How do you know you are performing at the top of club performance, or even above the average? What percent of revenue, relative to total revenue do your neighbor wineries produce from just the tasting room or just the club? If I asked you how many wineries pay for data capture within their comp structure in the tasting room, what would be your guess? What percent of revenue comes in through web sales in your region?
What's the reserve tasting fee in your region? How about the average tenure of a club member sorted out by average bottle price? Would it help to know the average gain in club members in your AVA last year?
I've recently been thinking about the changing metrics we've had available to manage the wine business over the years. What metrics existed 30 years ago for small wineries? How was wine sold then? What was the atmosphere like? How did we get information?
With daylight savings time upon us, I also started daydreaming today while looking out at the pool and thinking about summer. That brought me back to a trip to Mexico I took 40 years ago, so Mexico met up with metrics in this post as I pondered what direct sales will look like in 2028.
In 1988 my wife won a sales contest at work that provided for an all-expenses-paid three days at the Fiesta Americana in Puerto Vallarta. I had never been to a foreign country before, except Canada and I didn't count Canada as foreign. But Mexico? Well going there would make me an official world traveler!
We know that the average winery today has nearly 60% of their sales made direct largely through wine clubs and tasting rooms. How do we know that? Through an annual survey conducted by SVB.
If you have a club or a tasting room, how do you know you are performing at the top of the club performance, or even above the average? If I asked you how many wineries pay for data capture within their comp structure in the tasting room, what would be your guess?
Today 168 wineries have responded to the SVB Annual Tasting Room Survey and here is the result thus far for that question:
What about the average dollar comp awarded to tasting room staff in your region. Is that of interest? How about the average tenure of a club member sorted out by average price point so you can compare your winery against a winery with a similar price point? Would it help to know the average gain in club members in your AVA last year, or what about the average number of lost members?
Each of those questions are examples of benchmarks that will be available to you for free but here's the catch:The benchmarks are only available to those who take the 10-15 minutes to complete the survey. Isn't that an investment well worth making?
When the survey is closed on March 18th, we will spend over 200 person hours completing the analysis and will then return charts, graphs, and an excel spreadsheet cleaned of any identifying information. You will be able to dig even deeper into the data if you want.
In May we will host a live videocast to go over some of the results as we did last year.
In the July issue of Wine Business Monthly, the magazine will publish some of the information and conclusions in their annual Direct To Consumer edition.
None of the above is possible without the 10-15 minutes invested in the survey itself. Please consider taking the time to answer the survey questions. Your participation will improve both your own direct program, and help the US wine industry improve.
If you feel this content is worthwhile, please promote the link in your favorite social media platform, or even better - please forward the link to your winery colleagues and ask them to participate.
If you would like your AVA to participate, we will also send them free Regional Benchmarks for their own use if we have a statistically significant sample size and an address to send the information.
Another live videocast is in the can and has already hit summer re-runs on YouTube.
Somebody will soon be sending you some popcorn for you to pare with a pinot gris, so you can settle in with your tasting room colleagues to review the findings of the Wine Business Monthly/Silicon Valley Bank Tasting Room Survey .... feedback-results, whatever you want to call it.
Please
join us for an interactive video discussion of Silicon Valley Bank's 2015
Tasting Room Survey. This promises to be a lively conversation as SVB'sRob
McMillanreviews survey results and interprets industry trends in the Tasting Room and the larger Direct To Consumer chanel along with a panel
of experts. Sign
up for the presentation and receive a link to the replay and the complete
results of the Silicon Valley Bank 2015 Tasting Room Survey after the webinar.
Speakers:
Sonyia Grabski Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Sullivan Vineyards
I'm betting nobody knows who Thorstein Veblen is. Like this picture, you have to be a little cockeyed to know him; be a Jeopardy Champion, enjoy thumbing through pictures of people who look like axe murderers, or maybe you are an economist with little to do with your free time except refresh your memory about a Veblen good?
One on-going debate in the wine business where Veblen's theories play a role is price discounts. Should you discount, and if so when and by how much? To get at an answer we'll review some economic basics. (... I know how exciting that sounds but stick with it. I won't kill you with math.)
I used to work in retail when I was a young man. It can be fun when you have a good dialogue with a customer but when alcohol is involved, customers like Miles and Jack in the scene above can make life pretty uncomfortable for public serving employees.
That's when you need someone behind the counter who is confident and knows how to handle those situations. And before that, you want someone who can balance sales and client experience but there is a cost to attract that kind of a person, but how much is that?
