Ep. 2015 Potential for Direct to Consumer business development, and growth | wine2wine Business Forum 2023

The Italian wine podcast is the community driven platform for Italian winegeeks around the world. Support the show by donating at italian wine podcast dot com. Donate five or more Euros, and we'll send you a copy of our latest book, my Italian Great Geek journal. Absolutely free. To get your free copy of my Italian GreatGeek journal, click support us at Italian One podcast dot com, or wherever you get your pods. Official media partner, the Italian One podcast is delighted to present a series of interviews and highlights from the twenty twenty three one to one business form, featuring Italian wine producers and bringing together some of the most influential voices in the sector to discuss the hottest topics facing the industry today. Don't forget to tune in every Thursday at three pm or visit the Italian wine podcast dot com for more information. So we have a special, you know, the art of improvisation is kind of the key to survival. Right? Today, we well, so Barbara fitzgerald, our Italian wine Ambassador. She will be your, the main speaker today. And then I had to recruit her husband, the bodyguard. His name is Daniel. Okay. Daniel Fitzgerald. He actually owns a custom crush facility. Do you guys even know what a custom crush facility is? Italians. Okay. There you go. Okay. So, Daniel, you can explain that. Number one. Okay. So this session is going to be all about direct to consumer. Which is a very important aspect, of course, in America, but not as developed in Europe. And especially in Italy. So hopefully, you will get some insights into the direct to consumer model from America, from Barbara. That's the nice looking lady to your left. And then the husband, okay, will try to moderate this session because they told me, actually, they practiced this morning. By chance, because the moderator She is, for personal reasons, couldn't be here this morning. Okay. So what we're going to do the way it's going to go out is that Barbara is going to do her presentation, and then Danielle Daniel. Sorry. Daniel. Okay. Are you Italian? No. Belgium. Okay. Danielle from Belgium. We'll moderate this session. So it'll be interactive. And if you guys have any questions, please raise your hand. We have somebody oh, okay. Somebody will come in. Please wait till you get a microphone so we can all hear your question. Okay? Alrighty. Take it away, Barbara. Good morning. Oh, Daniel. Take it away, Daniel. Daniel. Sadly, I'm not Italian. Although I did my twenty three me, it turns out I'm one point eight percent, although I don't think that qualifies. So I, I I since we're supposed to talk about it, I I do own a custom crush, winery in Hillsburg in Sonoma, California called Elevation Custom Crush. And, essentially, what we do is we provide the winery and the equipments and, the consulting for people that that want to own a brand or have vineyards, but don't want to build a winery, and need a winemaker. So that's what I provide. And, I've been doing this for a little over twenty years. And during those twenty years, I've I've gotten to enjoy the freedom of exploring the boundaries of what one can do in a cellar and what what do in a vineyard and what one can do on a forklift. And I've gotten to enjoy that because of of people like Barbara, who who frankly, keep me, able to make wine yet another gear. Direct to consumer business, in in the US for us is is very important. It's it's really the lifeline of the wine industry. People like Barbara, help tell our story why we make the wines. We and then and the the philosophy behind the winemaking. And also, they afford us the best margins when it comes to sales. So Without further ado, I'd like to introduce my beautiful wife, Barbara Fitzgerald. And she's gonna tell you all about direct consumer. Sales. Thank you so much. So, yes, my name is Barbara Fitzgerald. I am so honored to be here. So thank you Steve and the whole wine to wine team for inviting me and to the Italian trade aid agency for getting me here. I, am an Italian American. My family is from Luca in toscana, and my husband and I actually live in Pulia in OStunee for about three, four months out of the year. I I cannot put into words in this amount of time what Italy means to me. I love it so much, so I'm so excited to be here. Not no longer just, you know, to visit family and to have a lovely vacation, but also to be a part of this amazing, industry that you have. I've also been in the wine industry in California for a very long time. So focusing again on direct to consumer sales and marketing for about fifteen years. I've just started my own consulting company to help, really wineries in Italy break into this space that as you'll see is very important, for those of us in the US and provides a lot of potential for you too. So we are doing, as we mentioned, a little bit of a pivot this morning. So I might have to refer to my notes just a couple times, since we're doing a little change of pace, but, bear with me. And thank you for being here. So what are we gonna talk about today? The takeaways, well, what is direct to consumer? First of all, and in learning what direct to consumer is, we'll talk about why it's so important for the the US wine industry. I also wanna say you might hear me refer to it as d two c many times or