The Florence Wine Merchants Direct To Consumer Business Model
In short: you grow the grapes, you make the wine, you ship the wine to America, we help to sell your wine to U.S. consumers (in most states) and trade partners (in selected states).
Florence Wine Merchants handles all of the set up to sell your wine online in the U.S. market, including a secure, custom branded page on the florencewinemerchants.com website. We take the orders, fill the orders, and provide customer service. We monitor your inventory in California, and we work to promote your brand through our websites, blogs, and participation on other wine websites on the web (forums, review sites, blogs, etc.).
Winery partners are responsible for shipping the wine from Italy (pallet minimum, you will be given a total price for your shipment, from pick up in Italy to delivery in CA, including all transport, taxes and fees) to California (NY/NJ may be available in the future), and, after 60 days, any storage fees that may accrue. We would help facilitate in all aspects of getting your wine there and ready to sell (filing the registrations, label compliance, etc.). We would require as part of the agreement that if you receive inquiries by email, fax, or phone from a U.S. consumer, that the customer is then directed to your order page on florencewinemerchants.com to complete their purchase.
We would then pay you on a monthly basis, beginning at 60 days after the product is ready to order (has been accepted into storage in California and is ready to sell on our website), as to allow for returns, breakage, etc.
Approximately 6% (on average) of the retail sale price goes to our logistics provider (their "fee"). All shipping costs and taxes (to the consumer) are a wash (paid by the consumer and passed to the shipper and/or states where applicable). That leaves about 94% of the bottle price as income - Florence Wine Merchants takes a percentage of that and the rest belongs to the winery.
Your up front cost: the shipping of the wine. Ongoing costs: storage fees per case for wine left in the warehouse more than 60 days.
The service we provide is that your wine will be available for consumer mail order (via the web) in most states (we will have a complete list soon), and also for direct to trade in select states (about 12 at the moment). You don't have to do anything but ship the wine to California. No additional paperwork, no website or web store to run, no customer service, etc. You can of course help promote sales by links from your website, emailing or faxing your U.S. clients, etc.
If you are interested in more information please get in touch and we can schedule a visit to your winery.
