2020 has taught us many things. One of the biggest lessons learned is just how important it is to be Web Savvy in the Wine Industry.
To that end, today Emma and Mike speak with George Christie, founder of the Wine Industry Network and purveyor of arguably the most read newsletter in the wine business, Wine Industry Advisor.
The three discuss how to best utilize WIN’s tools as a producer, if the hype around wine and cannabis is here to stay, and how we see the future of trade events, lectures, and seminars moving forward. It’s a great conversation. Let’s get ready to hit the bottle.
Transcript on Web Savvy in the Wine Biz
Michael Wangbickler:
So, my next guest almost needs no introduction. He has been in the wine business since 1991. In 2009, he started Wine Industry Network with his partner, Elizabeth ‘E’ Slater, and it started as an online directory and evolved into one of the most valuable B2B marketing and media companies serving the wine industry.
And I wanted to have him on to talk about what it’s like working with literally thousands of producers and what he feels that not only does WIN have to offer, but you know what the future is looking like for our industry in general.
So welcome to the show, George Christie.
George Christie:
Hey, Mike, thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.
Michael Wangbickler:
Great. Glad you’re here. Before we get too far into the interview, can you share with the listeners how they might get a hold of you should they wish?
George Christie:
Yeah, the best way to get a hold me of course, is email george@wineindustrynetwork.com. Phone calls are always good, my direct line 707-433-4215. I’m pretty easy to track down.
Michael Wangbickler:
So not only… So, under the WIN – the Wine Industry Network umbrella, you’ve got several different kinds of programs. Can you just give us kind of a brief overview of what those are?
George Christie:
Yeah, it’s funny. It’s actually it’s kind of like the Winchester mystery house, it feels like sometimes, we just start bolting new things on. But, you know, as you mentioned, it started off originally as basically an online directory, and we were running around with the big old print directories, like, of course, I work for Wineries my whole career, and we’d have stacks of the old print directories like no one used, you know what I mean? It’s something we got to do a better job than that.
But then, yeah, over the years, we built it on a basically an editorial site called Wine Industry Advisor, the Advisor is where we aggregate all of the news that essentially gets pushed out in the afternoon brief, which is a daily recap of the industry news from, for the most part, you know, West Coast, North America, but certainly international news as well…
Michael Wangbickler:
Which, if you’re listening to this podcast, you should be absolutely reading that that brief every day.
Emma Criswell:
Absolutely.
George Christie:
wineindustryadvisor.com/afternoon-brief, sign up, it’s free, it comes once a day. It’s just a great way to stay on top of industry happenings. We wound up… Again, we’ve got a couple of different events that we do, we wound up getting into the event business. North Coast Wine Industry Expo, second largest trade show in the country, takes place – usually takes place in December – every year.
We’ve got another event called the Wine & Weed Symposium; it’s focused on the impact that legal cannabis has on wine. Wine Industry Sales Symposium, which is really looking at how to help producers succeed, regardless of whether it’s the direct (DTC) channel or wholesale channel.
And I’m trying to think of some of the other things we’ve got, a data product called Wine Industry Data that producers, suppliers use to help research the wineries that they’re looking to target. So, yeah, we’ve got a lot of different things going on, all under the overarching umbrella of us wanting to be the best business-to-business resource that we can be for the industry.
What that means is that if you’re a winery or a grape grower, we want you to think of WIN as a place that you can come to research the products and services that you need to run your business, or stay up to date on the news and happenings around industry.
If you’re a vendor, we want you to come to us as someone that can support your marketing and sales efforts and getting your product and service in front of… In front of your winery or vineyard customers, whether they’re current or prospective.
And for the for the media, we like to think of ourselves as a great outlet for whatever content that you have. And there’s a lot of great content that’s being produced where the people are writing for consumers or writing for trade, and we want you to think of us as a resource there as well.
Michael Wangbickler:
That’s excellent. Thank you for the recap. Now, obviously, right now events aren’t happening and I’m sure that’s a big part of what you guys have been doing. So, like, how have you how, first of all, have you pivoted second of all, like, how is that translated to how you’re helping the industry right now, given that they don’t have they don’t have an outlet to go to an event and be a producer at the trade show, right?
George Christie:
Yeah. So, it’s interesting when COVID first starting to impact the world, I immediately looked into doing virtual… a virtual trade show [unintelligible] because we all we’ve always got a trade show even for our smaller events. And at the same time, looking at the webinar opportunities, the platforms that were out there to host panels.
And I will tell you that for us, we immediately recognized that there was real value in the educational webinars, you know, the virtual panel discussions, things like that.
