line to on-line retail. However, given wine’s relatively high shipping costs, this perceived effect may be moot. The study provides another highlight that suggests a way for wineries to take advantage of the potential shift: “57 percent of online adults said free shipping is a reason they are more likely to shop online as opposed to in a physical store”. This would confirm that running free shipping discount promos (or rather $0.01 shipping to be safe) make for a smart email campaign. Free shipping on half case order are always very effective promos in my experience.

Another heartening tidbit of this study is that “61 percent cited the ability to shop at any time as a reason they are more likely to shop online instead of in a store.” That’s really no surprise, but it confirms the steady trend of shifting consumer purchasing behaviors. The shift to online purchasing continues and for wineries to maintain strong direct sales, they must apply laser-like focus on their online sales&marketing skills. Your website really is the extension of your tasting room and can bring in more sales if leveraged effectively.

Oh, and the iCongo guys behind this study also say that rebate checks will have an effect on shopping attitudes. They found that roughly half of consumers plan on spending their upcoming Federal tax rebate on retail purchases. I personally think that buying a case of good age-worthy cabernet (or a stellar Kabinett) would be a good long term investment for those rebate dollars.

The Gomberg-Fredrikson Report brought in some good news, courtesy of Wine&Vines, for us proponents of Winery Direct Sales: Direct Sales Boost California Gains (CA winery shipments to all markets are up 2% over 2006). We are pleased, but not surprised. It confirms the silent wine revolution Inertia has been working for over the past 5 years.

I wanted to review all the factors contributing to the growth of winery direct sales, lest you forget it is happening.

1. Regulatory Environment
Ever Since the Supreme Court Decision of Granholm v. Heald in 2005, more and more states are opening up. The regulatory noose is finally beginning to loosen and winery are increasingly realizing that they no longer need to depend on being distributed in certain states to gain customers there. For the most part, eCommerce is enabling wineries to leverage this new freedom.

2. Wine Marketing and Media
Wine is more fashionable than ever. It’s healthy, it’s not as intimidating as it once was. Younger imbibers want it and CA wines have long shed their inferiority complexes. Hence the plethora of wine related publications and the growth of their readers. When the media focuses its attention on a given wine, this creates consumer demand. If the consumer demand cannot be satisfied in a given market for whatever reason, demand will find supply straight from to the producer, usually via a Google search.

3. Consumer behavior patterns
It’s a bit of a chicken&egg thing as to what helps what. Does the media make you drink more wine or because you drink more wine, the media had better write more about wine? This is a moot point. Let’s focus on the virtuous circle. No one will deny, American drink more wine per capita than they aver did, and they also buy more expensive vino. This is good for business. Furthermore, if more consumers enjoy wine, more of them want to explore the infinite possibilities of fermented grape juice, so they research it and look for availability (see factors 1 and 2).

4. Market Changes
The scissor effect: more producers, fewer distributors – this freezes the grinds of the wine market: traditional supply (retail) cannot satisfy a changing demand. And as this new demand grows (see above), new channel are needed to answer it. Moreover, producers no able to reach the market because of the constriction of 3-tier distribution, take the matter in their own hands and being to market their wines themselves. As producers realize that disintermediation helps their bottom line, they sell direct. Simple economics really, but huge vested interests are at stake so don’t expect these changes to happen overnight or without a big fight from the distributors.

The last factor in this growth is not an external macro-economic one; it is very micro-economic in nature and not as evident to outside observers. It deals with the wineries themselves. Here at Inertia we are in a preferred position to observe (and drive) the last factor conditioning winery direct sales growth:

5. Better Direct Marketing
Yes – selling direct is more profitable and a strategically sound business decision. But it is not easy – that is why producers have long left sales to others. But wineries are learning to sell direct and they are getting much better at it, provided they use the proper tools and sound marketing practices. As wineries get better at the sales and marketing game direct sales will grow, to the great benefit of consumers and producers alike.

We know for a fact that the growth of our clients’ direct sales is not just the result of outside forces; it is also in large part the direct impact of how they implement online marketing best practices. We loo forward to more and more winery direct sales!

As I keep a close eye on how wine enthusiasts connect, buy, sell, discuss and learn about wine online, I think it’s worth giving a brief classification of the main online actors of the wine world.

1.) Media
This encompasses the online versions of the traditional wine press but also the newer voices of wine journalism: wine bloggers. Blogs like Alder Yarrow’s Vinography have become a premier destination for those seeking an alternate editorial voice on wine.

