REthink Wine Blog

If you haven’t already found it, Ablegrape is one of the best new Web 2.0 wine tools - it is the ONLY vertical search engine for the wine industry with a very cool methodology of searching for wine information (check it out - we at Inertia are very impressed).  Please go visit the site and fill out their survey to make it better.

If you do not know it, we are the next generation of American wine professionals and we still walk among giants.  These pillars of our wine community have built each region from nothing to world renown wine growing areas.  Mondavi, Phelps, Seghesio, Parducci, Lohr, Barrett - I can go on and on.  Many of these great men, or the men that helped build their empires, still walk among us.  They give us guidance, counsel and prepare to pass the torch to our generation.  Unfortunately these great men are also passing.  This year marked the loss of two of my greatest heroes - Robert Mondavi and just this weekend - Tom Shelton.  For those who do not know Tom, he was the President of Joseph Phelps Vineyards for 13 years.  As a 16 year wine veteran, Tom has been a cornerstone of heroism and a man that championed Napa Valley and the entire wine industry.  He was the head of the NVVA for years and I remember his bravery as he tirelessly spoke openly about consumer direct despite running a brand that was very much in wholesale distribution.  He was an incredible person and everyone I have ever spoken to held him in the highest regard.  Again, I consider myself lucky to walk among these titans who still disseminate knowledge with such kindness.  In the last four years running Inertia I had called Tom for advice six times and every single one, without question, he would accommodate my schedule and give me his time to help guide our company and my future.  I owe him an incredible debt of gratitude for his guidance and kindness to me, our company and our industry.   His loss this weekend leaves another gaping hole in our industry and I plan to take a moment to spend more time with the remaining legends that have built the foundation to the American wine industry and whom we all owe our thanks.

Uh oh, the Inertia tech team is at it again - today we release our CMS platform to all as an opensource project. Why would we release a proprietary engine that can enable our competitors and others to use for making websites? Because we believe in a healthy ecosphere for people to help wineries sell direct even if they are not on our platform. We are firm believers in open source and take our lessons from http://bit.ly/3DMt5Z and http://bit.ly/wikinom - you have seen this displayed first with our free compliance tool, rethinkcompliance.com and now with Brix.

What is Brix?

BRIX is an Open Source Initiative sponsored by Inertia. Based on Wicket and JCR, it is the ONLY Wicket-based CMS framework available today. As such, BRIX was designed to aid our partners, designers and other organizations in accelerating development by allowing for easy integration of a powerful CMS into existing applications. BRIX was built on the idea of “Power versus Complexity”, providing for ease of use while at the same time allowing designers the highest degree of freedom in developing a rich user experience.

Web 2.0 has created a fundamental shift in end-user expectations, which in turn has resulted in a continually evolving set of business requirements as they relate to Content Management Systems. BRIX was designed to allow developers to meet those requirements, and delivers the tools you need to compete in the marketplace.
Brix can currently be found at http://code.google.com/p/brix-cms/ and eventually will be at brix-cms.net
BRIX TOOLS:

• The ONLY Wicket-based CMS framework: With a refreshing lack of XML being just one of its many benefits, Apache Wicket makes developing web-apps simple and enjoyable.
• Based on JCR (Java Content Repository):
• Based on Java: Use an enterprise-standard data repository.
• Extensible Plug-in Architecture: Create and publicly code extensions without having to roll those changes into the BRIX core providing a hack-free way of extending and customizing Brix to suit an extremely diverse set of needs of its user base.
• Tiles: Easily incorporate configurable, reusable blocks of dynamic content into your CMS.
  Templates: Easily create and reuse website skins.
• Prototypes: User-defined, clone-able site structures provide additional ease of use.
  Support for WebDAV: Allows for a collaborative approach to document creation, editing, and distribution. Also edit using your favorite desktop HTML editor.
• Site Snapshots: Provide support for version control and backup.
• Raw or Rich Content Editing: Incorporate rich text and the associated formatting.
  Ease of Use: Basic workflow/publishing support and flexible security infrastructure.

Delivery of BRIX via the open source community fosters innovation in Content Management.

At its deepest abstraction, BRIX is not a standalone CMS, but rather a CMS framework which allows for easy integration of CMS functionality into existing Wicket-based applications. This is its primary benefit and we are confident that it will become the CMS tool of choice for many organizations as a result.
BRIX is developed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Please enjoy our contribution and give us feedback, success stories, or challenges with Brix. Moreover, we hope that you will become contributors to this exciting project.