d t c. You might also refer to it in your oil as b two c. So these are all ways to say selling direct to the customer. We're also gonna look at some data talking about wine tourism, tourism in Italy, and specifically wine tourism, and kinda what the potentials are for you with that. And then at the end, we'll talk about some best practices to develop and grow your DTC channel in line with your brand. I think that's one of the most exciting things about direct to consumer is it's not a one size fits all model. You get to build it exactly how your brand is. Are you enjoying this podcast? There is so much more high quality wine content available from mama jumbo shrimp. Check out our new wine study maps. Our books on Italian wine including Italian wine unplugged, the jumbo shrimp guy to Italian wine, sangiovese Lambrusco, and other stories, and much much more. On our website, mama jumbo shrimp dot com. Now, back to the show. So let's talk about what is direct to consumer? Well, plain and simple, it is selling your wine directly to a customer, a consumer without going through a third party without going through a distributor. So within that, there are many different avenues that you can go down. And I think the most kind of the the easiest first step and what I see many of many of you already doing in Italy anyway is what we call in the United States a tasting room. You call it here a cantina. So people coming to visit you in your cantina. Beyond that, you have the option for, e commerce. You have the option to call people over the phone to make sales. You can have a wine club or an allocation model. You can have on-site events, meaning maybe you have, you know, you invite some customers to your winery for a private lunch with the winemaker or, a beautiful event out in the vineyard as an anteprima or something like that. And then you can have off-site events, which are becoming really more important in our US direct a consumer model where, maybe you'll have a dinner, a winemaker dinner, and a fabulous restaurant that you feel like represents your brand well, or maybe you'll even go into a customer's home, have them invite you in and host you and you're kind of the this the the the main point of the show, and you get to show your wines and tell your story. So these are all different avenues that you can go down. An important thing to remember with direct to consumer is that you don't have to be doing all of the these things. But The ability to diversify your revenue sources is really huge. So you all made it through the pandemic. You knew how hard that was. For wineries that were heavily in evolved and direct to consumer during those really, really challenging times of twenty twenty. When a lot of people were reporting a lot of losses, they were actually reporting growth because they had other ways to sell their wines that was not dependent on restaurants being open or, you know, didn't have so much to do with ports and, supply chain and all of that. So what are some of the advantages of the direct to consumer channel? Well, the number one biggest advantage well, I guess I shouldn't say number one. It kinda depends on on on what you're looking to grow, but a great advantage is the increased profit margins. So when you're selling your wine to, through a distribution model, through a wholesale model, the return that you get as the winery is about twenty to thirty percent. Well, when you're selling your wine ticket direct to consumer, the return that you're getting is about sixty five to seventy percent. That's massively larger. And on top of that, if we think about I can break this down for you a little bit more. So let's say you're a sixty thousand case winery. If you can pivot to just selling five percent direct to consumer, you're gonna increase your overall margins by profits by about twenty five percent. Yes, I can. If you are a sixty thousand bottle winery, and you transition to selling just five percent of your wine, direct to consumer, you're gonna increase your overall profits by twenty five percent. Now if you're a sixty thousand case one oh, excuse me, sixty in America, we always count cases. But if you're a sixty thousand bottle winery, and you sell twenty percent of your wine direct to consumer, You're gonna increase your profits by one hundred percent. These are incredible numbers, and they don't really require that much work to get to it because I guarantee that many of you are already doing a lot of things in a direct to consumer sector. You're probably already accepting visitors. So it's really just small little tweaks to understand what we can do to find these bigger profits. Another thing that I think is also really special is direct customer engagement because we all have an incredible story to tell with our winery, and I can't tell you how many times I've been in conversation with a producer in Italy who, you know, kind of is upset because they say, well, I send my wine off to my distributor, and then I don't know where it ends up, and I don't know what they're saying about it, etcetera. You're saying it now. It's coming right out of your mouth, and you're getting to tell the exact story you want to tell in the exact way you want to tell it. And that is a huge thing because most of us are in this because our story is really important to us. Also beyond that with this direct customer engagement piece