I mean, and I was a little bit of a naysayer first, you know what I mean, to be quite honest with you, thinking about “I don’t want to sit in front of my computer watch this it needs to be in person or it’s just not going to have the energy”.
But I will tell you, I’m a convert on the… I’m using a virtual platform to do panel discussions and mini conferences. I’m on board with that, man, I think it’s terrific, it’s given us the opportunity to get in front of people that could never attend an in-person conference here in Northern California.
And I’m talking about people in Virginia and Maryland and New York or Missouri. I mean, they first of all, they don’t have the budget, a lot of them, because they’re very small, but they want to be there. So, I love I love the way technology is impacted that part of what we do.
The trade show piece, I will tell you, man, I really questioned the value of these virtual trade shows. In a lot of ways [unintelligible] is not that much different. Our platform that we came up with ten years ago, that’s evolving – and we’ll talk about that – is not unlike these online platforms…
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah, and it’s essentially a marketplace.
George Christie:
Yeah – you go there’s a… They have videos or PDFs, it’s the same thing. I don’t I don’t see a future in online trade shows, I see a future in the virtual conferences. I think for us, we’re going to continue to do those as well as the in-person ones.
But I do want to share one quick thing with you – we could talk more about this later, too – is that I just finished a call with the county, Sonoma County, today, and we had rescheduled our trade show for from December 4th to December 3rd to March 4th.
And we got the green light. So, we’re going to be able to do a real in-person trade show now. It’s going to be modified. People are going to wear masks. We’re going to limit the number of people that can be in the building at any one time, and there’s different ways, tactics that we’ll use to do that. But the good news is that we’re going to be able to go forward and bring our industry together in a way that we haven’t been able to do for quite some time.
Emma Criswell:
Yeah, that’s good news. We’ve had plenty of conversations with our clients and friends about how we don’t know when we’ll be able to get back to the trade shows and see each other and kind of what’s plan B? What’s Plan C? What’s plan D?
It’s changing every day and it’s really frustrating. But it’s good to know that it looks like that’ll be happening for you, and do you think that’s absolutely something that’s going to happen? Do you think it could change?
George Christie:
Yeah, barring a setback – and what I mean is like right now, Sonoma County’s under the strictest guidelines, which is a color system. So, it’s purple. So, we’re still in purple, but even under purple, we’re going to be able to move forward. Again, you’re going to have to have safety precautions, social distancing, but it’s not that much different than going to Costco, Home Depot, or anything else like that, right?
Emma Criswell:
Sure.
George Christie:
It’s registration or check in will be a little bit different having to have people spaced out, you know, you won’t be hugging people the way we used to and shaking hands the way we used to.
But for the vendors that we work with and I’ve had 50 of these conversations from the largest vendors to just some of the smaller suppliers of products and services – they want to get back in front of their customers, they want to be able to get in front of their prospects. And so, we’re determined to do it. We’re determined do it safely.
Michael Wangbickler:
Well, you know, this is a relationship business, you know, more than many, many others. I mean, relationships are business in general, but in the wine business, so much business is done face to face. So much is done on handshakes.
And when you can’t meet face to face, I think there’s a lot of businesses out there that have been hindered in their sales because of that.
George Christie:
Yeah, there’s no question about it. It’s something that you take for granted. I mean, it’s so many things that we that we’ve all, I think going through this experience have taken for granted. You know, we, like I said, just the chance to run into an old friend and give them a hug.
I mean, it sounds crazy, but those are things that you just did – couldn’t imagine not being able to do. So I think it’s going to be interesting that when we do come out the other end of this thing, Mike, and to your point about this – I think people are just… there’s just this pent up demand getting together, right?
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah, we’re going to have – we’re going to have the problem of actually keeping people back.
Emma Criswell:
Right? Right.
Michael Wangbickler:
They’re all going to be like…
Emma Criswell:
Yeah, extra security… Time! Get people out of there at a specific time.
Michael Wangbickler:
It’s like it’s going to be like a scrum in rugby, you know, everybody’s just piled on top of each other.
Emma Criswell:
Oh, Lord, don’t we do that normally?
George Christie:
I’ll be right in the middle of the pile.
All:
Laughter
[Sponsor Break]
Michael Wangbickler:
So, one of the other businesses that you’ve kind of been dabbling in is cannabis with the Wine & Weed Symposium, and obviously that’s a growing industry. It’s… every day regulations are being loosened all over the country. Of course, it is – it is legal in the state of California where we are right now.
So, what is the… what does the future look like for cannabis producers and your organization, and how do you feel like you’re going to be able to service that particular segment?