2.) Retailers
By online wine retailers I mean companies that have a license to buy and sell wine. They find customers online and process transactions on their own online store. As even wine.com now has a brick-and-mortar facility, online retailers most often are click-and-mortar. The web is an extension of their real world store allowing them to capture new customers in new markets.

3.) Wineries
They sell most of their wines to distributors, who in turn supply retailers; while the rest of their production is sold in the tasting room. This has largely been the norm until the rapid growth of the direct channel. As the web first came along, most wineries built their online presence to be a marketing vehicle – the web being but one piece of a larger communications arsenal. Today many wineries see their website as the extension of their tasting room: where the brand is promoted and wine is sold. Ecommerce is now the main engine of direct sales growth for many wineries.

These three groups have operated in the off-line world to satisfy the desires of the wine-consuming community in much the same way for many years. The emergence of the web has created new ways for them to engage with consumers and the web is rapidly changing how wine is marketed and sold. The dramatic growth of online wine sales has, to a great extent, been fueled by the emergence of new group of players: those that help bridge the offerings of the three above groups to better serve online wine enthusiasts.

4.) Wine marketers
Roughly, these are organizations that directly help sell wine while not holding any inventory themselves. They may or may not help process transactions or take orders, but they help bring to wine lovers the information they seek and also help shape their purchasing behavior (think of how much a service like wine-searcher.com can mean to passionate wine buyers…) Wine marketers provide a service, that, if useful, builds them an audience. In turn, it is this audience that wine marketers leverage to generate revenue.

These wine marketers often re-use the content generated by the media (or allow their users to post their own content: reviews) and provide product information from retailers and producers alongside clear paths to purchase. As buying patterns increasingly incorporate online behavior, the demand for good wine marketing services will continue to grow. The cost of becoming a noted media player, wine producer or even simply a wine retailer is quite high. That may be why so many new online wine marketing companies are being launched. Though the Google or Facebook of wine as yet to emerge, many are vying to claim that mantle. In any case, innovation and competition in the world of wine marketing services can only be good for wineries and retailers and will only further accelerate the growth of online wine sales.

You may have heard of big wave surfing, in places like Maui, Hawaii’s Jaws or at competitions such as Mavericks on the coast of Northern California (check out the documentary Riding Giants). Last month I enjoyed a great day at the beach watching the Mavericks competition. It’s a bodaciously insane surfing event where the world’s best must be towed by jet skis to catch 30-foot waves.

What’s that got to do with wine marketing? Well, it made me think of an analogy - here goes:

The metaphoric big wave is the expected growth of online wine sales. Numbers don’t lie - so here are the recent stats for the year 2007 (courtesy of the Wine Market Council):

• 38% of Millenials (those born between 1980 and 1993) say they are drinking more wine. Nearly all Millennials will be of legal drinking age in the next 5 years and this group will drive both consumption gains and taste trends.
• 18% percent of core wine drinkers (those that imbibe at least once a week) have purchased wine online.
• 64% of those purchases were done on winery websites.
• Over the next 5 years online wine sales will triple!!!!!!

My point today is that the big wave is coming for online wine sellers, be they wineries or retailers. How will they surf it and which channel is best prepared to capture these new consumers we keep hearing about? The telling number here is that 2/3 of online sales in 2007 were direct, i.e. from winery websites. As online sales grow, will wineries keep that market share, or will it dwindle?

I would argue that currently retailers are better poised to ride the wave. Like the surfers, if you want to ride big, you literally need some ‘pull’- pull marketing that is! Retailers have quite a bit of it already, are getting more, and it will increasingly help them.

Wineries have many advantages over the traditional retail channels like content, branding, being the producer, loyalty built through hospitality etc., not price however. These strengths work great to retain customers acquired directly (via tasting room, clubs, website…). However, harnessing the power of the web to acquire new customers is another feat entirely - hence the need for pull marketing. To keep with the analogy, wineries have superior surfing skills but they don’t have a Jet Ski to help them catch that mythical break. Bummer dude!

A newfound desire for wine, marketing, demographics, deregulation, supply… all converge to generate and sustain new demand. The new wine buyers that make up the big wave are the famed Millenials. Who are they? What is their purchasing behavior? How do they shop? What makes them tick? These are questions anybody selling wine online should be asking. Yep, the eCommerce revolution is hitting the wine world.

