Raise Your Glasses
Americans drank 531 million gallons of wine in 1998, and, according to wine industry sources, about 80% of that was consumed at home. That’s a lot of people looking for a corkscrew and that, in turn, is good news for Tod Buckley.
Buckley, who left the Hawthorne, NY-based Wine Enthusiast as president in July of 1997, is founder of Wine & All That Jazz, a catalog offering wine accessories ranging from stemware and stoppers to climate-controlled storage systems. After an initial mailing of 400,000 catalogs in December 1998, Buckley spent the past year honing his product line and improving the look of the book, which has grown from 32 to 48 pages. Now, with 25,000 current customers and a database of 50,000 names, his continuing challenge is identifying the wine lover who doesn’t have everything – and doing that better than any of the competition.
“The existing catalogs are reaching very small segments of what is a fairly substantial wine drinking population,” says Buckley. The most recent Gallup poll, in 1997, identifies 32% of the nation’s alcoholic beverage drinkers as wine drinkers, and although headcounts of the nation’s wine drinkers vary, Buckley feels that none of his competition comes close.
Will a deeper reach into the barrel of the nation’s wine drinkers produce good catalog prospects? With a mailing list of 2.5 to 3 million customers, Larry Lynch, director of marketing for International Wine Accessories of Dallas, TX, says he thinks his firm’s catalog already taps into the profitable portion of the wine-drinking market. “People who buy wine once a week or once a month are not interested in wine storage, and for most people, the little $5 corkscrew they have works well for them. My point is, there’s a lot more people out there, but we’re not sure they’re interested in the high-end products.”
Likewise, Wine Enthusiast Companies chairman Adam M. Strum, whose catalog is distributed to 20 million people, doubted there was much ground left to cover. “It’s a very vertical, esoteric business…it’s a narrow niche,” says Strum, who, citing a pending lawsuit between the companies, declines to directly discuss his new competitor.
But Buckley is willing to try. “We’re doing a lot of testing – testing a lot of new lists and trying new approaches – a lot of things nobody has done before” to broaden his customer base.
What will also separate Wine & All That Jazz from the pack, Buckley says, is an unparalleled commitment to customer service. The catalog operates in partnership with Robinson & Sons, a Thornwood, NY-based retailer of wine storage systems and accessories. The arrangement brings with it Robinson customers and Robinson expertise on which the catalog can build. Similar to the service offered by Wine Enthusiast, customers calling to place an order with Wine & All That Jazz can speak to their own “wine storage consultant” for information on products. “We will hold their hand right through the process of selecting the right kind of wine storage system,” Buckley said. “We will work with that person, we will send them computer designs of their wine room, of racking, of cooling system. We provide this all as a free service. We really go out of our way to make certain they get a unit that will fit their needs.”
Buckley sees customers for Wine & All That Jazz falling into two groups, only one of which is exclusively high-end. “On one side we have the high-end wine collector who has a fairly large collection already on hand and is looking for a way to store it. And then we have a more general market audience as well, who enjoys wine casually.” Buckley said his catalog’s sales are pretty evenly divided between the two.
The first group is usually male, aged 45 to 60, with a six-figure income and a clear interest in wine. Demographics on the second group are much broader. That general market, Buckley says, ranges from thirtysomethings who enjoy wine on a regular basis to young people who are just beginning to embrace wine as they reach a more mature phase of their lives. “We’re trying to look at people with a certain maturation point, to look at life triggers,” Buckley said, which can include buying a house, the start of a long-term relationship or simply settling in with a mature circle of friends. “Usually then your taste in beverage changes, you drink more wine than, say, beer,” he said. The broad group also includes another large demographic segment: the woman who gives wine accessories as gifts. She’s aged 35 to 55, with a household income that starts at $35,000.
The catalog’s customer profile appears to parallel market research on wine drinkers in general. Statistics compiled in Impact Databank’s 1998 report on the U.S. wine market reinforce the idea that the wine consumer is older, generally affluent, and usually married. While overall consumption of wine in the U.S. is not going up greatly, the popularity of expensive wines seems to be growing, according to Gladys Horiuchi, spokeswoman for Wine Institute, a public policy association for California winemakers.
Banking on knowledge that his customers are educated readers, Buckley has relied so far on print advertising in The New York Times and The Wine Spectator. For 2000, Buckley says he’s considering more upscale food magazines such as Gourmet and Bon Apetit as well as lifestyle titles like Martha Stewart’s Living, regional wine magazines, and perhaps even political publications such as George to capture his high-end market.
Although its own Web site remains under construction, Buckley is identifying some potential customers on the Internet through Beehive, a question-and-answer exchange featured on the New York Times Company’s Winetoday.com site. This past summer, the catalog also participated in a wine cellar giveaway through the Web site. The result: A lucky individual got a $1,500 wine cellar and Wine & All That Jazz got nearly 10,000 potential customers. “It’s a program that for a little effort and expense gets us a lot of names,” Buckley says.
Based on data that shows wine drinkers also tend to enjoy golf and beer, Buckley said the catalog has tested sales of related products, but said results are not yet in. Despite the oft-cited relationship between wine and cigars – one marketing link employed by Wine Enthusiast – Buckley says it’s unlikely Wine & All That Jazz will offer smoking products. “That’s just an area we don’t feel 100% comfortable with,” he notes.
