Archive for the ‘Business Tips for Wine Shop Owners’ Category

As a wine shop owner, you better be a wine expert or your chances of attracting and keeping your best customers is severely limited. [level-members] We’re not saying you need the fancy designations and certifications of high-profile sommeliers, but you do need to have – and project – an air of expertise in order to attract […]

Honor among thieves may be the first rule of retail theft, but apparently the second is real men don’t steal pink wine. [level-members] All kidding aside, it seems, at least according to recent Australian crime data, that retail thieves just aren’t into pink wine. The most frequently stolen item was bourbon; it was five times […]

At Vinexpo this June in France, will include a panel of experts discussing climate change and its effect on the wine industry. What should that mean to you and your local wine shop? [level-members] On one hand, you could dismiss this as too macro an issue for you to even think about, and that’s not […]

In the vast majority of businesses, recurring revenue is about as desirable as it gets. How can wine shops achieve it? [level-members] In a word? Wine clubs. OK, that’s two words. We’ve talked about wine clubs before but they bear another look as the landscape has changed. Over the past few years, the number of outlets […]

Following up on last week’s column, we came across another reminder that if you’re not willing to be creative, someone is going to come eat your proverbial lunch. [level-members] We came across this February article from the New York Times which describes how Amazon is using Seattle as its own real-world retail laboratory. Clearly, none of […]

Unless you’ve been living under a rock – and hibernating – for the past decade, you know that retail is undergoing a seismic shift brought about largely by the internet and ecommerce. What do these changes mean for your wine shop? [level-members] That’s the $64,000 question, of course, and though I can’t pretend to know the answer, […]

Have you bought a car lately? If you’re older than 40 or so, boy how times have changed. When you bought your first car, the dealer held all the cards. Now, the consumer does and dealers seem to live and die on their service departments. What’s that got to do with retail wine sales? The […]

Anyone who refers to rosé as “summer water” is OK in our book, though the news gets less good from there. Well, good for wine consumers. Not so good for wine shops. [level-members] Summer Water Societé is a joint venture between Winc and Yes Way Rosé is a delivery service focused entirely on, you guessed it, […]

One of the keys to happiness and success in owning a wine shop, as with so many pursuits, is being able to tell the difference between the things you can control and those you can’t. Those you can’t control – like, for example, Brexit or the price of land in Napa Valley – can still […]

We talked last week  about the value placed on peer ratings and reviews, but that was about reviews for products. You might consider tapping into that power for your wine shop and not just the wines in your shop. [level-members] In some ways, this is a bit of a defensive play since only the most […]