Like most savvy online shoppers, these new wine buyers will first look to shopping portals, vertical search engines, social shopping sites, social networks, blogs, forums, etc. to get information, prices and to make a purchase. If a prospective online wine buyer has not visited your winery or received an email from you or heard a recommendation from a friend, chances are he or she may not first look to your website to buy wine. That person will Google what they are interested in and see a very long list of possibilities - only one of them being your winery’s website.

That plethora of options can be daunting, so smart entrepreneurs have created marketing services that act as filters to help consumers find what they want quickly. You know the main ones: Wine-Searcher, WineZap, CellarTracker… and the newer ones: Snooth, Winelog, Vinquire, Radcru, TasteVine, Vino2Vino, Calwineries, Bottlenotes, Cork’d, ClassicWines… There are many. These essential outfits compete to cater to the needs of the inquisitive wine lover. With a few exceptions, they look to wine sellers to fund them. Almost all paths to purchase lead to a retailer paying for a click or a sale. These wine marketers allow supply and demand to connect, and so far, the supply being connected is represented mainly by retailers. This ecosphere of wine marketers has undeniably helped wine retailers, big or small, build their online business. Can they also help wineries?

Wine retailers have been at the online marketing game for some time now. In addition to experience, they have the advantage of working with large inventory, this makes for economies of scale in marketing. They can feed their product data to various price comparators or product list aggregators and also engage in paid search. Retailers have been quite effective at creating multiple paths to their stores. With the growing appetite for imports, this pull marketing is what will surely help them ride the big wave of online wine sales.

The number of wine producers is growing. The number of distributors is decreasing, as is their appetite for diversity… This classic scissor effect creates the need for wineries to find customers outside their usual hunting grounds. No one can argue that the web can be the largest source of new sales. We can agree that retailers already have an edge in this regard. So, given this situation, how can wineries effectively compete for new online customer acquisition?

They need to find ways to enter the same marketing channels as retailers and have their products and content listed on as many wine search engines, databases, social networks or marketing programs as possible and have links to their store wherever their brand is mentioned. Not only will having links and content listed outside your website help your SEO, it is the surest way to bring in traffic and sales.

In acquiring new customers from the web, I would argue that:
- wineries can hugely benefit from such pull marketing
- wineries actually have many strengths they can leverage over retailers
- wineries can play on mediums retailers cannot
However, for wineries to make this happen, they need what only retailers have - scale. Wine marketers need to work with compatible entities, requiring low overhead for data collection. I would argue that for wineries to build this kind of pull marketing, they need an enabler who can bring scale to the table. By working with multiple wineries, using a common data platform, such an enabler can broker on their behalf to make this happen.

In case you’re wondering where this is going… Inertia is busy building the Jet Ski that will help its clients ride the big wave. To beat the analogy to death, I’ll say that what powers the jet ski and how it pulls is best kept for a later blog post… Gnarly!

For your information, I’m the resident frog at Inertia - that means I’m French

Growing up in France I was raised with a fun New Years’ Eve tradition: “Sabrer le Champagne“. This means beheading a bottle of Champagne with a saber/sword. It sounds as cool as it is.

Last week, I was part of a fantastic Champagne tasting group. Among the many fine bottles was a magnum of Pierre Gimmonet 1999 Champagne. As this was the only magnum of the bunch, our delightful host thought it would be in bad taste not to follow the Napoleonic tradition of decapitating a magnum. Having had some experience with this - and wanting to make up for bringing the only corked bottle of the night (1990 Comte Audoin de Dampierre) - I volunteered to be the executioner. Here’s the video:

Champagne Sabering in San Francisco

Before you attempt the coolest trick of the holidays in front of a crowd, you should know practice is recommended. Here are the easy steps:

1. Prepare the field: remove both the foil and the wire cage covering the cork of you well-chilled bottle of bubbly.

2. Find the neck: locate one of the two vertical seams running up the side of the bottle. Where the seam meets the lower lip of the bottle is the point where you will strike.

3. Get ready to strike: grip the bottle firmly around its base. Point it at a 30 degree angle away from all people, windows and pets. Now take your saber (or the back edge of a chef’s knife or even a heavy metal tablespoon if you are feeling cocky) and lay the blade flat just below the lip at the weak spot.

4. The crucial moment: Draw the sword back along the seam and then swing with full force away from your body, upward and into the bottom of the lip. Don’t forget to follow through (as with any sport, see the cork popping, be the ball). To minimize spillage, turn the bottle upright immediately afterward.

5. Victoire! : if executed properly, the cork and bottle top will fly a few feet in the air (this is why you must aim carefully), you will not lose much Champagne but gain massive respect. This is your moment!

Pascal Davis-Givoiset