I have been watching and planning for what we will do for .mobi - when do we create a tool that replicates all our winery partner sites with a mobi extension? I am still not sure the answer to that question but I am thinking about it. I am also an avid Iphone user (though I hate the email delivery and can’t wait for the next version). I like to the tools that are useful on this platform in mobi format or more. Fortunately we have a new partner that extends us to the mobi side of the fence. Culination has a great model of matching food and wine and more importantly, putting it on a mobile platform to view and search easily. Kudos to Rick for leading this charge and we are pleased to be his partner.

On another note, I will be doing a theme for a few weeks and taking questions from twitter (http://twitter.com/pmabray) or from the OWC post and then taking them to the team to answer every Wednesday. Please send questions about selling or marketing wine or major industry challenges (in regards to direct) and we will put our thinking caps on and try to bring a good answer. The questions that I will try to answer before next Wednesday mostly came from Twitter:

http://twitter.com/kathleenlisson asks:
Could wineries partner/contract with a personal chef to develop recipes, answer questions on a forum on the wineries website?

Is giving customers ideas / new reasons to drink wine a part of their sales strategy?

If wineries have a mailing list, can they encourage direct sales by providing an e-recipe book of 5 - 6 wine and food pairings?

http://twitter.com/israeliwine asks:

maybe some formulas for determining your best shipping discount strategy (maybe it varies by state even)

http://twitter.com/ColeDavid asks:

How do you better sell DTT? What are the best practices?

http://twitter.com/domaine547 asks:

Do wineries get value from sponsoring celebrity events and if so do you know any who’d be interested in sponsoring wine at an LA/Celeb event on july 4?

Stay tuned next week (or hopefully sooner) for the answers and more questions. Now off to get the team to do some brainstorming.

Yes we continue to grow - please say hello to the Inertia family. We are here to help wineries succeed and look forward to you meeting everyone in person at this year’s symposium.

Love him or hate him but there is no denying the power of Gary Vaynerchuck. He has exploded into the wine world with his powerful voice, his unique methods of reviewing wine, and his love for life. Disclaimer - I consider Gary a friend and am a huge fan. I like his disruptive approach to wine, his goal to democrotize and empower consumers, and his zest for life. If you want a great history of Gary, read this article. If you want to know him, meet him at any of his events or follow his twitter http://twitter.com/garyvee where you will get a mix of vicious promotion and statements that let you know Gary is a great guy, for example - “Wine + Board Games + Friends = BEST NIGHT EVER!”, or ” So excited to be alive! and to be alive in this amazing time when at 2 am I have all of u to hang with, THANK YOU everything/everybody!”, or ” thnx everyone for yappin on AIM, hope everyone has a house full of LOVE today and u are spending time with friends and FAM! See u guys soon!”

Sometimes I don’t agree with the way he describes wine and I am sure that wineries feel the same. I mean really, it must be hard to have someone publicly comment on the product you have crafted with TLC. But good or bad, as long as he mentions it, sales increase. I’ve heard MANY stories where he loves a wine, sells through it, and when the consumers want more, he points to the wineries. Moreover, there is a Anti-Gary group that just buys everything he pans. Amazing.

He is a huge advocate of winery and retailer Direct to Consumer as well as Direct to Trade efforts (yes, Gary is one of the major retailers who loves the concept of buying DTT). Needless to say, he is a HUGE winery advocate.

He is the newest and without question, the most prominent wine personality in the US today. His internet reach, his ability to garner mainstream media attention (Conan O’Brien cameos that are great to watch), and his usage of Web 2.0 has him as the most watched and listened to wine critic in the world. You may argue that point but I would contend that the numbers don’t lie. You can watch his show daily at http://tv.winelibrary.com/ or at http://www.hulu.com/the-thunder-show. He also has released his first book 101 wines - which is a hilarious, accurate, and wonderful new approach to how he analyzes wine. I won’t steal his thunder (pun intended) by sharing the content of the book, but if you are in the wine industry it is a fun read. I know he is already at work writing the next version and I hope one of your wines gets mentioned. I also hope you try to put it in your tasting room or sell it. I think that promoting that type of fun in wine is good for the industry and will continue to capture the attention of our largest growing wine population - the Millennials.