is the ability to pivot very quickly. So as trends change, as consumer preferences change as the market shifts, you're able to you're more agile in this direct to consumer model because you're looking at a smaller data set. You're looking at a smaller number of people. But when you're working with, you know, your distribution model, an entire state, an entire country, that boat doesn't turn as vastly or as quickly, excuse me, as, you know, an agile little Ferrari. So you can make these pivots much more easily in the direct to consumer channel. And then the last thing is branding and message control. So I I kind of already spoke about this, but you get to tell your story the exact way you wanna tell it. You're in control of all the marketing pieces around your winery, you're in control in the frequency of those marketing pieces, and you're also in control of the audience that it's going to. So we're gonna look a little bit now at, the US. And why this is so important for us in the US. So I wanted to share this quote from Jim Trezeyes, who is, the president of wine America, for for lack of a better word, it's basically the consortium for all wineries in America. And so in his most recent report, he shared this that direct sales to consumers are the lifeblood of the American wine industry. While comprising a relatively small percentage of total wine sales from large wineries through wholesalers, DTC fuels the vast majority of wineries, which are predominantly small, family owned businesses. I think that sounds pretty familiar here too. So according to Weinstein's Analytics, there are eleven thousand five hundred and forty six wineries in the US. Of which forty nine point four produced fewer than one thousand gallons, and a total of ninety seven point two percent fewer than fifty thousand gallons. For most of those small wineries, the fifty percent discount involved with wholesaling is not economically sustainable. And yet those small wineries account for a major portion of wine's economic impact in terms of investments, jobs, tourism, and taxes. Now, he said this about the US, but it's very similar for you here in Italy. You your wineries are a tremendous economic impact overall on what's happening with, Italy in general and specifically in the areas of of tourism. I'm also terrible with conversion stan. Are you able to convert talents into leaders on the spot? No. So what does it mean that, one thousand gallons and fifty thousand gallons? What is that with in liters? Well, there are, three point seven eight five liters in a gallon. So, basically, multiply times four. Okay. So pretty small wineries, much like you have here. Thank you. So this is some sales data specifically from the US over the last five years. This is from Wind Direct, which is a a director consumer wine technology company in the United States, and they release a a DTC impact report every year. So this is from their twenty two, twenty twenty two impact report. The top line, the darker line, is showing the number of cases sold and then the line underneath it is the number of net sales. So some really interesting things to notice here, first of all, in the US. Direct sales have been very happily on the rise over the last five years. There has been a little bit of a slowdown in the number of cases sold, so that top line, between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two. But it's very interesting to note that the number of net sales, so the money being made did not slow down. It was still increasing. So what's really interesting about the direct to consumer model is you can actually sell less wine, but make more money. And one of the reasons why cases sold was slowing, we know, if you especially if you were in, the talk in here sir day morning, things can feel a little bleak in the US. People aren't drinking as much wine, but people are, buying wines at higher price points. And, also, we're doing away with things like discounts in the direct to consumer model. And I'll speak more to that later, but just keep that in the back of your mind for now. This is looking now a little bit more, about how how important the direct and consumer channel is for winery. So this is from Silicon Valley Banks data from their twenty twenty two annual, DTC survey. And again, Silicon Valley Bank is a really important resource for us, gathering and sharing information about the direct to consumer channel. When we're looking at premium US winery, I should also mention that they're they have about twenty between twenty five hundred and three thousand winery respondents every year. And these are all wineries that are involved in direct to consumer. So direct to consumer is becoming the most important way for wineries to sell their wine, and wholesale is becoming less and less important. So fully a little more than two thirds of these wineries are selling their wine direct. And those little orange and yellow pieces of the pie on the left are getting smaller and smaller. Now if we start to look over at the right, this is breaking down, that two thirds piece that's on the left. So we're looking now at what the the breakdown is within direct to consumer. And you can see here, the kind of the dark big pie and the lighter big pie, those are wine club, and, container visits, wet tasting room visits. Those are the two most important pieces. Each one of them is about