Bryan: Because we’ve made it I’ve made it sound really rosy. I wish it was, you know, but it’s like, you know, every day it’s it’s hard.
Peter: This is the field guide, practical marketing and leadership guidance for business owners. I’m your host, Peter Wilson of Biz Marketing. Each episode focuses on what actually works in the real world. Let’s get started. Welcome back to the field guide.
Today, my guest is Brian Melitas. He is the founder of Fat Quark and we’re gonna talk about what Fat Quark is. We are on location today. I think this is the first time we’ve done an on location. Brian, welcome to the podcast.
Bryan: I feel honored.
Peter: Thanks.
Bryan: First on location visit. Indeed. Thank And
Peter: we are at Fat Quirk. I think we can see the name here.
Bryan: Small underground cave in Lower Queen Anne, Champagne Cave.
Peter: Tell us what you do.
Bryan: Real briefly, we import champagne from small producers in Champagne, France. Import them to this cave in Seattle, keeping it temperature controlled. And we sell it direct to consumer all across the country.
Peter: Direct to consumer. So you’ve got a tasting room here in Seattle. Correct. And then if I lived in South Carolina, we were just speaking about South Carolina, I could
Bryan: Yep, borrow order it this through FedEx.
Peter: Got it. So that’s amazing. And you are importing the bubbles directly to Seattle.
Bryan: That’s correct.
Peter: Got it. Okay. And something that is interesting about you only import French wine.
Bryan: Yep. That’s right. All we do is small production champagne from France, from the Champagne region in France. And we bypass, we are the distributor, we are the importer and we are the retailer. We of course have different business entities set up so the product flows through there legally.
But the purpose of that is to control the quality of the champagne from the cave of the grower, producer, to our cave here in Seattle, and eventually to the customer in South Carolina using temperature controlled compostable packaging. Oh, wow. Yeah. Cool.
Peter: So let’s start at the beginning here. You mentioned before we got online here that you’ve been doing this for sixteen years. So let’s talk about
Bryan: Sixteen years on my own as my own business.
Peter: Okay.
Bryan: Yeah. But five or six years before that in the champagne business with the large champagne house
Peter: in Got it. New York So let’s talk about that.
Bryan: My origin story goes way back before New York. Okay. Actually growing up in Portland, Oregon, my family, my great grandfather started a beer and wine distributorship. My grandfather and my grandmother, Chris and Cleo Melitis. So Chris and Cleo Melitis grew the business throughout the Portland, Beaverton area.
My dad and his brothers took it over and there was a lot there and they split the biz and my dad took part of it. And I worked growing up as a merchandiser, a delivery truck driver for stocking the grocery store shelves, delivering to bars and restaurants well before I was of legal drinking age,
Peter: but
Bryan: I could drive and deliver the product.
Peter: And what product was that?
Bryan: It was mostly Miller Coors product beer, waters and wine. And that’s where, you know, stocking the shelves of the grocery stores, I did not care about the beer. That was just stocking it. But the wine and especially the Italian wine where I could read the story of the grower on the back and the family. So as I was merchandising I was getting a little bit of an education.
Especially into the Chianti’s, right? Started drinking them and then actually after college I thought I was gonna be in marketing. I got hired by Wyden and Kennedy. Oh wow. As an intern.
Got a job for one month after the internship ended as a, what was it? It was like a media buyer, assistant media buyer on the Nike print account. Nike gosh. And it was unbelievable. But that was in the year 2000 and they laid me off quickly after that.
And I said, am I gonna do? I love wine, Italian wine. So I went to Italy and did a harvest in the year 2000 in the fall. And I harvested with a winemaking family, Fell in love with wine. Thought, oh my gosh, I love this product, but they couldn’t pay me beyond the harvest.
So I came back. Long story, came to Portland, back living with family, coaching water polo, working at REI, just doing odd jobs. But knowing I wanted to get into the Italian wine business and a fellow by the name of Leonardo Licaccio, an Italian out of New York that started Wine Bow was doing a tasting in Seattle, which is where we are now. I drove up from Portland to Seattle, came to the tasting, introduced myself to Leonardo. He said, You need to wait around here.