Hats off to Gary, he really is one of the people helping to change the wine industry for the better.

As a post script - Gary will be at our Annual Symposium speaking about innovation. If you have not seen him, please try to come. It is open to all of our winery partners and as a non-Inertia winery partner you can rsvp to try to get in since we have limited seats. For everyone that comes we’ll be giving away a copy of his book for you to enjoy as we do.

The rumors are flying - there is growing concern that we are entering a recession.  All indicators seem to point in that direction.  What does that mean for the wine industry?  Well, in general wine sales have slowed during recessions but people tend to enjoy wine when they are in good or bad times, they just tend to be more frugal.

But the ramifications and challenges are less related to consumption than they are to how the market deals with the plethora of brands.  What you have is that wholesalers are less likely to take chances and buy low velocity or unproven brands.  As a businessman I completely agree with their thought process.  Why tie my dollars up in inventory that I may not sell, takes extra effort to sell, or sells slower than other possible products.  Moreover, when they do take a position in a brand, they tend to take a far less aggressive purchasing approach.  Why buy two pallets instead of just one?

On the demand side of the equation the trade also is experiencing a similar approach.  Retailers are less likely to veer off the standard path of what sells and what sells fast and easy.  Restaurants on the other hand are in the situation of not wanting to purchase deeper inventory due to the slowdown in on-premise sales.  But remember, restaurants continue to proliferate in direct support of population growth and I know people don’t stop making babies during recessions.

Consumers are still buying wine, just trying to manage their pocket books better and buying less expensive wine on the frequency basis yet still saving a bit of money for that favorite winery or exploratory purchase.  Unfortunately also they are not traveling as much to wine country diminishing the tasting room as your core direct sales machine.  That doesn’t mean they don’t want your wine, they are just not traveling across states lines as frequently to get it (one side note, tasting room sales do not often decline during recessions because LOCAL residents not traveling out of state tend to visit local wine regions more frequently to get their fix - it doesn’t denote health of hospitality, just a shift in attendance).

It sound scary.  It sounds ominous.  But look deeper.

As a result of the “slow down” the amount of access to brands in any particular market becomes limited.  That does not change the fact that that there are still buyers - both trade and consumer - looking to buy their desired brands.  It just means that those brands may no longer have the same access to the markets.  Do you really think that just because the brand is not in the market and someone loves the wine that they are going to abandon purchasing it? Heck no! They will simply need to find another way to gain access to that brand!

Also, just because on-premise has slowed it does not mean that restaurants do not want a diverse wine list that matches their food, atmosphere, and personality.  But unfortunately the slow down means their access to these brands is now limited by the economics of the market.

So where is the good news?  It is very pure and simple.  Demand for your products still exists, but the strategy for getting them effectively into your desired markets does need to change – think DIRECT.   With a direct sales strategy, the consumer who can’t find your wine in the local market will search the internet and find themselves at your website or find a phone number to call you on the phone.

How do you ensure you’re available for that DIRECT contact? Consider the following: Are you staffing appropriately for your DIRECT program?  Do you have a good fulfillment strategy (like leveraging Wine Tasting Network’s bi-coastal operations) to help lower costs and incent people to buy direct?  Have you made sure to get maximum, cost-effective penetration through your direct shipping permits?  On the trade side, specifically for restaurants, selling direct to trade is new. However, in an economic slowdown, with a limited selection likely being offered by traditional means, they are more likely to go the extra effort to buy direct. Why? Because it allows them to continue in their efforts to create a unique Point of Difference through their selection, from the restaurant next door.

And for you, the winery, this is ALL good news.  It means that your direct channel gets more fuel from sales.  It means that you can possibly recapture margin.  It means that your customers now go into your database for creating long term relationships, thus stabilizing your brand.  Are your direct programs ready for the recession?

Dear Inertia Friends and Family,

It’s been an incredible last two years at Inertia, with almost 100% growth year on year. We’ve seen the realization of our industry-wide compliance solution, REthink Compliance, as well as the take off of our Direct-to-Trade initiative. Our partnerships have grown, and - most especially - our management team has grown.

You’ve heard me talk about our “All Star” team of executives – seasoned professionals who bring extensive experience in all facets of direct sales, marketing, product development and technology applications – and now I’m excited to announce our biggest addition yet.