twenty five percent. So together, they're about half of of DTC revenue. But these other pieces are not insignificant because what is a really great thing about direct to consumer is that you have the ability. Like I mentioned, to pivot into places where where you have relevance in any moment. So I'll talk for a moment about container visits. That is dependent on people getting to your winery. We'll say, you know, in, like, the month of December, there's not a lot of people traveling to go wine tasting. But in the month of December, there are a lot of people that need wine because they have Christmas. They have Hanukkah. They have whatever they're celebrating new year's. So they're maybe not coming to their winery, to your winery, but you can call them. You can get them on the phone and say, hey, I remember you visited me over the summer, and you loved my pinot grigio. Can I offer you some for the holidays? Or you can send them an email and inspire them to order something online. But again, centered around this idea of reminding people. Yeah. They need wine for the holidays. So there's these smaller channels, like I said, they don't look very significant, but they have a lot of potency in particular times. And are a part of that whole larger package of us being able to insulate ourselves and protect ourselves from from losing revenue in a difficult time in a slower time. We talked a little bit too about how direct to consumer has the ability to pivot really quickly with market trends. So let's talk a little bit right now. What are those market trends in at the moment? Well, first of all, the market is very experientially driven. And people are coming to want to go visit places that are both authentic and transparent. And in my many years in the wine industry, I got nobody does authenticity better than the Italians. You don't have to change anything you're doing. You're already doing it. You're just looking for the people to tell the story to. When you have these experiences here, I'll I'll give an example. I, on my honeymoon, eleven years ago, I went to a winery in Piamonte called Chilvuti. I talk about my visit to Chilvuti to this day, to anybody who will listen, anybody that's going to to Mimonte. I say, let me let me connect you with Claudia Chilviti. Because she was so amazing. The tasting was so memorable. So these people are coming for an experience, and they end up leaving your ambassadors. I actually was also on, Friday at the, wine tech symposium in Milano, and I got to hear Masimo Jannulli, who is from, Colina de la cigiella in Valentantenna, speak. And he said that his idea when people visit his winery is that they leave acquiring a piece of the winery. And that's so true. That's and that's what people want. They want to be a part of your story, and then they wanna go out in the world and share your story. Another really important thing right now is wellness and socially conscious minded brands. Now, this is really important for the consumer, but I can tell too here it's really important for you as producers. I mean, the amount of of conversations that you're all regularly having around this topic is really inspiring. And your your consumers, your customers are gonna pick up on it right away, and they're gonna be really excited by that. The last is wine market growth that we'll talk about right now, anyway, is wine market growth. And as I mentioned, that can feel a little bleak right now. We know people aren't drinking as much wine as maybe they had. We know that we're having trouble engaging those younger generations, but there's also some promising data, specifically some data that we just released in the US from, from a research company called, wine market council. And that is that people that drink premium, expensive wines are drinking more, and people that drink mid tier wines are drinking better wines of higher value. Now that's really helpful to you in a direct to consumer model because I guarantee you the people that are coming to visit your container are either at least mid tier consumers, if not high end consumers. And you saw that too, again, in the in the previous graph where Even though the number of bottles may have slowed down, the revenue being made was not slowing down. Okay. I do talk very fast. I'm sorry. But let's talk a little bit about tourism in Italy. So if you're here in Italy, you probably know that there's a lot of people that come here. These are some numbers that I pulled from IanIT so that you can just see over the last even couple of years. So, obviously, things were really slow, for you guys during pandemic times. But then even if you look at, years, you know, compare what's happening right now to years beyond the pandemic, you're still showing some really impressive growth. In tourism. You're an important travel destination around the world, but specifically for Americans. Americans love to come here to Italy. I mentioned that because Americans also love to go wine tasting. So the fact that they're coming here, and then they have this expectation and this kind of culture already in their minds that they wanna go visit your cantina, they wanna hear your story. And the most important piece, they want to buy your wine. They really do. So, yep, just some really interesting numbers I wanted you guys to look at. I also once heard that Italy for many years was the, number