I’ve got 400 people here. At the end of it, he took time with me. He looked at my resume and he said, you don’t have the experience to work for me yet, but I like your passion and I’m gonna get you an interview at a retail wine shop in New York City. And if you can learn to sell the world of wine,
Peter: then
Bryan: I’ll entertain giving you a job. I went to New York City, it was amazing. Young 20s, Leonardo was good on his word, he gave me a job after that. I became a junior brand manager at Okay, now who’s Winebow? Winebow started, Leonardo Licaccio started Winebow.
They are now have morphed differently but they started off as an Italian wine importer and distributor in New York and New
Peter: Jersey. Got it, okay.
Bryan: When I worked for them, they were expanding and they also distributed champagne. One of them champagne Laurent Perrier. Okay. And so I worked on that account as a junior brand manager and ended up getting into the world of bubbles and they hired me, not Laurent Perrier, but Wine Bow hired me as a full time brand manager. Okay.
And I worked for three years in New York. I had a urge to come back to the Northwest, but thought Portland was too small. So I moved to Seattle. And that was twenty years ago, twenty one years ago, and worked for a distributor here and got into the world of small production champagne, grower champagne as we know it today and really wanted to found my own business and went to the University of Washington, their executive MBA program. Yeah.
I was able So to work as a salesman in Downtown Seattle selling wine to the hotels and the restaurants downtown while also going to school. Cool. And then in 2009, I graduated from that and I really used that education with those professors and classes to write the business plan for what has become Fat Quark. Upon graduation, had a very supportive wife that had a great job and we were able to start Fat Quark in 2010.
Peter: So, startup. It was actually a startup. You didn’t acquire somebody else’s dream, it’s your dream.
Bryan: That’s correct. Wow.
Peter: So, at what point did you I mean, it seems just like a natural progression there, right? It sounds like It almost sounds like this was Like you had this idea all along.
Bryan: Oh, was very serendipitous things that came to be, you know. The real, I mean, working in the wine shop in New York City, I had no exposure to bubbles before that. I liked Italian wine, I liked Chianti, but these little things where I would encourage people to buy this bottle of Prosecco and keep it in their refrigerator and open it for no special occasion, but instead open it to create a special occasion. Nice. And these same customers, these were retail customers.
They would come back into the shop and say, Brian, thank you so much. My sister and I opened this bottle and she said, why are we opening this? And I said, well, because you’re here. And we had like a great, you know, and so that really was the first occasion. Then the whole Winebow experience, I didn’t, they put me on the Laurent Perrier champagne account.
I had developed this passion for bubbles but then I got a front row seat champagne, the business of champagne. Then I came out to Seattle, I didn’t know about grower champagne. I thought I wanted a job as the national sales rep for Laurent Perrier.
Peter: Sure. Okay. And then I found grower champagne and I said, this is what let’s talk about growers, growers champagne.
Bryan: Yeah. What does that mean? Well to start What is it? 90% of champagne production is made by 30 main houses,
Peter: the
Bryan: grand marks, the big houses.
Peter: Yeah.
Bryan: Those 30 main houses buy from 15,000 different growers and they make master blends. So most of the people that grow grapes and champagne do not make champagne and that’s because one, the price of grapes for great champagne grapes is second only to burgundy. So they get really good prices for their grapes. Yeah. Second, it costs a lot of money to make champagne.
First, have to make great wine which incorporates everything about making wine and the equipment, and then you have to invest the time and the money and the equipment to make great champagne. So it’s a much more expensive process to make champagne. Therefore, most of the growers are happy not to make their own.
Peter: So it’s a lot easier just to sell your grapes.
Bryan: 10% of that, know, so that’s 90% of the champagne is made by these big houses that buy from thousands of growers and their value proposition is we do different blendings. We taste these different wines and we’re gonna make the same wine every single year.
Peter: So every year you’re not
Bryan: Every getting any year Vuf Cliqueux tastes the same.
Peter: Yeah, exactly. People Which is why people like it.
Bryan: That’s a value proposition. They know what they’re gonna get. Also, the Grand Marx, if you have a flavor spectrum that’s this big, right, the Grand Marx do not want to hit the edges. They want to appeal to this very narrow flavor margin that’s accepted by the most people. So those are the grand marks, that’s the value proposition they do.
They can make wonderful champagne and they have done more than anything, the name champagne is the most recognizable name maybe in the world beyond like Right? Coca Cola or If you say champagne anywhere in the world, people know what you’re talking about.
Peter: Yeah. And it’s got to be grapes that came from that region, obviously.
