Benchmarking Oregon’s DTC Landscape
In October 2021, the Oregon Wine Board secured an Oregon Department of Agriculture Specialty Crop Block Grant to partner with DTC experts Community Benchmark and WISE Academy. Join Community Benchmark founder John Keleher in this seminar as he reveals the first benchmarking insights into Oregon regions’ DTC positioning, health, and regional trends. WISE Academy founder Lesley Berglund will discuss the opportunities for activating positive change and increasing channel growth from this benchmark data. Regional associations will also lead a discussion into insights they’ve gathered from this regional benchmarking and what it means for their regional success.
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Speaker Bios
Lesley Berglund is an accomplished wine industry entrepreneur and CEO with a focus on change management. Over the past 30 years 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 deep experience in consumer direct marketing of fine wines. Lesley has served on the board of eleven wine-related companies and trade associations. In 2008, she co-founded the WISE Academy, which provides education, training and certification for winery consumer direct professionals across wine regions throughout the United States and in New Zealand. In 2014 she co-founded SOLVE Services which provides financial analysis, planning and decision support services for wineries. Today she spends most of her time coaching winery leaders through growth related challenges and opportunities. Beyond wine, Lesley is a member of the YPO where she has held numerous local, regional and international board and leadership positions. Lesley is also a third-generation Napa Valley native from a grape growing family, with a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a MBA from Harvard Business School.
John Keleher decided in June 2012 that it was time for a change. For seven years, he’d found major success building web-based businesses in Washington DC, co-founding two companies in that time: Benton Consulting, where clients included high-profile entities like the World Bank; and ARMS College Athletics Software, where he led a 300% growth in three years before being acquired. However, despite his success, he was in search of more than the fast-paced city life. He wanted a rural, hands-on, self-sufficient lifestyle. John wanted to grow his own food, build things, and be part of a smaller more intimate community. So, like the pioneering homesteaders of old, he moved west to Mendocino County, CA to grow and cook his own food, live healthier, and – it’s also worth mentioning – drink some excellent wine.
In time he found that while you can take the boy out of the business, you can’t take the business out of the boy. John became eager to find ways to use his skills and experience in entrepreneurial enterprise to contribute to his new community. Following a six-month internship with world-renowned agriculturalist John Jeavons, he started a business growing and selling market greens. Seeing that the area was, for many, a great place to live but a tough place to make a living, he also began consulting with small local businesses – especially wineries. John helped them organize and build financial and data systems to vastly improve their record keeping and sales. He found purpose in helping small business owners and wanted to help more.