On May 20th, Ted Jansen will join our management team as Chief Executive Officer. Ted joins us from Expedia.com, where he led the company’s North American initiatives. Ted is a multi-talented executive with significant experience in on-line luxury product marketing. Most recently from Expedia.com, he also spent over 7 years on the management team with Walt Disney and over 5 years leading ecommerce and retail initiatives for both Disney and online luxury travel companies.

At that time, I will move into the Chief Strategy Officer role, leading both business development and product development initiatives. I will also retain a seat on the board, ensuring that I will continue to be very engaged in leading Inertia to its end goal: To Help our Partners Sell More Wine Direct.

How did we get here?

The concept of using technology to disrupt an antiquated and dysfunctional supply chain and instead offer a high margin, high velocity parallel distribution channel is something we eat, breathe, and sleep every day at Inertia. Our goal is to build a transactional platform that allows wineries to interact and with customers in a cost efficient, scalable manner. And by doing make the direct channel one of the most viable and profitable channels in the wine industry.

To truly be the “change agent” we see ourselves becoming, I looked at some of the most successful innovation companies out there: Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft… Every one of these companies demonstrated a similar story: the founder(s) built a company that had great success, but in order to bring it to full scale, each brought in an experienced CEO and worked hand-in-hand with them to ensure the scalability and success was achieved.

Based on the continued growth we’ve seen in our own business, I decided it was time to bring ourselves to the next level, as well.

We recently announced the dates of our annual Client Appreciation Symposium in July. At this Symposium, each of you will have a chance to meet Ted, in both our presentations, as well as during our Client Appreciation Party and Golf outing. I encourage each of you to attend for the great content, as well as for the opportunity to meet Ted and many of the other great new people we have added to the team.

I feel blessed to have such a passionate, devoted team as well as a wonderful group of partners that are all oriented to help the wine industry Sell More Direct.

I look forward to this exciting new time in our future… I hope you join me in that excitement.

At our little company we like to say that when someone has strong skills or do something great that they have “strong kung foo” (yes, I know it is spelled wrong). Today is my blog day and I looked at the ominous screen wondering what should be my topic. Fortunately I was inspired by an email from George Vare (the Chairman of our Board and a great mentor to our entire team) and I thought today would be a nice day to put up a list of people in the wine industry that have “strong kung foo.” This is by no means a comprehensive list, but rather those who immediately came to mind. There are other great Kung Foo Masters out there. I also made an attempt to categorize these people to show where their kung foo is strongest. Please feel free to comment on people in the industry that you think have strong kung foo - I very much would like to see them added to this list.

Grandmaster Kung Foo (A category with only one member)
George Vare

The Legends of Kung Foo
Robert Mondavi
Michael Moone

Winery CEO Kung Foo
Mary Ann Tsai - Luna Vineyards
Erle Martin - Pine Ridge
Scott Weiss - Fosters
Tom Shelton - Joseph Phelps

Best wine sales Kung Foo
Gary Vaynerchuk - Winelibrary.com (and cult of personality Kung Foo)
John Tichenor - Brown Forman

Guys behind the scenes you may not know but they make all the magic but they do, Kung Foo
Chris Edwards - Wine Tasting Network
Tom Wark - Wark Communications
John Hinman - Hinman and Carmichael

Consumer Direct Kung Foo
Miryam Chae - Fosters
Lesley Kiefer Russell - St. Supery
Jennie Haug - Revana
Jason Williams - Lancaster
Samantha Lloyd - Niebaum Coppola
Jim O’Shea - Sterling Vineyards
Matt Wood - Icon Estates

Financial Kung Foo Wizards
Rob McMillan - Silicon Valley Bank
Bill Price - Texas Pacific Group
Prescott Ashe - Golden Gate Capital
Christian Whipple - Pacific Premier Vitners
Vic Motto - Global Wine Partners

Not sure how to categorize their crazy good kung foo, kung foo
Jeff Stai - Twisted Oak
Marc Engel - BRSgroup.com
John Collins - Fosters
Lesley Berglund - WISE, WITS, Aged Cabernet
Tammy Boatright - Wattle Creek

Wine techie Kung Foo
Philip James - Snooth.com
Jason Coleman- Winelog.net
Joel Vincent - Openwineconsortium.com
Michael Brill - Crushpad

People fighting the good fight kung foo
Paul Kronenberg - Family Wine Makers
Steve Gross - Wine Institute
Kenneth Star - SWRA

