Advanced Tasting Room Strategies Generates a Tremendous Response

Livermore, CA - January 31, 2007 - Winery representatives from across the United States attended the Advanced Tasting Room Strategies this week in Rohnert Park, CA. Attendee feedback was positive as they took action investigating solutions for increasing sales through their websites, increasing their wine club membership and retention, shipping, compliance, gift items and more. The event proved to be a tremendous opportunity for winery owners and managers to meet and evaluate a great variety of service providers. Two days of seminars and over 50 exhibitors from as far away as New Mexico and Colorado shared their wares. From an exhibitor's point "The attendees that visited were the types of decision makers that we like to see at these events" stated Ron Kreutzer, WineWeb "They were knowledgeable and wanted to take action."

Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) provided resources and answers to many of the regulatory questions. Several venders were available to provide solutions for compliance. Solutions shared ideas on outsourcing options to third party fulfillment warehouses like New Vine Logistics, a la carte and full service programs from WineCompliancePro, and of course, the option to have your own personal consultant. Industry expert Leroy Lucas of WineCompliancePro gave attendees tools that will help them wade into the selection process with understanding and confidence. "I let the wineries know the specific kinds of questions to ask when looking for a compliance solution" stated Lucas.

Whatever solution is used, the ever-changing regulatory environment drives the need for someone who knows and monitors the regulations in order to keep the rules and compliance solution up to date. Compliance solutions that were missed in the presentations include existing sales and club solutions which are "rules base." We have found that customers want to customize their own program. Active Club Management is based on the customer's preferences and rules and has been providing regulatory compliance support for several years said Theresa Dorr, Active Club Management. Other solutions most likely have rules and reporting capabilities so people may want to check their existing solutions before changing or adding something new. In either case, wineries still need to know which rules to apply so having a specialist available can save a significant amount of time.

The value of having a newsletter was echoed in several presenters. The goal is to keep prospective customers informed and to provide value to the newsletter audience. Newsletter customers hopefully will become customers and eventually loyal club members. Both session "Tips on Wine Club Member Retention" by Theresa Dorr, Active Club Management and "Compelling Web Copy and e-mail Marketing" session by Eric Groves of Constant Contact touted the advantages of developing a loyal community through e-mail. Campaigns can be both economical and help to generate revenue.

Wineries benefited by seeing a wide-array of products, services and solutions. Barclay and company offer affordable packages which allow the widest variety of venders to participate. Other events require such high costs to exhibitors and do not allow wineries to see the true variety of options available from which to choose. One of the 2006 Technology events required a minimum of $ 2,500.00 exhibitor fee up to $ 75,000.00. Venders report that the high fees make such event cost prohibitive and often only the highest price venders decide to participate.

WineCompliancePro™: WineCompliancePro provides automated compliance reporting for the wine industry for BOTH direct shipping to consumers and wholesale shipment reporting requirements. Product Sales and Compliance Consulting Services.
Contact: Leroy Lucas (510) 388-9449        Email: support@winecompliancepro.com

Barclay and Company: Barclay & Company provides can write a marketing plan to fit your budget, help you define and select the distribution network that will work for your wines, create market-oriented sales strategies, assist with sales projections, conduct sales trainings and meetings, create target account lists, monitor depletions, and develop effective sales incentives. For more information, visit www.wineprofits.com Contact:Veronica Barclay, P.O. box 71, St Helena, CA 94574       Phone: (707) 963-3185       Email:info@barclayandco.com

The WineWeb: WineWeb Enterprises, Inc., founded in 1995, provides an electronic marketplace for wine consumers, wineries, and wine retailers. Its trademarked service, The WineWeb, maintains a directory of over 34,000 wineries from around the world, over 90,000 wines available direct from wineries and online wine merchants, provides value-added e-commerce and website hosting services to assist wineries and wine merchants in selling wine online, and provides a consumer-friendly method of integrating thousands of wines into a searchable environment. For more information, visit www.wineweb.com.
Contact:Ron Kreutzer ron@wineweb.com          Tel: +1 888-236-0058

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