Bryan: Yeah. But just, I know it’s so long, but to get back to grower champagne. Yes. That is the 10% of production that is made by about 500 of those growers that actually make their own bubbles from the grapes that they grow.
Peter: Got it. Now are they doing, I’m guessing maybe they’re doing a portion of their grapes are going to the
Bryan: Yep, that’s correct. The Grand Marks and then Very few of the growers that make their own champagne only make their own. So a way to say that is they also the growers that make their own champagne also sell a portion of their grapes for the yearly income.
Peter: But
Bryan: if their grapes come from this town of Verzi, they get paid a set price for the grapes in the town of Verzi. No one’s telling them the grapes that come from the very center of the plot, right, or on the center of the hillside, the very prime grapes, I that’s what they keep for
Peter: see, I see. Okay, interesting. And
Bryan: they go growers farm usually a single plot of land from a single vintage make it much drier, it speaks clearly and we’re talking about that flavor spectrum. They play on the edges all over the place which for me is much more interesting.
Peter: Got
Bryan: it. And it drinks much more like wine.
Peter: So you’re actually seeing a different flavor.
Bryan: Yeah. We don’t put it in flutes. We do not pour champagne into the flutes. Flutes are great because of the precipitation of bubbles. Yeah.
They help that, it limits the aromatics when you have a small little hole. So you want like bigger glass, yes, the bubbles dissipate quicker, but you’re really getting into the wine.
Peter: Got it. So we’re talking growers, the growers champagne and it’s a niche. How much of the champagne is making in The United States and and how are you finding how are you growing that market here in the Seattle area and beyond? You know? So tell me a little more about appetite for growers champagne in The US.
Bryan: Well, it’s Or locally. Okay. So the appetite for growers champagne is certainly increased since we started the business in 2010. But there was a trend there, of course. And the trend, right, it started with craft beer and craft everything.
You wanna buy from a maker and feel special and hear the story about the maker and their family. So I knew, you know, just it goes back to me reading the stories of the family of and Chianti. So the appetite for grower champagne is certainly increasing. We don’t subscribe to any data numbers, I
Peter: don’t know.
Bryan: But it’s about 5% of the market in The US champagne is champagne. Okay.
Peter: So it’s a very
Bryan: tiny Yeah. Versus worldwide, it’s about 10%. In The US, it’s about 5% of our consumption, this grower champagne.
Peter: Okay. Got it. So why did you decide to narrow down and just do grower’s champagne?
Bryan: Yeah. Well, it’s a passion of mine. Okay. I had the connections in champagne and it allowed me, this was my thought, to become a recognized expert because it’s a small niche. So I could become a nationally recognized expert in a small niche.
But if I was just a wine person, there’s a thousand of us. There’s 5,000 of us maybe. Right? But if you are a champagne expert and all you do is grow our champagne very, very well, Those are the two pillars of our business by the way, since day one. Quality, the best quality champagne in the world.
That’s what we bring in and the best customer service we can offer. Are pillars and if we just keep grinding on those two things, the other things have seemingly worked themselves out.
Peter: So let’s talk about how you acquire the champagne. So you’ve got so do you
Bryan: It’s not easy.
Peter: Just get on the phone and say, hey, this is Brian from Seattle and we wanna buy, you know, a 100 cases of your best blah blah blah.
Bryan: Well, with established relationships, yes, that can happen. Right. But it takes a long time to establish those relationships.
Peter: So does that mean going on-site, meeting the families or do they
Bryan: Yeah, origin is always in person, face to going to champagne. It started in 2008 when I took my wife and we just knocked on doors. I mean, talk about like, very nervous. Like, hey, this is us, this is fat pork, Would you like to entertain a tasting with us? And the French were like, Oh, fat cork.
Well, no, no, no. I mean, don’t you understand? This is very high quality stuff. I’m like, Yeah, I understand. But we try to make the best champagne in the world approachable to novices.
Peter: Right.
Bryan: So hence the fat cork, the play with the name.
Peter: The name, the brand, the fat cork, Yeah. Who came up with the name?
Bryan: Well, I paid a kid. I paid a 20 year old kid and gave him a bottle of champagne when I was at UW. He was a concierge at a hotel that I sold wine to. He was starting his own marketing company. He came up with his friends, they sat down with a bottle of champagne and came up with a list of probably a 100 potential names.