one travel destination in the entire world and that you were just unseated by, a tropical country. I'm so sorry. I can't even remember which one, but you're still number two. And that is amazing for this tiny little country to be having welcoming all these people from around the world. So a really exciting, this combined with the potential of direct to consumer uniquely, I think, positions you, Italians to to really take this to an astronomical level. So this is looking specifically now at, enoteourism, we'll call it wine tourists in Italy. This data is from, a brand called wine suite, and they are, an Italian company, an Italian director consumer technology company. I'll talk a little bit more about them later, but I highly, highly recommend them if you're looking for this kind of technology in your continuum. So interesting to know, maybe not that interesting, probably what we all expected, that, yes, the number one the highest percentage of your wine tourists are from the USA, but not in significant numbers from other countries. I was actually really surprised to see that so many of your, ten percent are coming from Holland. Strong numbers from Germany, strong numbers from Great Britain. So this is all helpful in understanding, how you can also set up experiences. So you want to have experiences that really cater if twenty two percent, twenty three percent of people are coming from the US, you probably want something offered in English at some point at your winery. And then Also, if you know where the person is coming from, it can help you think about how you're gonna structure the the experience, and maybe even the wines you're gonna pour. So it's something that's really interesting. Like, maybe you make a Geward's Jaminer, and you have somebody coming from Germany. They they probably are interested to see how your Geward's Jaminer is different from from what they might have found in in Germany. This is looking now at the languages, the most requested languages. And I'm sorry. The the total for Italian request got cut off, so I'll tell you it's sixty five point eight percent of, tours are requested in Italian. And I think that's a really important statistic because that means you have a lot of people within Italy even that are doing this wine tourism. And one of the positive things about that is is the easiest way when you're thinking about the logistics of sending wine around. It's the easiest to send it within Italy. Also, it's really helpful to have, a strong local contingency of direct to consumer customers because then you have the ability to invite them to return many times. And that's always positive. So lots of people obviously are asking for it also in English. And then the the rest of the requested languages are really nominal. I will say, it says one point five percent for Germany, for German, but that request is higher in Alto Adije. So most likely if you're in Alto Adije, you probably speak German anyway, but a good idea if that's where you're located to to offer something in in German as well. Alright. So let's are talking now about how we do direct to consumer. So it is not possible without data. Data is absolutely key, and at minimum, when I say data, data on your customers, you know, information about your customers. At minimum, you need to be collecting everyone's name, email, and phone number. You're definitely probably collecting that from the person who made the appointment, but I would highly recommend that every person that is part of that group, you get this information from. That's at minimum, like I said. Now the more detail you can get on a customer, then the more personal your relationship can be. Because as our customer lists grow, the likelihood that you have time to individually contact with everybody on your list is gonna get smaller and smaller. So we have to use a tool called data segmentation, which means you're able to make unique groups of the people in your customer base and talk to them as a group through something they have in common. So let's say, you know, dog lovers you can make a a note in your system. This person is a dog lover, and then you can send, these people a specific email and say, I'm planning an event at the cantina for you and your dog. There's a bit there's a big thing in cal in California, being able to bring your dog. I don't know if it is here too. But and that's just a a a little example. But you can also send, put a, a flag for this customer segmentation that says this person does not like Nebula. I don't know why they wouldn't like Nebula, but they don't like Nebula. Okay. So now you're not going to send them marketing emails about Nebula because that's not relevant to them. When you are emailing sending communications to your customers that are relevant, they are going to they're going to continue to engage with you. They're going to stay your customer. When you start sending them a lot of emails that are not relevant, you might lose them. They might unsubscribe. They just might lose kind of their attention span with you. So this piece of data becomes so important. Now, not only do you need to capture the data, but you need an effective way to store it. So I wanna talk a little bit bit again for a brief moment about companies like wine suite. This is a wine, consumer relation customer, soothing customer relationship, management software. We