On average, wineries producing fewer than 5,000 cases sell 70% of their wines directly to consumers through their tasting rooms and wine clubs, according to the Silicon Valley Bank 2018 State of the Industry Report. With the majority of Oregon wineries producing around or below that threshold, the DTC channel plays a critical role in the success of many in our industry. That’s why the 2019 Oregon Wine Symposium features a business track dedicated to DTC practices to help smaller wineries up their game in this space.
What’s more, the Oregon Wine Board is sponsoring two additional DTC seminars with WISE Academy in Portland on the days immediately preceding and following the Symposium.
The DTC Business track starts off with highlights from the Wine Visitor Profile Study, currently under way in four major wine regions of Oregon. The Know Your Visitor panel, moderated by Vanessa Hadick, marketing director at Sokol Blosser Winery, will discuss how to use these new insights to attract quality visitation to your tasting room and partner with other organizations to find common ground in bringing them to your area.
The afternoon of the first day features two mini-sessions focused on being laser-focused about your approach. Connect, Invite, Close: The Art of Selling shares effective techniques for sealing the deal on wine club memberships and features Susie Tucker, DTC trainer and educator at VingDirect. This will be followed by a discussion on why You Don’t Need Social Media Unless You Are Doing It Right.
The second day of DTC sessions delves deep into the nitty-gritty of running your consumer-facing channel for maximum results. Two Oregon direct sales mavens, Carrie Kalscheuer of A to Z Wineworks and REX HILL and Hallie Whyte of Soter Vineyards and North Valley Vineyards, will host a Best Practices for DTC Managers seminar aimed at equipping you to recruit, hire, train and retain the best hospitality people for your brand.
Finally, the popular Wise Academy team of Lesley Berglund and Liz Mercer will be joined by Jim Agger of Wine Direct to show you not only how to track and measure direct sales metrics, but prove that measurement of the right metrics can be used to grow sales.
For owners and direct sales managers at wineries of all sizes – but especially those at the smaller end of the spectrum – the 2019 Oregon Wine Symposium DTC Business track will give you tools you can implement to immediate effect for your business.
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