George Christie:
That’s a really good question. It’s funny because when we first launched Wine & Weed Symposium, it came about because we had… we put one of our sessions on at the expo just talking about, “hey, cannabis looks like it’s going to be legal in Nova”. And typically, one of our sessions would attract about a hundred fifty people. We had like five hundred people show up for this particular session…
Emma Criswell:
Wow!
George Christie:
So that’s what made us decide, hey, why don’t we dedicate… and we realized in one hour we could not answer any questions. It was just – we were overwhelmed. And so, we thought, you know, let’s dedicate a full day to tackling the topic of what the cannabis impact might mean for wine, and what the potential opportunities might be.
And that was the beginning of Wine & Weed’s Symposium in 2016. It was so crazy because we got so much national press around this mini little conference. I think simply because it was this, this idea of talking about this emerging industry that was literally coming out from the underground, from the black market in conjunction with this traditional industry wine that has so much tradition and so much history, you know?
Michael Wangbickler:
I call it inertia.
George Christie:
Yeah, and the conversations that were beginning with a lot there was a lot of fear based of like, oh, my God, the vineyards are going to get turned, there’s going to be fields of cannabis, and people are going to stop drinking wine, they’re going to… None of those fears really materialized, right? So, the conferences sort of evolved from what, you know, all the scary things that might happen, to being more of like an educational conference where people can learn about what’s happening.
There’s conversations about some of the collaborative opportunities. For example, we had Corey Beck from Francis Ford Coppola speak about their venture into cannabis and their ability to leverage their brand in another industry. But to be honest with you, Mike, I don’t I’m not sure what the future is for this, because it’s not as hot of a topic as I think it once was. I mean, we’ve got our problems in Santa Barbara with the two industries having a hard time cohabitating for a number of reasons.
And, you know, there’s still some… Like we’ve got… We’re doing our virtual conference, a virtual Wine & Weed Symposium, which is a compressed – only three session conference – that’s going to be broadcast on October twenty eighth.
Emma Criswell:
OK.
George Christie:
And we’ve got…
Michael Wangbickler:
As in next week?
George Christie:
As in next week, yeah. One session sort of like the overview of the COVID impact on cannabis, and on wine, and what sort of correlations there are. We’ve got a session that’s talking about kind of the investment landscape, the beverage industry’s investment in cannabis like Constellation, for example, and then the final session, which is, I think, going to be somewhat controversial as a session on is cannabis good for the Napa Valley.
And we’ve got a couple of vintners who are on that panel who really have taken a position like, you know what? They think it is good. A lot of the controversy out there that I think gets people interested is sort of not existing. And we’re not a position I’m not a cannabis expert, I mean, I’ve learned a lot over the last few years, but there’s no future and… you’re never going to see, like the weed industry network, like that’s not happening.
Michael Wangbickler:
Right.
Emma Criswell:
What do you think has brought it into the mainstream? Has it been that industries like the wine industry that are just so ingrained in the country and so traditional have kind of brought it into the light and made it less of a controversial thing? Or where do you think that comes from?
George Christie:
I don’t think I don’t think the wine industry has done anything to help lower the stigma, to be honest with you, I think it’s just…
Emma Criswell:
I feel like it’s happened very quickly.
George Christie:
Yeah, I think I think that – at least here in California – even though recreational use just was legalized, it’s not like it was hard to get, right? It was here anyway. I think that that what’s changing – why it’s changing so rapidly, it’s just that people are a) people aren’t as embarrassed as maybe they once were trying to keep it such a secret. And I think that a lot of the worst fears that people thought were going to happen that were maybe anti cannabis never materialized, you know.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah.
George Christie:
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s it.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah. I think we’ll see what the future holds.
Emma Criswell:
Yeah.
Michael Wangbickler:
There’s definitely some… There’s still some issues that I think both industries need to work out and as you say, cohabitate, because I do think there’s plenty of room for both even if there’s a fight over land use and water use and all that stuff.
So, switching gears, so coming back to resources for producers and suppliers, you’ve got… We mentioned the Advisor earlier today, and you have like over like thirty-five thousand subscribers to that to the newsletter.
So how are some things that your suppliers and your producers who sign up for the network, how are they able to leverage some of these opportunities?
George Christie:
So, the way the platform basically works – it really is a content marketing platform is what we built, even though we didn’t really know that’s what we were building back when it started. What the… Basically the value proposition to our members – we refer to them as members – is access to our audience, right?
In addition to the afternoon brief that goes out every day, every Tuesday and Thursday, we’ve got another basically campaign that goes out, except its feature – it’s a product and service feature.
And we’ve got four categories production, sales and marketing, vineyard and leadership or operations. And so, the biggest value proposition that we have for our members is they’ve got this platform right, where they can repurpose all the marketing material that they’ve already created.