call it CRM. It's a way to store all the data about your customers, and then a way to use that data efficiently to maintain communications. Also beyond that wine suite does a few other things we'll talk about later. But what I mean by that is if you just if let's say now, if you email people and you're using, vertical response, you probably don't have as many features in vertical response to segment your list beyond, like, geographical features. So you could email everyone in, you know, Alto Adije, but maybe you couldn't email everybody in Alto Adije that loves Karen. So with a CRM software system, you're able to create these finer tune details so you get to talk to the people the way they want to be talked to. And this building of the stronger relationship helps to to increase all of all of your touch points and all of your effectiveness in DTC overall. So another reason why data capture is so important is because it is far less expensive to sell and maintain a relationship with an existing customer than it is to to acquire a new one. So this data, again, is also from wine direct, in in the US. From their d DTC impact report in twenty twenty one. So I really wanna call out, especially that second column, which is says POS. Now, in America, we call that point of sale. And that means basically people walking into your into your cantina. Now what is so interesting for that is twenty five percent of people that made a sale in the cantina were a repeat customer, so they had been there before. Forty five percent of people that bought wine from the tasting room were club members. Now this column this first column on the left is specifically for club purchases. So that forty five percent in the second column means your club members, their club members, came back outside of the wine that they already agreed to take in their club shipment to buy more wine. So having the ability to maintain a a really, effective relationship with your customers is important because you can see it's the the bottom level and the middle level across the board are the repeat customers and the club members and they are buying most of the wine direct. Okay. I can finally put this down now, I think, for a moment, at least. So let's talk now specifically about how we can either build or grow direct to consumer. And as I mentioned in the beginning, this is not you don't have to do everything all at once. And in fact, I highly recommend or, yeah, I highly dissuade anyone from doing that. I'm a firm believer that if you're if you're trying to do everything, you're doing nothing. So focus on a few things that you know you can start with and do really well because the beauty of most of these things is they do require some some hand holding and a lot of thought and a lot of intention at the outset. But eventually, they they become more self sustaining. So one thing will be running really smoothly, and then you can shift your attention to something else. So let's get into we already talked a lot about data capture. The most fundamental thing maybe is operational considerations. So this is as simple as staffing. How many people work for you? How are you gonna hire new staff if you need to? How are you going to train new staff? Is your staff seasonal? Do they work year round? Is your staff part time, full time? This is all part of how you can now decide how you're gonna offer experiences, in your cantina. And also maybe engage in marketing and maybe have a wine club, etcetera. Now even beyond that, it's really important in an operational consideration to think about how easy are you to find? A lot of wineries in in Italy are not on a main thoroughfare. They're often, you know, down windy roads. So signage is really important, or sending people really specific details or sending people, not just GPS coordinates, because not everyone uses that, but the option to to pull up your address in Google Maps and Apple Maps? Because, again, you don't know what your customer is using. So you wanna make sure that they have the best way to find you without any worry at all. Then wine club. So wine club, as you've been seeing in many of these graphs, is so important. To the American wine industry. Why is it important? Because it becomes reliable revenue. So as we talked about, things can feel a little bleak in the overall market right now, and having something that is reliable revenue changes the way we are able to forecast, plan, and do business. So let's say you have a wine club and you decide you're going to send two shipments a year in February and October. You're gonna send them a case. Each each of those times is about three hundred euros for a case. That means you know every February and October. If you have a hundred club members, you're gonna be bringing in thirty thousand euros. If you have five hundred club members, I mean, as as it grows, the reliable revenue will grow, and this changes how you're able to plan for your bottling needs, for your packaging needs, for everything else that you do because you you know that this money is coming in. Now when you're setting up a wine club, there's lots of considerations to think about. You have to think about how many shipments a year. You have to think about shipping, which we'll get to in a moment. But another really important piece is benefits. There has to be a reason why somebody should join your club and commit