And we kept dwindling the list down. We’d pass the list to this group of friends, this group of friends. We say, Pick your top five. Pick your top five. And fat cork was never number one, but it made everybody’s
Peter: Oh, I understand.
Bryan: And it always made people chuckle. And then we got down to the top three or the top five. I still have the list somewhere, handwritten list, of course. And fat corked the URL was available.
Peter: Oh my gosh.
Bryan: And I said, Well, if the URL is available, this is what we’re doing.
Peter: Yeah. That’s great. That’s excellent.
Bryan: I also got SkinnyQuirk by the way.
Peter: So let’s go back to these relationships. So you’re knocking on doors, the French are somewhat skeptical. Yeah. Very skeptical perhaps. So what was your first, who was the first person that said, you know what, I like your idea, I like you, let’s give it a try.
Bryan: Yeah. Well, I think it’s the salesman in me. So if sitting down in person, that’s where you make the sale. There were a lot of first people. Mean out of the group that we visited, I think it was eight or 10 growers that we signed up on that visit.
Wow. So, and some of them are still with us today.
Peter: Had they ever worked with American? No. So
Bryan: you No, went guys into the business searching exclusivity in The United States to be the only importer of record for these growers.
Peter: Got it.
Bryan: I’m not as most of them still are exclusive, but I don’t search for exclusivity. One of the growers I found actually Charleston, South Carolina that I’ve worked with for the last eight years, I found them in Charleston, they weren’t in Seattle and I was okay with that. Yeah, sell it on the East Coast, it’s fine.
Peter: Got it. But generally speaking, you have these exclusive relationships or have had exclusive relationships.
Bryan: For the most part.
Peter: So, if a connoisseur of Grower Champagne, probably gonna have to visit Brian and Fat Quarter. Yeah. See what you got to offer.
Bryan: Yeah, you should or even if you’re not a connoisseur.
Peter: Okay.
Bryan: We do a lot of education with our champagne so that you will under even if you don’t understand all the terminology that we’re talking about on the back label, we provide you the resources so that you can be educated. And as you become educated, you get more interested and then you wanna share that knowledge with other people.
Peter: So very approachable. So I think what you have is a brand that’s that’s selling something that’s, you know, very exclusive and considered a luxury item. Right? For sure. But you’ve made it super approachable Yeah.
As well. So I think you’ve really kind of threaded the needle there with
Bryan: We’re trying. Celebrate every day has been our mantra since day one. I love that. And that doesn’t necessarily mean drinking champagne every day.
Peter: Sure.
Bryan: But it means not waiting for a special occasion to open a bottle of champagne.
Peter: Nice. I like that. That’s great. So with respect to the business, so you started sixteen years ago, started in 2008 with this trip, and then you what was the first step here? Was it opening a tasting room or just
Bryan: Yeah, you’re looking at it. We’ve been in here. This is underground, so we you know, the champagne’s all back there, even further underground. And it allows us to keep a temperature control, perfect humidity here in Seattle. So this was the first step.
Looking for a space to store it. And what became our retail room and our tasting room, this used to be our office, it used to be everything before we moved across the hall. Yeah. But yeah, we face north, we get the least amount of direct sunlight. This is not a space that most people wanna be in for retailer.
Okay. We’ve made it into a champagne fruit.
Peter: Yeah. Who doesn’t wanna go somewhere for champagne? Yeah. You’ve got the retail and you’re importing and then, as I understand now, are, you ship all over and you have a subscription or a club or Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the genesis of that side of the business.
Bryan: Yeah. I did not want so fatcork.com is our online presence where we sell.
Peter: Yeah.
Bryan: And out of our tasting room. That’s all I wanted. I did not wanna start a club. But my wife said, You have to start a club. And I said, Well, I don’t like clubs because I don’t like Malbec and they send me a Malbec in every shipment or they charge me a different price for every shipment.
And she said, Well, start a club that you would join yourself. So I said, Well, if I’m gonna join a club myself, I know I’m gonna get the same price and I want every shipment.
Peter: And
Bryan: I wanna be able to customize and pick the bottles that are right for me. And so that’s the champagne club that we started. It’s quarterly allocation. We pick, you know, you sign up for four bottles a quarter, six bottles a quarter, 12 bottles a quarter. We pick what we think is best for that allocation, the best bottles selected.