We built it in a way so that when they have news to share, they update their – what they what we call their ‘what’s new’ tab – and that is captured and picked up and pushed out to those newsletters.
Those newsletters – each one of those newsletters has over… Between 12 and 15 thousand subscribers that are interested specifically in that category, right? So, I’m a vineyard guy, I don’t necessarily care about new teaching and point of sale, but I do want to know what’s happening in the Vineyard department.
And so we are able to push that vineyard specific or that winemaking specific information out to a very targeted audience and that all links back to their profile so that, you know, it’s sometimes we just kinda kid around and say we’re basically an awareness machine.
So, if you have something that you want to make our industry aware of, come see us. And we can do it in a way that I believe is very cost effective, number one, and more importantly, it’s very measurable and as I already mentioned, targeted.
Emma Criswell:
That’s such a good way to put it. Who are you finding is getting the most value out of those resources? Is it still the media or is it more going toward the producers? Is it even?
George Christie:
Well, you know, it’s like everyone has different needs that they’re looking to satisfy. So I think that for the vendors that we work with – and again, they don’t all take full advantage the way that they should, right, but the ones that are “I see the value in this, I see how it works”, that are coming up with good content about their product or their service and their they’re included regularly in these issues, they’re seeing a very easy clear return on their investment, no question about it.
I think on the winery side of things or vineyard side, the people that we think of as subscribers to this news, it’s just like a super easy way to stay on top of, like, innovation that’s happening in our industry. And, of course, that’s separate from the news, right?
The Afternoon Brief is all about news – and we talk about products and services there as well – but that product and service newsletter’s very specific to just that.
Michael Wangbickler:
Great. So, anything you’d like to add before we wrap up here, George?
George Christie:
No, I think one of the things that that we are excited about is we basically took everything that we had built with our website and tore it down, and are in the process of launching our new website. The original site operated a lot like an online directory.
We could go in and you could type “cork”, and here’s all the cork producers, or type “bottle” and here’s all the different companies that sell bottles. The new site is designed in a way that’s more consistent with the social media sites, you know the LinkedIn’s, the Facebook’s.
Now you can still search it and get to a particular company page the way – just like the way you used to. But in addition to that, when you see the… but when you land there, it works a lot more like a news feed like on LinkedIn or Facebook, and you’ll be able to scroll down and as you’re scrolling down – because this is the way people consume information these days.
Emma Criswell:
Right, right, absolutely.
George Christie:
So, you’ll be able to scroll down and you’ll get your industry news will be interspersed with product and service news or people news, and so we’re super excited about that. It’s taking us one step closer to what the ultimate goal was when we initially conceived of this is actually creating that network, right?
Michael Wangbickler:
Right.
George Christie:
That network, whether it’s a network that’s connecting to producers or… Vendors want to be connected with vendors as well. And Mike you alluded to it earlier – it’s like we are a social industry, but we haven’t successfully done the digital version of what happens in person.
And again, it can never be better than what happens in person, but we feel really good about the direction that we’re going, and we feel very confident that that’s the future of how people are going to connect at an industry level.
Emma Criswell:
Yeah.
Michael Wangbickler:
That’s fantastic, that was news to me, and that’s huge. Because I see a lot of potential there for producers to engage with one another, to engage with vendors and vice versa in a platform that’s like not so broad, like Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever.
Emma Criswell:
Right.
Michael Wangbickler:
Because sometimes that’s just stuff gets lost.
Emma Criswell:
Gets lost so frequently.
George Christie:
But you used the right word, right, “engage”, and it’s all about engagement. And, you know, we did the best we could with our original site, but it didn’t have the engagement tools that we envision in the future. So, we’re on our way, we’re not there yet, you know, and we’ll continue to layer on different features as things go.
But, you know, the ultimate goal is to see if we can’t make the industry a little bit smaller by making, you know, the ability to communicate with each other, engage with each other easier.
Michael Wangbickler:
That’s fantastic.
Emma Criswell:
That’s fantastic.
Michael Wangbickler:
George, thanks for being on the show with us today. Emma, my co-host, it’s great to hear your voice.
Emma Criswell:
I know it’s been too long.
Michael Wangbickler:
It was it was great having you on as well, so…
Emma Criswell:
It’s good to be back.
Michael Wangbickler:
And so, thanks – thanks a ton.
George Christie:
Thanks for having me, I appreciate you having me on the show.
Show Links
Reach George by phone: 707.433.4215
visit: Wine Industry Network
excellent resource: Wine Industry Advisor
subscribe: Wine Advisor Afternoon Brief
