Having gotten bitten by the wine bug young and with deep wine retail experience, Devon Magee, founder of Offshore Wines, decided to start a small wine importer. Inspired by Kermit Lynch, Offshore focuses on small, artisanal brands making high quality, yet affordable wines. Devon shares how he bootstrapped the company and is finding his way as an importer. 

Detailed Show Notes: 

Background - mostly wine retail, did harvests in France (Vieux Telegraph, Chandon de Brialles in Burgundy - 2012-2014)

• Inspired by Kermit Lynch, he was interested in writing

Offshore Wines Portfolio

• Christian Knott of Chandon de Brialles started a new project, Domaine Dandelion, and asked him to import them
• 2017 - 1st shipment - 4 cases of Domaine Dandelion, 20 cases of Champagne Charles Dufour
• 15-20 producers now
• Goal: find high-quality wines made in an artisanal way from lesser appellations that are “affordable”
• “Affordable” = $30-100 in US retail

Starting an import business

• He did it on his own, with no lawyers
• ~2 months to get a license, ~$1-2k in fees
• Need a licensed warehouse to receive wines (uses CA Wine Transport)
• Self-financed 1st shipment

Cash flow is challenging

• 2-3 months for wines to land in warehouse (from France)
• Restaurants/retailers get 30 days terms
• Payment to wineries varies - most ~60-day terms from shipment, while others want payment upon shipment or 50/50 terms (upfront and on delivery)

Lifestyle is fun, traveling and visiting rural areas

Choosing winery partners - a lot is timing, being at the right place, getting to know communities, and very relationship-based; most wineries are referrals from existing relationships

Offshore differentiation - speaks the winemaker’s language (French, Spanish), worked production, and is building deep personal relationships

• Wineries are exclusive to CA, and only market Offshore works, though they sell to a small distributor in CO
• Focus on small producers precludes needing to be in all 50 states
• Optimal portfolio size ~25 wineries to be able to respond and represent wineries well
• Gets wine out for people to taste them, prefers personal connections over social media
• Shares other aspects of what people are doing (e.g., got and gave away bags of coffee from a producer experimenting w/ carbonic coffee bean ferments, giving away sweatshirts from Domaine Hausherr with an artistic word game on the back)

Devon is the only salesperson now, and he would ideally like 1-2 salespeople

• Other salespeople have opened doors for him to help him

Building small brands

• Many people struggle with name pronunciation
• He tries to share wines, stories, and pictures of brands
• He doesn’t agree with the need for scores and tasting notes; he uses email to share stories, wants to publish a newsletter eventually
• The new style of wine writing can help small brands - e.g., Alice Feiring, Ray Isle’s new book

Advice for others - be able to sell the wines

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