Only One Solution Meets the MFK Direct Sales Survey's Recommendations

November 20, 2004 - Napa, CA - The results of the MFK Direct Sales Survey were release today at the Direct Shipping Seminar organized by the Wine Institute. The survey sampled 94 wineries with an annual production between two-thousand to two million cases. A majority of respondents came from the Napa region. Other areas included Paso Robles, Lodi, Monterey and Santa Barbara.

Research reports that Direct Sales are particularly important to smaller wineries as they allow wineries to avoid the challenges that are encountered when working with a consolidating distribution system or retail network.

Research reports that over 75% of wineries today have one or more wine clubs. Wine clubs are a direct channel to the consumer. This offers the maximum profit margin to the businesses as they are not paying commissions or deep discounts to distributors or sales personnel. Profit margins are reported to be as high as 60%.

A significant challenge from wineries is managing club programs and securing club information. Reports showed that wineries were using multiple systems to manage clubs. It is common to find people using Outlook, Excel and on-line shipping tools to process a shipment. The problem is that when a club members wants to update their information, the data has to be updated in all systems. This means that instead of changing one record, the winery has to change the customer information in three places. This increase the opportunity for errors as well as triples the time required to complete a simple task.

Research strongly recommend that wine clubs and support tools be consolidated into to single database which stores and secures information. Tom LaFaille from The Wine Institute reported there was no solution on the market today that met that standard. Theresa Dorr was at the presentation and reported that Active Club Management fits the exact recommendations of the survey.

Wine Institute personnel were surprised to hear about Active Club Management but were delighted that such a solution exits.

"It is extremely exciting to find out that we offer the only solution on the market which meets the recommendations of the survey" stated Dorr. Active Club Management is built using single database to manage, secure and store customer data. We integrate seamlessly with credit card gateways, shippers, email and printing services. We did our own research and had no idea that MFK a study. Our automation and pricing is like no other solution on the market today. We offer a tremendous solution in an affordable program for all sizes of wineries.

About Active Club Management: Active Club Management offers an affordable and powerful solution for wine club management. Serving over 100 clubs in boutique operations and large, multi-locations organizations Active Club Management is customized to the needs of each business. The solution works like a personal club assistant and is specifically built to offer seamless integration with other accounting, POS, Inventory and shopping cart solutions.

For more information, visit www.activeclubmanagement.com