After falling in love with wine through a year abroad in Burgundy in high school, Nick Ramkowsky, Owner of Vine Connections, has built a premium national importer of South American wines and sake. Nick discusses the types of wine importers in the US, how he thinks about building a brand portfolio, and the keys to success as an importer in part 1 of this 2-part series.

Detailed Show Notes: 

Vine Connections

• A national import and marketing company based in CA and has a retail license
• Focus on regions with winemaking history but not globally recognized
• Started as a broker and distributor (when Nick was 25)
• Worked with Billington Imports and met Laura Catena, went to Argentina, and fell in love with wines
• Established 1st premium portfolio of Argentine wines (1999-2000) - least expensive wine was $24 retail
• 2002 - imported sake
• 2013 - 1st premium Chilean wine portfolio
• Has wholesalers in all 50 states, including RNDC (#2 in the US), Breakthru (#3), and other smaller ones
• 30 people today, from 2 originally
• Split company in 2 - Kome Collective (Japanese), GeoVino (wines)

Types of wine importers

• All importers are also distributors in their state
• Sales Geography - can be state, regional, or national; Vine Connections is national for control over brands all the way through, exclusive for all 50 states, contracts w/ producers outline the responsibilities of importer and producer
• Portfolio Focus - world or specialized; Vine Connections is specialized in S America and sake

Role of importer

• Bring wines in, warehouse, sell to distributors, & work with sales teams to sell to various channels (on-premise, off-premise, chains)
• Work with press, do consumer events, lots of training and education

Sourcing wines

• Looks at people first, then property, and consistency in product and pricing
• New wines don’t cannibalize the current portfolio
• Complementary driven by a sense of place and identity, even if the same region, varietal, price point
• Looking at expanding to more regions to take advantage of the distribution network
• Originally specialized to have more of an identity as an importer
• Optimal book size - has ~120 SKUs in portfolio vs. ~900 at some importers and ~10,000 for RNDC as a distributor; optimal size varies by business model (e.g., focused on chains vs. independent stores/restaurants)
• More in not better - high cost to inventory and more challenging to prioritize

Pricing wines

• In general, SRP is fixed, but each state is different (based on freight & tax differences, distributor margins (larger tend to work on lower margins), and retailer margins (some take less margin)

Selling wines

• Used to self-distribute in CA, now uses wholesalers (couldn’t service all the accounts, wanted to focus on national sales)
• Distributor salespeople don’t have time to focus on everything
• Importer needs to generate interest in brands

Key elements for success

• Find good partners - share the same philosophy (quality, value, consistency), support each other
• Vine Connections doesn’t add new wineries often (only one new Chilean winery); only one winery left in 20+ years
• $1M revenue/employee benchmark for success

Vine Connections differentiation - good communications, both in transfer and transparency (e.g., sales by state), consider Vine Connections an extension of the winery

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