When planting your vineyard, some key questions need to be asked to understand exactly how much wine you want to make. It’s a careful balance of supply and demand. I can help eliminate some of the guesswork and give realistic assessments of the stock needed. I can also help plan your stock processing to ensure that you always bring the best-quality wines to market and help implement some procedures to maintain this.

This is a critical part of the business and can also be one of the most enjoyable, allowing you to put your personality into your product. However, having an independent voice involved in the process can be very valuable, challenging decisions and helping you to think more deeply about it.

What are the physical and emotional cues that will be associated with your brand? How should the brand voice sound? How do you want people to feel when they consume your brand? Perhaps you have already launched your brand but wish to develop it. I can help with this and have a designer on hand to be able to develop it for you should you wish

This sounds straightforward but is very difficult to get right. Many different embellishments can be added to the label, some of which can be costly, so careful consideration must happen. Your label is effectively your shop window when in retail, so it needs to stand out but ideally not age too quickly.

Then there are the legal requirements. The last thing you want to do is print off thousands of labels only to have to dispose of them because something has been missed.

Either from scratch or new products that are additions to your existing lines. How these look and feel like part of the brand family is something to be considered.

How much should you make, where will you sell it, how much should you charge? All things that need to be considered before undertaking any NPD. Whilst you might like the idea, is there a broader appetite for it in the market? Can you make this product without damaging the integrity of your core range?

‘My products taste great, look great and have won lots of medals. They should be easy to sell?’

In my experience, nothing is that easy to sell, and even if it is, you need to make sure that you are getting the most out of these sales in terms of brand exposure and margin.

Do you want to sell through distributors? Do you understand the pricing structure? Do you want to focus on independent retail? Could you sell it all direct to the consumer? Is export a scary prospect? I can help you think about all these decisions to ensure that you have a stable and profitable business.

At its most basic level, marketing aims to match a company’s products to those who wish to purchase them. Therefore, we can find out what your ideal customer looks like, what their interests are, where they shop, etc. Then, I can work with you to hone your activities to avoid wasting time and money marketing your product in the wrong places.

We can develop a marketing budget, assess where and how it will be spent, and measure it. I can assist with digital marketing with one of my partner agencies.

Having developed Hattingley’s DTC business because of the pandemic, the business went from selling £16k on its website in 2019 to £500K in 2020 and continues to thrive in this area.

This was the result of a lot of hard work and trial and error but worth every penny. So naturally, selling through this route can not only provide one of the most profitable routes to market, but you can develop a much more robust customer base who will hopefully become genuine ambassadors for your product.

I can advise you on how to make your DTC business not only a success but a pivotal strand to sales. If you are an established winery that doesn’t offer DTC, don’t worry, you haven’t missed the boat by any stretch of the imagination.

Export can be a very valuable part of the sales mix but can be a daunting prospect. What labels do you need? What are INCOTERMS? How does the shipping work? How do you get paid? Is it worth the bother?

I can help you make these decisions, or you can even outsource export to me should you wish.

Getting column inches is not easy in the very competitive world in which we live, so paying for a good PR agency can be worth its weight in gold.

However, if you don't have the other elements above in hand, it can be completely wasted money. There is nothing more frustrating for a consumer to read about a fantastic product and then be unable to purchase it. On occasion, you may have some great achievements at the winery that should be promoted to help increase the business's image. I can help you to do this and advise you when I don't think it is newsworthy.

I can offer a partner agency to employ or help you decide on which agency to work with.