As I’ve begun announcing my impending return to New York, I keep getting the same question over and over.
“Are you sure you want to go home and try sell into that market?? Isn’t this not the best time for that?”
While I’ve mostly tried to avoid the topic of the current world economy, both in my own head and on this blog, it becomes increasingly difficult as I continue to hear about more offices closing, more jobs being lost in every industry, and unending job searches for those of my friends who are unemployed. I guess it’s time to face the facts.
Fortunately (for me), the facts as I see them aren’t all that bad. While perhaps I’m living in a fantasy world (I’ve been accused of much worse things), I believe that crisis can equal opportunity - especially in an industry that, geekiness aside, revolves mostly around keeping people happily intoxicated. The key in times like this becomes keeping people inexpensively intoxicated. So that has become my goal.
Despite all economic factors, North Americans continue to drink more wine than ever, and according to this recent article in the San Francisco Business Times, imports of Argentine wine to the United States actually increased 34% in 2008. This is truly telling - bear in mind that traditionally as much wine is sold in the United States in Q4 as in the other 9 months of the year combined. So if the growth continued through the final months of last year despite the economic situation… well, I’m led to hope that this may continue well into 2009. The fact of the matter is the more sorrows people have, the more they want to drown them. Of course if those sorrows are related to finances, the value of the beverages they are being drowned in becomes more important than ever… and I’m neither the first nor the last to claim that Argentina currently offers the best wine values in the world. Why did you think I came down here in the first place??
Now, this is not to say that people are not struggling out there in my business as much as every other. To hear tell from my friends in “traditional” wine jobs back in New York, it takes a lot more work to make each sale, the average dollar value per sale is lower than ever, and restaurants are hurting badly, as are those who supply to them. However, in general, people continue to drink wine! The extravagantly wealthy are still extravagantly wealthy, and they still drink and collect their First Growths and Barolo. More importantly, the low end continues to grow as more Americans get turned onto wine. But the middle has completely fallen out of the industry - inventory is not moving much on those retails shelves with price tags between $20 and $40, or in the middle pages of restaurant wine lists, between $50 and $100. This is where novice wine drinkers tend to look as they begin to learn more about wine and explore beyond the $10 or $15 category, except that the young professionals who typically make up this demographic suddenly have much less disposable income to dispose of. They have been forced to return to the top of the wine list, but armed with more discerning palates, they are seeking the best bang for their buck, and they’re not looking for Yellow Tail anymore.
So it falls to myself and my confederates around the world to give them what they want. I’m out here looking for it.
February 11th, 2009 | vino | 4 comments