to regularly making this purchase from you other than just purchasing whenever they feel like it. As I mentioned earlier, originally in the US, our model was to offer a discount. And that model in premium wineries is actually really dying back. And I'm personally kind of happy about that because I think that we don't have to sell our wine. We don't have to tell somebody, you know, bring down the price of our wine because your wine is valuable, and your story is valuable, and your marketing is valuable. But you do have to offer a benefit. So maybe that benefit is, if you have, a property, if you have a a villa or something on your on your on your vineyard, they can stay there for a weekend. Maybe it is exclusive access to a wine that is very limited production. So it only goes to your wine club members. May and maybe it is a a discount, but my the The one thing I will warn is just start really small with the discount, maybe even ten percent, and see how that works. Because, again, we want people to be connected to the story and the brand, and not just to kind of the sales gimmick. Now shipping. Shipping is really difficult. We live in this Amazon era where everybody expects to get something in two days, and they expect to pay no shipping for it. And unfortunately, that is not sustainable with wine at all. It's a heavy package, so it costs money to send it. And also, you know, with the likelihood that you're gonna get it from Italy to California in two days is really small. Some things to think about with shipping is that It's difficult on both sides. It's difficult for you, and it's difficult for the consumer. And because at the end of the day, we wanna make the consumer feel really good. We have to think about ways to cushion it for them. So I would recommend if it's possible for you to subsidize shipping in any way. So to take on some of the shipping cost yourself, especially because you know now in this direct model, you're making such better margins on your wine. Maybe you can take on half of the, half of the shipping cost to kind of pad that for your customer and make them feel a little bit better. There's also when you're talking about specific states in the US, you do have to look into compliance issues. I'll tell you right off the bat. You will never be able to ship wine to Utah or Mississippi So don't even try. But there are kinda other ways to to ship to other states as as necessary. I think consolidating here is really helpful when you can. So what I mean by that is if you know you have a big im, importer shipment going out in a few weeks. Maybe you can try to get some direct shipments on that same, importer shipment. And then once it lands in the US, you get it you get it to its destination. I wouldn't recommend that being the only way you do it because maybe you don't maybe you only send one or two importer shipments a year. And if somebody ordered their wine in in February, they don't wanna wait until November to receive it. But again, this is the beauty of direct to consumer, is that you don't have to do everything the same always. You can kind of pick and pull and mix and match and make it work for you. Customer experience enhancement is a big one too because as we mentioned, this is a very spiritually driven culture and economy right now. But you guys here in Italy do already the most thoughtful experience. So when I say enhancement, I don't mean, like, suddenly you need to bring caviar into your into your container. I just mean something that is really incredibly thoughtful. Maybe it's that they get to sit down with your winemaker in the vineyard and have a picnic. Or, maybe it's just that they they they get to really learn about the whole his history of the family and all of these things. These are all really, intimate experiences that I've seen offered in Italy time and again that are becoming harder and harder defined in in the US. So What you're already doing, I would argue is is enough and just do it more. Invite more people to come to come see you. We talked a lot about this. The multi channel strategy, don't Don't depend on your revenue only coming from one source. Try to diversify it as much as you can. Now using a multichannel strategy does mean that you need to involve technology into this. So we'll jump to we'll jump to utilize technology as well. You can't if you're gonna sell your wine online, you obviously need a a website that can host sales, and you need a a credit card processor that people can make secure transactions through. So these are all pieces that need to come together. There are now many companies that kind of bring all of these pieces together for you as one pretty package. Like I mentioned, Divina, who makes the product wine suite. Another important piece about technology is, for the ability to take online reservations. It is I I I mean, I'm in California, so I can speak from that perspective. Nobody wants call anybody on the phone to make a reservation. They wanna be able to do it online. And especially if they're calling you and they don't speak the language, and, you know, it's difficult cell phones for Americans don't always work that great here in Italy. So the opportunity to make an appointment online is huge. Also, the benefit of online appointments is immediately you have data on that person. You have their email, you have their name, maybe their phone