Drop in the wine business

DorisWilson · Dec 5, 2016

Hi there,
I own a small wine shop near to my home in Toronto. It has been 1 year since we had this shop. We had a good business before but seems to be little dropping for this fall. When comparing with the last year, we had 68% sales for the November 2015 but this year we had only 42% sales. We are hoping that we would have good sales in this December.
Also, I have seen an article regarding the marketing strategies http://www.grassrootsadvertising.com/blog/marketing/4-affordable-marketing-strategies/, we already have facebook and twitter pages. We would like to make advertising videos for our shop as mentioned in the article. We have a limited budget, thinking that we can make the video ourselves. Would like to get the ideas for the same.

Amanda660 · Dec 5, 2016

I haven't read the article yet and I don't know the dynamics of your operation but I have a lot of questions.....Do you offer wine tastings? Do you offer wine classes? Is there a local radio station desiring a wine show once a week? How is the staff - knowledgeable? What is the competition in your location? What do you offer that draws people distinctly to you? What about your business makes a person want to walk through the door....more than once? I'm not thinking a low budget video is the answer to increase sales. Discovering the reason for such a sales decrease is high priority so you can continue to keep the doors open.

vacuumpumpman · Dec 5, 2016

Amanda660 said:
I haven't read the article yet and I don't know the dynamics of your operation but I have a lot of questions.....Do you offer wine tastings? Do you offer wine classes? Is there a local radio station desiring a wine show once a week? How is the staff - knowledgeable? What is the competition in your location? What do you offer that draws people distinctly to you? What about your business makes a person want to walk through the door....more than once? I'm not thinking a low budget video is the answer to increase sales. Discovering the reason for such a sales decrease is high priority so you can continue to keep the doors open.

Very good questions !
I actually PM'd them in reference to alot of the same questions you brought up -

dcbrown73 · Dec 6, 2016

I will say this. This year, I'm getting bombarded by wine shops offering deals in my email that I didn't get last year. (though I've purchased wines from many more vendors on the Internet that I hadn't the year before) It could be that they are stealing your business.

Do you sale your wines on the Internet?

jburtner · Dec 6, 2016

Can you get grapes delivered for the harvest seasons? If there was a place local to me that could do that I'd be onboard lickity-split.

Cheers!
-jb

cpfan · Dec 6, 2016

DorisWilson said:
Hi there,
I own a small wine shop near to my home in Toronto. It has been 1 year since we had this shop. We had a good business before but seems to be little dropping for this fall. When comparing with the last year, we had 68% sales for the November 2015 but this year we had only 42% sales. We are hoping that we would have good sales in this December.
Also, I have seen an article regarding the marketing strategies http://www.grassrootsadvertising.com/blog/marketing/4-affordable-marketing-strategies/, we already have facebook and twitter pages. We would like to make advertising videos for our shop as mentioned in the article. We have a limited budget, thinking that we can make the video ourselves. Would like to get the ideas for the same.

Do you sell wine (in competition with LCBO which seems to be advertising more & offering home delivery) or are you a Ferment on Premises?

Steve

downunder · Dec 15, 2016

Do you have local farmers or produce markets? Can you obtain a license to sell there? lots of retail outlets are struggling to get customers through the front door. Try taking your product to the customer instead of waiting for them to come to you. Face to face contact is better than any video. Promote on facebook you are going to be there giving free wine tastings. every person that walks past your stall sees a living advert for your store. Man your stall with someone who interacts with passing trade, someone who can make people laugh and look twice at your product not someone who sits on a chair playing with their smart phone