But if you don’t like rose and I’ve put a rose in there, you swap that out.
Peter: Okay.
Bryan: Or bonk de bonk.
Peter: How long have you been doing the club?
Bryan: Since 2011. Wow.
Peter: Okay. You’ve been doing it quite a while.
Bryan: Yeah, took us one year of non club and it’s become 80% of our revenue. So that reoccurring revenue is allowing us to do predictive modeling for our buying, purchasing Right, right.
Peter: Yeah. That’s excellent. So you have a club, it’s this recurring business model, which I personally am a big fan of recurring business models as a marketing running a marketing company, it makes it a lot more enjoyable when you have that relationship with a client over time. Mhmm. What are you finding with respect to growth of like, just overall marketing for the brand?
Are you finding growth sort of organically or what what are you finding is working for you guys
Bryan: Yeah. For growing? Well, word-of-mouth has always been number one since the day we started.
Peter: Yeah.
Bryan: It started off with a group of our people and it grew from there, word-of-mouth. As you know, word-of-mouth takes a long time, but it’s also the stickiest. So that continues to be how we drive business. Over the years, we’ve tried lots of different things. The buying AdWords for us, no go, does not work.
SEO, we think it works. We’ve got the long tail of people that come through on different blog posts and such. I think that works a little bit. What definitely works and what we started investing in last year a lot was driving people to the tasting room.
Peter: Yeah.
Bryan: That in person experience because when we get people in here, we can tell them the story, we can taste them on the champagne. That has been the driver for us. Yeah. Just that in person experience, and of course, the way we’ve done that is with social media. I am reluctant to use social media personally, and so I was reluctant to do it for the business.
But I actually really enjoyed it. I like putting myself out there. I’m an opinionated guy. So Yeah. We talk about fun opinions as it relates to champagne and
Peter: Got it.
Bryan: Yeah. And PR, old school PR. Yeah. Right?
Peter: One thing I know, my wife is a very big fan of fat quark. So truth be told, she recently sent a gift to a friend of hers in California who is not necessarily known for her champagne. I mean, she definitely likes wine, but you know. Yeah. And she was just raving about it and that gift to that friend definitely is creating this connection to your brand Mhmm.
Now. And, you know, she said One of the things she mentioned was that when she received the package that just the presentation
Bryan: Oh, I’d love to
Peter: hear that. So and that really stuck with her. So tell me a little bit about that merchandising or what you do when you send those boxes.
Bryan: Well, it’s all very purposeful. I mean, I do not just put wine in a box and ship it out with nothing. Whether it is a personalized card that we hand right here. So if you send a gift and you type in a note, we will hand write that note. And then the way that that note is presented packaged and laid on top of the package with the description card for the champagne that you ordered.
So that person, of course, they don’t recognize the label because this is a grower champagne. This is a little niche thing. It’s not Vuve Clico where you know, oh, this is a $75 bottle. It’s Vuve Clico. No, this is a bottle of champagne.
I know nothing about it. So here is a description card that tells me where it’s from, the actual vineyard that it’s from, what vintage it is, how much sugar or no sugar is in the bottle in the case of most of ours, a little bit about the family that grew it, vineyard practices. So we try to give an education.
Peter: One thing I’ve noticed as well is that all use some QR codes or you have some labeling on the bottles as well so you’re able to get more information if you
Bryan: We just happen to own the back label for the growers. So the growers all have their own front label which is beautiful, the PLO here. The back label is what we own and we ask the growers. We tell our story on the back label. We have the geeky details on the back label.
I don’t know if that’s what your question is.
Peter: Yeah. No, that is indeed. And maybe I was wrong, but I thought
Bryan: I saw one Well, we’re always changing. We have had QR
Peter: codes. Okay.
Bryan: We always evolve.
Peter: So it’s the back label that you’re able to really Market. Yeah.
Bryan: Market and tell our story and tell our brand.
Peter: Got it. Yeah. So as an aside, we’re definitely gonna have a little tasting like I mentioned earlier. So we’ll do that but I do have another question for you. I understand that you’re into golf as well, maybe passionate about golf, maybe as passionate or more passionate about golf than champagne, I don’t know.
Bryan: Champagne is a business. Golf is a passion.
Peter: There we go. Okay.
Bryan: You know, I do have passion for champagne.
Peter: Yeah.