People that buy ink (digital or real) by the gallon and use it well Kung Foo
Cyril Penn - WBM
Eric Jorgensen - WBM
Alder Yarrow - Vinography
Tina Caputo - Wines and Vines
Howard Goldburg - NYT, et al
Mark Fisher - Dayton Daily News

The Peter Foo Awards (great guys with the name of Peter that have had a major influence on the wine industry)
Peter Marks - Icon Estates
Peter Granoff - Founder of Virtual Vineyards - Ferry Building Wine Merchants
Peter Sisson - Founder of Wineshopper.com - Serial entrepenuer

Now mind you there are many, many more and I just listed those who first came to mind. Here are some suggestions for kung foo categories you may look to add: most innovative small winery kung foo, best tasting room manager kung foo, best winery marketing kung foo, etc, etc - I look forward to your comments and to you helping me add to this list.

Finally, after months and months of work (a labor of love), we have released rethinkcompliance.com out of beta and free to all US wineries. We are committed to improving this tool over the next six months with three major releases (some of which are things the wine industry have never before seen in a compliance tool). I am very thankful to our investors, our board, our team, and all winery supporters for this initiative. It make Inertia feel good to give back to the industry in order to help wineries sell more direct. The press release is below:

Free Access to Inertia’s “REthink Compliance Tool'’ Aims to Increase Direct-To-Consumer Wine Sales

NAPA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Inertia Beverage Group announced today that it has opened its REthink Compliance™ tool for use free of charge to any winery, fulfillment house or compliance company. Access to Inertia’s REthink Compliance tool comes without qualification and does not require use or subscription to Inertia’s direct shipping platform.

Wineries, fulfillment houses, compliance firms and point-of-sale service providers can register and use the Inertia REthink Compliance tool at: http://www.rethinkcompliance.com.

SYSTEM GENERATES STATE REPORTS, COMPLIANCE STATUS AND HOSTS LISTS OF STATE LAWS

Inertia spent nearly two years, over half a million dollars and more than 6,000 man-hours creating the REthink Compliance tool. The new service allows wineries to automatically check that their wine shipments are in compliance with shipping regulations in fifty states and generates the reports which states require direct shippers to file based on their sales into the state. In addition, the new REthink Compliance tool provides a detailed matrix of the myriad of rules and regulations for all fifty states concerning direct-to-consumer shipments.

“We’ve opened the REthink Compliance tool to all parties because it’s clear that the winery-to-consumer sales channel is going to flourish only when wineries have an affordable and simple way to comply with the multitude of complex and confusing wine shipping regulations and requirements that exist across the country,” said Inertia CEO Paul Mabray. “This new compliance tool, being available free to all who want to use it, is our response to the compliance burdens that have kept many a winery from accessing the national direct-to-consumer market.”

REDUCING COMPLIANCE BURDENS & EXPENSES HELP EXPAND SALES AND CONSUMER ACCESS TO WINE

The simple process of using the REThink Compliance tool amounts to uploading wine order information, in the form of an excel .csv file, into the web service-based REthink Compliance tool. Most shopping cart and direct sales platforms available to wineries have a simple “export sales” command that allows creation of the necessary file. The REthink Compliance tool will then inform the winery where they are out of compliance with rules based on total amounts of wine shipped into a state or to an individual. The tool will also indicate which state reports are necessary, and completely format and fill in the necessary reports if requested.

Inertia has committed staffing and resources to continue to evolve and enhance the feature set for REthink Compliance. Over the next six months, they will have three releases to enhance the tool with new features such as additional file upload formats, web-services integration with key partners, a step-by-step permit application process wizard and a compliance status map for easy determination of compliance standing.

“Our goal here is a simple one: to increase the size of the direct-to-consumer wine market by giving wineries the means to efficiently access more markets,” said Mabray. “This in turn will bring more consumers in to the direct wine market as more wineries choose to ship to more states and do so with the confidence that they are in compliance with the states’ rules and regulations.”

To ensure accuracy and continued updates of the system, Inertia dedicates two full time compliance experts, including a compliance lawyer, to the task of monitoring changes and additions to state regulations across the country. In addition, Inertia has created its “Inertia Compliance Council,” a group of industry compliance and legal experts who meet on a regular basis to discuss the state of wine shipping rules and regulations.