After falling in love with wine through a year abroad in Burgundy in high school, Nick Ramkowsky, Owner of Vine Connections, has built a premium national importer of South American wines and sake. Nick discusses the types of wine importers in the US, how he thinks about building a brand portfolio, and the keys to success as an importer in part 1 of this 2-part series.
Detailed Show Notes:
Vine Connections
A national import and marketing company based in CA and has a retail license
Focus on regions with winemaking history but not globally recognized
Started as a broker and distributor (when Nick was 25)
Worked with Billington Imports and met Laura Catena, went to Argentina, and fell in love with wines
Established 1st premium portfolio of Argentine wines (1999-2000) - least expensive wine was $24 retail
2002 - imported sake
2013 - 1st premium Chilean wine portfolio
Has wholesalers in all 50 states, including RNDC (#2 in the US), Breakthru (#3), and other smaller ones
30 people today, from 2 originally
Split company in 2 - Kome Collective (Japanese), GeoVino (wines)
Types of wine importers
All importers are also distributors in their state
Sales Geography - can be state, regional, or national; Vine Connections is national for control over brands all the way through, exclusive for all 50 states, contracts w/ producers outline the responsibilities of importer and producer
Portfolio Focus - world or specialized; Vine Connections is specialized in S America and sake
Role of importer
Bring wines in, warehouse, sell to distributors, & work with sales teams to sell to various channels (on-premise, off-premise, chains)
Work with press, do consumer events, lots of training and education
Sourcing wines
Looks at people first, then property, and consistency in product and pricing
New wines don’t cannibalize the current portfolio
Complementary driven by a sense of place and identity, even if the same region, varietal, price point
Looking at expanding to more regions to take advantage of the distribution network
Originally specialized to have more of an identity as an importer
Optimal book size - has ~120 SKUs in portfolio vs. ~900 at some importers and ~10,000 for RNDC as a distributor; optimal size varies by business model (e.g., focused on chains vs. independent stores/restaurants)
More in not better - high cost to inventory and more challenging to prioritize
Pricing wines
In general, SRP is fixed, but each state is different (based on freight & tax differences, distributor margins (larger tend to work on lower margins), and retailer margins (some take less margin)
Selling wines
Used to self-distribute in CA, now uses wholesalers (couldn’t service all the accounts, wanted to focus on national sales)
Distributor salespeople don’t have time to focus on everything
Importer needs to generate interest in brands
Key elements for success
Find good partners - share the same philosophy (quality, value, consistency), support each other
Vine Connections doesn’t add new wineries often (only one new Chilean winery); only one winery left in 20+ years
$1M revenue/employee benchmark for success
Vine Connections differentiation - good communications, both in transfer and transparency (e.g., sales by state), consider Vine Connections an extension of the winery
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