Above is the spreadsheet to use as a model for determining viability of your event that you are creating in your final project. You will need to delete my numbers and insert your own.
Also: please sign up and a trial account at www.constantcontact.com
Back in my garment industry days, we had a fellow in quality control who we nicknamed “Mr. Good Enough.” Why? Because on every quality issue that we presented to the management team, he responded, “it is good enough.”
I learned very quickly that “good enough” never delights nor will it move the dial in winning fans in whatever industry you are in. Unfortunately, I see that “good enough” has become an acceptable standard for many in our industry. This attitude will keep a winery solidly in middle of the pack and keep you out of the super star status.
I’m not talking about throwing money out the window, but take a look at what you do and put the mark of quality on those areas that are noticeable.
Most importantly, you need to make sure that your customer service is not operating on “it’s good enough” stance by your staff and against your best intentions, it has become your winery culture. This can easily happen when your staff are keenly aware that you want them to watch unnecessary expenditures and when you quiz them on their customer service decisions.
Smaller wineries need to recognize that they can own both customer service and visitor experiences without having a million dollar tasting room or by throwing splashy parties. You can win loyalty by recognizing your customers as the most important part of your business and by offering a full, rich experience each and every time they visit.
Recently, I heard from guests that they visited a winery where they are wine club members and the tasting room staff did not pour the current club offering nor offered to open a bottle when broadly hinted that they would enjoy tasting their latest club selection. Can you imagine the mileage this story has received just from the retelling?
As one winery owner likes to reminds me, “A customer is far more expensive than a bottle of wine.”
We will meet at L’Ecole No. 41 at 2:45 PM for Monday’s class. See you there.
Courtesy of wineinstitute.org
EV141 students:
Here are the Final Assignment Requirements.
EV 141 Final Assignment_Market Plan
Also attached is the Gross Rev/Profit worksheet to include with your marketing plan, instructions are written on the sheet with color codes.
To simplify things, determine your retail price from your market position and supported by the perceptual map of your brand and its competition.
In real life, you would have also tested your assumption by talking with retailers and with targeted consumers, i.e. formal or informal focus groups.
However, that is beyond the scope of this class. Therefore, starting with your retail price, half of that price = FOB (what your distributor will pay you).
Your Cost Of Goods + Profit =FOB
You then determine an amount less than your FOB as your COGS, and multiply by 12 for COGS/case price.
Wine Marketing & Sales: Success Strategies for a Saturated Market, 2nd Edition is the textbook I choose for my introductory Wine Marketing classes at Walla Walla Community College this winter quarter. This class and book work together as a primer for would-be winemakers and wine grape growers to gain an understanding and appreciation that while they might be focused on making the best wine possible or on growing the best grapes, nothing happens until a consumer decides to purchase that bottle of wine.
It is great to have a resource specifically dedicated to marketing wine. Marketers from other consumer products find out very quickly that their tested strategies and tactics don’t necessarily work when marketing a highly-regulated, image-driven product such as wine. Why? The overwhelming reason is that only 21% (Wine Market Council, 2011) of American adults consume wine in any kind of regular frequency. This eliminates traditional lifestyle media for all but the large players, while national wine publications are out of the reach for most small to medium wineries. However, overwhelmingly, there is an aversion of most small to medium wineries to market their crafted product as if they were selling a detergent or an automobile.
Since 2008 though, the industry has changed with the downturn, forcing wineries to focus on the selling (read marketing) their wine rather than waiting for wine visitors to arrive at the tasting room door. (more…)
Posted by Steve Heimoff on Dec 21, 2011 in Opinion | 41 comments
Before I go any further, I want to let certain people off the hook. First off is Merry Edwards, who uses “Méthode a L’Ancienne” to suggest her minimalist approach, and Verité, whose French winemaker entitles him to call his wines “La Joie”, “La Muse” and “Le Desir,” although I wouldn’t. I exempt also Roederer Estate’s L’Ermitage; after all, they are owned by Roederer.
But why would an American call something by a French name?”
(Read the rest of Steve’s article)
This article has been posted here for use of my EV141 -Intro to Wine Marketing students and hopefully will spark lively discussion. Other readers are welcome to join the discussion.
By WILLIAM GRIMES
NEW YORK TIMES
It’s peppery and full of fight. The tannins have grip. The nose takes no prisoners. This shiraz is a bitch.
It says so on the label. Royal Bitch is the name of the wine, one of a teeming sisterhood of cabernets and chardonnays from a variety of producers with labels like Sassy Bitch, Jealous Bitch, Tasty Bitch and Sweet Bitch. They’re reinforcements for a growing army of rude, budget-priced wines that have shoved their way into wine stores and supermarkets in the past few years — most recently Happy Bitch, a Hudson Valley rose that made its debut last month.
The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, an agency of the Treasury Department, approves about 120,000 applications for wine labels every year. Most names are traditional, often genteel, especially at the lower price points. It’s natural for a chardonnay or cabernet priced below $15 or even $10 to buff the image a bit. Woodbridge, Coastal Estates and Turning Leaf could be suburban subdivisions.
This article has been posted here for use of my EV141 -Intro to Wine Marketing students and hopefully will spark lively discussion. Other readers are welcome to join the discussion.
What was Netflix thinking? They just proved that even a wildly successful industry leader can mess up their business when they push their customers in ways they don’t want to go. I am referring to Netflix’s doubling of the monthly fee if members wanted to keep the options they enjoyed. Netflix knew they would lose customers and had prepared its investors for some attrition. However, by September, a million more subscribers than they predicted have quit. The company’s stock price fell 14 percent.
I’m guessing that many of you did what I did – I stewed about it for over a month. However, when the deadline loomed immediate, I said the heck with them and cancelled.
The majority of members who voted with their feet, didn’t want to be forced to chose one option over the other. If we had to chose, our rational brain would have said that our out-of-pocket would have been the same, and frankly, we are not talking a lot of money. Many of us were already using one part of their service more than the other part. If we had wanted both options, the new fee was still less than two tickets to a local cinema or using today’s standard conversion — four lattes. So it wasn’t really about the expense for most of us. It was about the way we felt they treated us!
How does this relate to your wine club? Well, there are times when change to your club structure becomes necessary. Most of us formed our clubs thinking in the present tense. Then after a few years, we more fully realize the impact of production changes (either growth or reduction) or the amount of resources (staff, technology, wines, etc.) needed to sustain a robust club.
At some point, we may want to increase shipments or number of bottles in each release, cut back on perks or maybe ask members to pay for something that used to be complimentary.
How to accomplish this without a mass exodus is worth spending some time analyzing what Netflix did wrong and what you must do right.
Recently, I helped a winery client increase their club revenue by making well-thought out changes to their club structure. We accomplished these changes in stages and by carefully explaining the changes. We rewarded members for their loyalty when they accepted the changes. The result ? Only two members quit during the phase-in period.
Should you decide to make changes to your wine club, take time to avoid the Netflix debacle.
And if I can help guide your team through the process, please contact me.
