With a portfolio of luxury wineries, including Domaine de la Romanee-Conti and Biondi Santi, Wilson Daniels has developed deep expertise in marketing luxury wines. With allocations, deep tracking of where wines go, and a heavy event schedule, Shannon Coursey, EVP of Sales & Marketing, describes how taking great care of the wines is critical.
Detailed Show Notes:
Wilson Daniels (“WD”) overview
- Founded in 1978, they started as a domestic wine brokerage,
- In 1979, they were asked to represent Domaine de la Romanee-Conti (DRC) and became an importer
- Represents 37 families with ~50 producers, ~⅓ France, ~⅓ Italy, ~⅓ New World
- Owns distribution in 5 states
- ~35 sales managers, sells ~600k cases/year
Importer role
- Curate portfolio
- Distributor management - make sure strategy is executed
- Create messaging with the wineries
- Pricing - for WD, keep consistent around the country
- Education
- Channel mix - on/off premise, national accounts, chains
- Work with press
- Keeping wineries top of mind in trade - does a lot of events
Sourcing
- Sources wineries with estate vineyards, some with the ability to scale (~⅓ of the portfolio), look for regions where they will not take away from existing producers
- At optimal book size now, additions could be grower Champagne or 1-2 new Burgundy producers
- Grew portfolio a lot in recent years - ~20/37 families added in last 8 years, ~10 in last 3 years (including Gaja, Faiveley)
Distributor management
- With RNDC and Breakthru in ~50% of states
- Create groups within the portfolio to help distributors
- Manage pricing, inventory, programming (sometimes)
- Does not allow wine closeouts, prefers to buy back
- Fast Start program - incentives for new placements, not volume
- Wholesale Manager Bonus - for distribution managers, often trip-based
- Other support methods - ask to be on focus, market work, getting the producer in market
Marketing wines
- Crafting messaging is critical, and some producers already know what they want (e.g., Gaja wants to be known as 4 different wineries)
- Does a lot of grassroots marketing - events around the country at top restaurants, visibility of on-premise placements
- A lot of trips to wineries
- Iconic brands - taking care of the wine from start to finish, the allocation process is essential (~⅔ of brands are allocated)
- Lesser known brands - more about visibility, messaging is critical, can target a broader base (e.g., use more social media)
- Luxury - 3 key segments - sommeliers, collectors, critics
- For larger brands, does some consumer marketing: e.g., Bisol Prosecco - did 15 city tours, wrapped an Alfa Romeo car in Bisol green, did press, consumer, and trade events; went from 7k cases (2015) to 120k cases (2024)
Process for building brands in the US
- Create messaging
- Education - WD wholesale team, WD national team, distributors
- PR launch kit and sales kit
- Identify channel mix, including target account list
- Events (very different for each producer - e.g., vintage tastings for Biondi Santi, Faiveley; Gaja - white launch, Tuscan properties, Sicilian tasting)
Re-establishing brands that had poor marketing (e.g., Biondi Santi, Dal Forno)
- Need to work through inventory in the gray market
- Don’t lower prices to match the gray market
- Make a splash on new vintage releases
- Dal Forno - launches in the US 6 months before the rest of the world, helps reduce gray market activity
Private client group / direct-to-consumer
- ~300 people by invitation only
- Experience-driven
- Members support the entire WD portfolio
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
