Benchmarking for Wine Business Profitability
This session will present ways in which wineries and growers can utilize benchmarking to gauge and improve the performance of their companies. Tim Hanni, MW will launch Oregon Wine Board’s Grape & Wine Profit & Sales Channel Calculator tool, the first of its kind and available to all Oregon producers through exclusive agreement. This uniquely Oregon tool will provide producers with an understanding of their true cost of goods and variable pricing and channel management strategies. Lesley Berglund of WISE and Matt Franklin of Zepponi & Company will share trends within the DTC and three-tier sales channels, mergers and acquisitions, and strategies being employed to meet current challenges and opportunities in the industry.
Speaker Bios
Lesley Berglund is an accomplished wine industry entrepreneur and CEO with a focus on change management. In her 24 years of experience in the wine industry, she has started up the equivalent of nine new businesses, acquired and integrated four companies, and led during periods of dramatic change. As co-founder and former CEO of the Ambrosia Wine Catalogue/The Winetasting Network (which she sold in 2004), she has extensive experience in consumer direct marketing of fine wines. She coaches winery leaders through growth-related challenges and opportunities. Lesley is a third generation Napa Valley native from a grape growing family, having earned a BA from Wesleyan University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
With more than 19 years of corporate finance advisory experience, Matt Franklin has been an advisor on numerous beverage alcohol industry transactions and has completed more than 100 business valuations and valuation-related consulting projects. Matt was previously a managing director at a boutique investment banking firm in San Francisco where he provided sell-side and buy-side transaction advisory services to food and beverage companies. Matt also worked for KPMG’s Investment Management Services Group where he provided assurance and advisory services to investment banks, private equity firms, mutual funds, hedge funds and broker/dealers. His professional credentials include certified public accountant (CPA) and chartered financial analyst (CFA) charter-holder.
Tim Hanni MW is an innovator, researcher, renegade and a relentless crusader against wine snobbery. He is currently the vice president of the Institute of Masters of Wine North America, teaches The Business of Wine online courses with the Napa Valley Wine Academy and at Washington State University, and consults for wineries and wine-related companies around the world. He is the author of “Why You Like the Wines You Like; Changing the Way the World Thinks about Wine.” This paradigm-changing book focuses on expanding wine enjoyment by understanding the factors that influence personal wine preferences. He also penned “The Sweet Wine Lover’s Manifesto; Ending the Tyranny of the Dry Wine Fashionistas,” published in fall 2016. He formed eCode.me, LLC and the wine consumer profiling technology myVinotype.com, complete with an app available through iTunes.
Dr. Jeff D. Peterson is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Linfield College. He is the Director of the Linfield Center for the Northwest, and started the Wine Studies Program at Linfield College. He is currently a Faculty Affiliate with the Linfield Center for Wine Studies.
