Vin & Développement
Vin, Solidarité, Commerce Équitable et Développement Durable

The 3 directions for "wine and solidarity" [en]

Community of fair bloggers, organization of tasting-events, building a fair-trade brand

The project is split into 3 parts:

The project detailed in W&S 0.1 (a community of fair-customers run with different blogs ), is now debating [fr] with the community of French bloggers. There are some fresh ideas, and some propositions of e-tools for helping in a first test.
Organization of tasting-events with some big NGOs/NPOs (e.g. the wine event near Geneva with the UN Refugee agency ). Exploitation of the customer files generated with a regularly updated website. Mailing and e-mailing of a short selection of wines to the members of NGOs/NPOs.
Building a brand with a private label explicitly fair-trade oriented and compatible with the fair-trade marketing models. A range of good basic wines from the major famous grape varieties (e.g. chardonnay, cabernet, pinot noir, merlot and malbec). This wines have to be good enough for having the official support of a famous media-related wine critic, but they don’t need to be high-premium. This wines are proposed to big wine-companies and/or retailer-chains (hypermarkets?).

Hot Six: What Would You Do If...

Connections/Introductions: If you could be introduced to one person (or company) who would it be and what would you want from the introduction? We all live less than six degrees from one another, closer now that the internet is so widespread. If you could get the introduction what would you want the outcome to be?

The marketing director of a big wine company (import/export, online retailer, chain of franchised stores). It doesn’t need to be E&J Gaallo, Constellaation Brands or The Wine Grooup, it just needs to be an open mind one: open about social enterprises and the lost in the FOOD CHAIN purposes. The outcome: “OK for trying and doing all we can to integrate a special campaign with our baseline and our regular range.”

Technology: Most people have a technical level at which they feel comfortable with, beyond that it becomes very untenable. What (if any) do you think the next piece of technology you need to help drive your enterprise forward? What is it you need from that software? What is it you need the software to do? The outcome? The work product?

A software that could integrate a like Amazon system for managing the database of wines AND of NPOs/NGOs: [*]

people who has bought this wine have also bought this one; with an easy way for evolving on a more sophisticate version that could integrate the database of friend sites: other fair trade products, recipes and cooking, wine tourism, fair tourism etc.
people who choose to fund this NPO have also choose this one
[*] After this very interesting discussion [fr], I have a better idea of the kind of e-tools I need for this project (more sophisticated than the like-Amazon tools I quote).

People/Staff: Beyond yourself if you had to hire that first one part or full time person, what would their job title be? What would they do? This may not be an "in-house" person but an outside independent contractor so don't get put off by those related "office" issues. I won't ask you write a job description, but what are the daily or weekly deliverables you'd really want to see out of this person?

Some good level technical and imaginative people who could develop the software and work on user-friendly features with blogs, wikis and/or forums. Someone still converted about the interest and the potential of virtual communities.

Capital/Resources: For sh#ts and giggles let's say $15,000 landed in your lap. You must spend it on your business and you must spend it in two months or it evaporates. How would you spend it, and why? How would you evaluate its success once it was spent?

I would pay a life-size test with the labeling of a few thousands bottles, a mailing and e-mailing campaign, some ads and the creation of a dedicated blog-wiki for presenting the wines and the NPOs. I would arrange for having some very fair prices from the partners in return of a good communication concerning their big hearts and their faculty for being avant-gardist, hip, in the trend etc.

How would you evaluate its success once it was spent?

The wine sold and the funds raised, the (e-)media coverage and the comments and remarks in the blog-wiki, and… the comments and remarks of O/net members and particularly the lost in the FOOD CHAIN ones :)

That could also be completed with an official evaluation offered by a semi-public French company specialized in wine and marketing like Sopexa : usage and attitude consumer surveys, opinion, image and awareness indicators etc.

Pillars of Revenue: Please go list them in Peter's thread. Six of them. It's really important to have multiple revenue streams. Enough said.

fee on bottles sold
ads on the website and blogs
marketing, communication and PR solutions sold to the winemakers for the best exploitation of the potential of image generated
location of the customers files and the database
grants from the wine regions that have difficulties for selling their wines
derived products: wine accessories, cookbooks, “produits de terroir” etc.

Milestones: What are the three most important milestones you have set between now and the end of the year? You can list more should you desire, but in any event please list them in priority order from most important on down.

writing a perfect presentation of the project
organizing a small test with an NPO in Paris (mailing, blog and small event)
finding an import/export partner