While top sommeliers and winemakers tend to get the spotlight when it comes to wine sales in the United States, it’s easy to take for granted where the vast majority of Americans procure their favorite wines.
In 2017, approximately 78 percent of all wine sales across the country occurred in the off-premise channel (Nielsen 2018). As Americans are drinking more wine by volume and have more choices than ever before, it’s essential for brands to stand out, in the minds of retailers and in the eyes of their customers. Here’s some insight from top buyers in the off-premise around the country.
Understanding the Retail Buyer’s Mindset
When planning a brand’s sales strategy, it’s important to consider the people who will be putting the brand’s products in front of consumers and the challenges that they face. As both wine lovers and salesmen, retail wine buyers often face a pressure to compromise between their own interests and local demand. David Calkins, proprietor of Wine Gems in Bronxville, New York, says that there is a “need to respond to customer demand for many popular brands, when I’d much prefer to focus on less well-known brands I find more interesting and often superior in value. There is never a shortage of those new brand opportunities, just a pressure to compromise.” Pitching your brand to a buyer generally means asking them to take the risk of replacing a successful SKU with yours, due to the reality of limited space in most shops. That means it’s crucial to make your brand stand out, both to the buyer and their customers.
Smart Packaging
Yes, looks matter, especially in retail. Consumers do judge a book by its cover, and for that reason, so will buyers. “Often a customer will choose a wine just because he or she loves the label,” says Calkins. “Conversely, a boring or unattractive label is the kiss of death for that wine or spirit. Bottle shape, color, closure, and labels are all important factors in the buying decision – both mine and my customers’.”
However, attractive packaging alone is not sufficient to drive a brand’s off-premise sales. Matthew Gaughan, DipWSET, wine buyer at Napa’s Back Room Wines, says, “Imagine a tourist comes in and sees there are 18 Napa Cabernets all in a row. How does a wine stand out? The label has got to stand out. At the same time, it has to reflect the product that’s inside. So if it’s a serious Napa Cabernet, a jazzy label is not going to fit. The best labels in the shop reflect what the wine is and allows us to say, ‘look at that label; that really tells a story about what the wine will taste like.’” On the contrary, Gaughan says, “When the label is mediocre and boring, it makes you think, ‘have they actually put any thought into the whole package, into the wine they’re selling and marketing?’”
Brands must also consider that consumer preferences vary at the regional and local level, so a label that sells well in one town might not do so well in the next. “A lot of people pick wine by the label,” says Doug Kooluris, proprietor of G. Griffin Wine & Spirits in Rye, New York. But, he adds, “In my area, ‘hip’ labels do not do well with my clientele.”
For brands offering multiple SKUs, packaging design should be assessed on an individual basis, rather than a ‘one size fits all’ vision. “We have an issue when someone comes in with four or five wines, and we would like to carry all of them, but if they have the same label we can’t do it, because they just fade away,” says Gaughan. Having multiple SKUs that look exactly alike also makes it more difficult for a store’s staff to sell the right bottle and keep an accurate stock count, which could reduce, if subconsciously, a salesperson’s motivation to recommend the brand.
Superb Sales Materials
Retail buyers are constantly being pitched on new products, often multiple times a day. That means that a lot of sales materials are landing on their desks, which can make purchasing decisions cumbersome. The best thing that brands can do, according to Jesse Salazar, Wine Director of Union Square Wines in New York City, is to supply their distributors with great materials that clearly show what the product is in a brief amount of space and time. Materials should include labels, appellations, and price points, plus a vineyard photograph if possible. “They should be presented in PDF form, because you don’t need sheets of paper falling out and spilling off your desk,” says Salazar. “It should be immediately appealing when you look at it, with a picture, and it should be one or two pages maximum. That’s super helpful, and you take that person [the sales representative] and that company a lot more seriously than someone who just photocopied Beverage Media. If you’re scanning through and it’s ugly, the quality is poor, and they’ve misspelled words like ‘appellation,’ you’re just like, ugh.”
The Golden Rule
Don’t waste anyone’s time. Retail buyers have to juggle purchasing with managing a team of staff, keeping track of inventory, creating in-store promotions and advertising, as well as spending time on the floor with customers. They don’t have ample time to sit down with a sales representative, sample wines, and read through paragraphs of information. The best distributors are those who respect a buyer’s time and interests and do their homework. “Just pitch me on the things that you’ve seen that might fit here,” advises Eduardo Andrade, the Specialty Beverage Buyer for Whole Foods’ downtown Miami location. “Don’t try to pitch me on things that you know are not going to work here and that I know are not going work here. Let’s not waste each other’s time.”
Without a doubt, distributors and their sales representatives play a key role in determining the success of a brand in-market. But brands can invest time and resources to ensure that the people representing them have the best available information, fantastic sales materials, and an interesting aesthetic that makes it easy for buyers to capture the eyes (and patronage) of their customers.
