United You Can Stand, Divided You May Fall!

About two months ago I reached out to a number of winery owners around the world trying to get a sense of how cooperative various wine association members were with each other in terms of sharing valuable data.

Since those inquiries went out (and answers returned) a lot has happened in the wine industry but I would bet that nothing has changed. It is my contention that most wineries were too busy selling wine to really pay much attention to the direct to consumer sales over the last several years. As a percentage of the total wine sales, the DTC sales were probably not overly significant, yet having precise data now would be invaluable in making smart business decisions about how to go forward in this difficult time.

Knowing traffic per month, sales per consumer (both in dollars and bottles), how many new wine club members joined (and where) and a whole host of other marketing related information would provide significant benchmarks at this point in time. Realizing that almost no one was really paying attention (based upon my own visits), I thought that the help of each wine association to collect current data blindly for release to all group members could at least help guide marketing decisions.

I was surprised to learn, of all the wine countries globally, that only the associations in Portugal and Australia do anything like this. Every other response that came back seemed to indicate that I had asked about a two headed monster.

I would hope that the 30 or so large winery operations are not only keeping data but purchasing key statistical information from the likes of IRI and AC Nielsen (and industry specific market data consolidators), but for the average winery this is far too costly to do on a continuous basis. This could be an important first step for the local wine associations to collectively purchase the marketing information to be shared with its members.

The associations could be the bedrock for working synergistically with related businesses. Why not offer special hotel packages, with meal plans at specific restaurants, and free or special accesses to a group of wineries? If anyone is doing it they are not well published! Certainly I have not seen it in any of the emails from the Wine Country group (that I get daily) or on any of the social networks (where it should be prominently displayed).

The associations need to start thinking out of the box, and now. As I mentioned in another blog the associations could sponsor a wine tour app for the wine lovers. I just received a wine map from the Wine Road association (northern Sonoma) that was beautiful in its detail (including all the pertinent information for each winery and their websites) but nowhere does it mention which wineries are on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. To say that this is important should go without saying. Yesterday, I learned from an associate who was researching WMG (Warner Music Group) that last fall 138 million Americans were using social networks and a half BILLION people around the world were using them. Folks, how much longer are you going to wait to realize that this is the future?

Yesterday, I also read another article from Santa Rosa’s Press Democrat (“The Crush of Harvest”) that indicates that growers not under contract who had the good fortune of selling were getting around 50% of last years prices for grapes, and for those who have not sold the immediate future does not look rosy. They stated that there is already talk about wineries leaving some grapes on the vines, and that these grapes will be sold as bulk. If you don’t think that this will affect you this year and for the next several as a winery you are in more trouble than you know.

Throw out all the “old rules”, start thinking out side of the box, start working together within your associations and begin to form with synergistic relationships.

Please!