Bryan: But every time I drink champagne, I’m analyzing it. Every time I read about champagne, I am is this accurate? Can I use this in some way?
Peter: Okay.
Bryan: When I read about golf, that’s how I put myself to sleep at night. I just read about golf.
Peter: Okay. So tell me about the intersection of your brand and golf.
Bryan: Well, Rory McElroy has consumed our champagne. He has not paid for it, but he’s consumed it. So that’s exciting.
Peter: That’s cool.
Bryan: Yeah. Beyond that, the intersection really lies with how we found our operations manager, Sam. We advertised on a golf podcast. Yeah. And, you know, why would a champagne company advertise on a
Peter: golf podcast? It’s because I listened to that golf and
Bryan: I know the guys were good at selling their ads. But Sam listened to it and we found Sam and that’s really been the best connection is having a great great manager come to us through the passion of the golf community.
Peter: Which is the reason I’m sitting here today is we’re friends with Sam.
Bryan: That’s right.
Peter: So so you were on the golf podcast from time to time? Yeah. What’s the name of that podcast?
Bryan: The Fried Egg.
Peter: Fried Egg.
Bryan: Okay. Great, great podcast. And they do these video blog vlogs or whatever. And they have me on sometimes as a wine expert that correlates it with golf.
Peter: Nice. Are you finding I mean, you had folks reach out as a result of that
Bryan: Oh, yeah. Appearance? Oh, yeah. We can always tell who the golfers are when the new orders come in from a specific town that’s very known for golf.
Peter: Oh, right.
Bryan: Like the there’s a golfer.
Peter: Okay. Got it. That’s cool. I have a question I like to business owners and you know, when it’s asked of myself, I always pause and think about the answer here. So go back sixteen years.
Brian is talking to, you know, founder, talking to your wife sixteen years ago. What advice would you give yourself from today now knowing everything you know today going back?
Bryan: Every time I’m upset about something, I need to have my wife read the email first.
Peter: The email you receive or send?
Bryan: That I send. Okay. Okay. Alright. You know, there is something about just every day there’s a new fire and you can get fiery in a response and I am a passionate person And so I’ve burned myself.
And But my wife, thankfully, I’ve learned and she’s there to save me and she’s like, let’s rewrite this email. Mhmm.
Peter: That’s a good advice. What about yeah, what else?
Bryan: I mean, you know, the business advice is just you gotta grind on the gross margin, right? You cannot let that gross margin fluctuate because you wanna drive this or that, like really focusing on what is the engine of the business. The engine is how much money do we make on one bottle that we sell. And Yeah. Just don’t let that falter because then you get yourself in trouble.
Peter: So you’ve got a lot of cost associated with
Bryan: your business.
Peter: Now you are I don’t know the financial terms when you buy this from a grower, you know, are they just giving it to you and then hope you sell it or
Bryan: Oh boy. Well, international financial terms. Letter of
Peter: credit type of situation?
Bryan: It is dependent on the relationship for us. And so with the growers that we’ve been working with for a long time, obviously I’ve never missed a payment they’re willing to give me terms and they’re willing extend terms even longer as I grow my business. Yeah. With new growers, I’ve gotta pay them upfront.
Peter: Got it.
Bryan: And that just kind of establishes the trust and then maybe the third time I see them in person, I can ask for ninety days.
Peter: So have you run into situations where the growers actually struggle, have business struggles at all? Or Oh gosh. Things like that?
Bryan: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Of course. There are growers that struggle there. One thing I’ve learned in dealing with the French is that I don’t burn the bridge with the French.
If they are struggling, I, in terms of quality, and I don’t compromise on quality, I don’t fire them. I just slowly back away.
Peter: I see.
Bryan: And then if they start making good quality again and I hear about it, I can approach them again. And everybody understands what’s going on, but it allows me to save the grace to come back to them at a later day by not saying, I don’t wanna do business with you anymore.
Peter: Yeah. And word gets around Yeah. About you and your reputation
Bryan: That’s right.
Peter: The French.
Bryan: That’s right.
Peter: Yeah. You’re way over here in Seattle and they’re all together. They’re all together. Know what’s going on. Yeah.
Right? So interesting. So you’ve got so you’ve got the the product you’re buying and then you are shipping it.
Bryan: Yeah. Importing it temperature controlled on containers.
Peter: Okay.
