A Unique Wine Brokerage
With about 11,000 US wineries and tens of thousands of foreign wineries vying for valuable shelf space, menu placement and wine by the glass programs, it’s no wonder wineries are finding it to be increasingly difficult to secure meaningful distribution and ongoing sales volume.
The fact is, the number of wineries has increased more than 4-fold over the past 25 years, yet there are only about a quarter of the distributors with whom to work. The large wine groups now control about 90% of total domestic volume in the United States and are in a position to dictate which wineries a distributor can represent or prioritize. Unfortunately, this frequently leaves small and medium sized wineries out of the picture. When these wineries find themselves with too much inventory, they can no longer count on moving it through the traditional three-tier system. Oftentimes, their wine clubs and tasting rooms can’t provide enough volume potential to make a meaningful difference. These wineries frequently don’t know where to turn to convert their fine wine into cash. That’s when Mulberry Trample can be of service.
Between the huge growth in the number of California wineries over the past two decades, the steep reduction in the number of distributors, and imported wines gobbling up almost a quarter of U.S. wine sales, it’s no wonder many small to mid-sized wineries have found themselves with excess finished goods inventory.
Most wineries are loath to reduce the price of their wine in a visible manner. It not only deteriorates the brand’s image, but makes it extremely challenging to sell-in the next vintage, particularly if the discounting is visible to the retail trade.
Mulberry Trample is unique in its ability to provide wineries real value beyond the traditional wine brokerage services. That’s because it offers wine exclusively to merchants capable of making significant purchases without employing highly visible means of sell-through. Mulberry Trample works very closely with the following types of distribution outlets on behalf of the wineries we represent:
- Email wine marketers looking for great value in exchange for exposing discounted wine exclusively to their contained mailing lists. These promotions never hit Wine Searcher or other online databases.
- Wine of the Month Clubs and Gift Programs. These channels actually inflate the value of the wine in order to enhance their programs’ value proposition to their customer base.
- Specialty retailers and restaurants looking to create outsized gross margins for their enterprises and promote to their own wine clubs and mailing lists. These merchants agree upfront to keep wine prices off Wine Searcher.
- Airlines and Cruise Ships looking to enhance their margins. They don’t discount a wine’s brand image via low pricing.
- International markets offering a quiet outlet for overstocked wines.