number. And with that email, you're able to communicate with them throughout the process before they even arrive to your cantina. So you can say, here's a reservation confirmation. And then a couple days before, you can send them a reminder and say, oh, I'm so excited to see you. And just in case here are the directions, here's the here's the the link to find us in in in the map. So all of these extra pieces that become really, really beautiful touch points that help foster a meaningful relationship are able were able to do all of this with with technology. Okay. Let's go back to marketing and promotion. So we all know how important marketing is. You with direct to consumer can maybe engage with, you know, influencers that in line with that are in line with your brand and your values. But one of the most important things I would say with direct to consumer specifically is you have the opportunity to engage your current customers as your brand marketers at almost no cost. I just stood up here twenty minutes ago and told you about, she did not pay me to say that. I just loved the experience so much that I am I market her everywhere I can now. I love to share. And tell people to go visit her. So you can think about ways to utilize your own customers and the people that visit you, you might even incentivize them. You might say, Hey, if for for every, you know, five referrals, I will give you a a bottle of our wine or something like that. But use those customers as your as your marketers. And a really important piece about direct to consumer is that it is not in competition with your distribution, with your wholesale model. And when done well, these two pieces can actually complement each other really well. So, you know, an example of building an alliance with your distribution is to maybe identify, a really strong market that you have somewhere in the United state. I'm gonna say the United States because that's where I'm from, but you could have a strong market anywhere. Let's say Chicago. So users rebute some of your wine in Chicago. You know you have maybe even a particular Inoteca or wine shop in Chicago that sells a lot of one of your wines. Now, you can call them and say, I'd like to come to your wine shop and host a tasting and bring a few of my wines that are not in distribution for your customers to try. Now your distribution is gonna benefit because their customers already love you, and they're gonna get to meet you and hear directly from you. They're also gonna continue to buy your distributed wine in the inoteca or in the wine shop. But they're also gonna get to build a deeper connection with you, foster more brand loyalty with you, and maybe even buy some of the wines that you don't distribute. So now they have two sources for finding your wine. Another really important piece is that with with you out there spreading the message about your wine and building brand loyalty, people are gonna come home from Italy and go to their restaurant or wherever, and they're gonna ask for your wine. And then your distributors are gonna say, hey, everyone's asking for your wine. So like I said, this could really be a an alliance, that works well together. The last thing I wanna talk about is building a community. This is so important. I've spent, like I said, my entire career so far in the California wine industry in Sonoma County specifically, and I really think that we can attribute our success there to the fact that we work well together, all the wineries. You are not in competition with each other, even even though you you might sell the same wines and you might have similar price points, you have a different story. And that is what makes you unique, and that is what the direct to consumer customer is looking for. They're looking for your story. So in supporting each other and in building a community where you can refer people, and you also can, have a space where people can plan one trip. They can plan one trip. We'll say to, pulia. And they already know five wineries they can go to because there's a network of you guys sharing, resources and sharing information. So we say we like to say in the in in the US, a rising tide lifts all ships. And I really fully truly believe that. Now, I'm almost out of time. So I just wanna wrap up here and say that recently, I read a book by, Robert Camuto, he was here yesterday. I don't know if he's here now, but it's called south of somewhere, and I cannot recommend it more highly. If you haven't read it, read it. It's all about his travels to wine destinations in the south of Italy. And in this book, he says that, the world needs Italy. And I could not agree with this more. We need your wine. But we need your art. We need your food. We need your pace of life. We need your olive oil. I need a lot of your olive oil. But also Italy needs the world. So you're a small country. You have sixty million people. You create a lot, and you can't only get by selling it to just here. So I guess what I would like to say is go out there and get the world. They want you. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you your podcasts. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, email ifm, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through Italian wine podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment, production, and publication costs. Until next time, chi ching.