Bryan: And then shipping it via UPS and FedEx to customers across the country. Now,
Peter: how do you control the temperature?
Bryan: We don’t. We monitor weather windows.
Peter: I see.
Bryan: And we have insulated compostable packaging.
Peter: Got it. So when it goes into the box, it’s
Bryan: It’s got Cave Tem.
Peter: Cave Tem. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Okay.
Bryan: I started with customization. Okay. Went away from it as we grew, and then went back to it with automated customization. I used to do it all by hand. I used to look, you know, here’s Pete, he’s my customer.
Yeah. This is what I sent him before. And I would keep notes and I’d say like, these are the wines that Pete likes, these are the wines that Pete doesn’t like. And I’d have my inventory sheet right here, and I’d say, okay, in the next allocation, I’ll give Pete this one, and this one, and this one, and this one. And it was all by hand.
And I had files of people. That’s how customization started. We went away from that, and I started putting people into buckets where I had 20 different buckets of like minded people. Yeah. And that worked for a while.
And then I wanted to do even more customization and we invested in automation that allows us to put products in and people to choose
Peter: on their own. Nice. Nice. So you kind of come full circle.
Bryan: Yeah. And then one of the things we do for our club allocations, we’ve put together these newspapers, these quarterly newspapers, which of course have fun graphics, but then have some serious stories about Instagram, the world’s best champagne stopper, or an article all about a region in champagne. So we’re going to take you in-depth on a particular region and how it relates to a bottle in your allocation. So a lot of different efforts and of course newsletter, email marketing efforts to educate our club member as to what they’re receiving in their allocation, why we’ve picked it, right? Adding value in the experience.
Once just recently heard a club member describe us as a book club for champagne.
Peter: Yeah.
Bryan: Where they love to get our champagne, they have our newspaper, they have the description card, they have their group of friends come gather and learn about these different champagnes.
Peter: Well, the thing that I find that I really enjoy is the newspaper element of it. This physical
Bryan: Yeah.
Peter: Manifestation. You could have sent out some email Right. But you’re not, you know, you maybe you’re gonna look at it in your phone or your iPad or something and it’s just not gonna be the same experience. I mean, look at this. I I just love the the colors you have here, the graphics.
I don’t know who did your graphics.
Bryan: We’ve got a great, artist.
Peter: And
Bryan: Date date that great.
Peter: Date that great. I mean, this is just fun.
Bryan: Try to have fun with it.
Peter: This is fun.
Bryan: Yeah. That’s all to make the the club membership educational and an an experience that you wanna keep receiving.
Peter: So it’s not just a it’s not just a quarterly bill on
Bryan: your Right.
Peter: Visa card and you’re just like, oh, why are you know, because I’ve joined other clubs in the past where they don’t do I mean, it’s just like, come and get your wine Yeah. Or that’s it. You know? Yeah. Maybe a maybe a tasting or something like that.
But nothing to the extent that you guys are doing this. I mean, this is really
Bryan: Focusing on what the customer wants.
Peter: Yeah.
Bryan: Asking the customer what can we do better? What do give me the dirty. Mhmm. I don’t want the clean. I want the dirty.
And give it to me anonymously however you want to give it to me, but give it to me and we make changes on that. And we make changes that are difficult operationally.
Peter: Okay.
Bryan: Right? Customization is we’re having a quarter of our club members customize now and that’s only going up. It was probably more this time. So, you know, completely changing our description cards because I wanted to go from a lengthy description of a couve to three words. I wanted to simplify it even more.
Yeah. And it’s like very hard to take a 180 SKUs and change all of the description cards
Peter: Right. For
Bryan: But that’s what the customer wanted. Yeah. So that’s what we’re doing. And not folk, you know, we have a lot of copy cats out there and I take that as a badge of honor. Sure.
They’re doing what we’re doing. We are not gonna focus on being better than them. We are going to focus on those two pillars, the best quality and the best customer service.
Peter: Yeah.
Bryan: And keep those guys, yeah, we’re aware, but really driving our values and in the end, it seems like those guys are still back there. Mhmm. Hopefully.
Peter: And you guys are continuing to grow and Hopefully.
Bryan: And Grow or die. Grow or die.
Peter: The the growers say the same thing. Right?
Bryan: Yeah.
Peter: So so what else what are we missing? What what’s what’s one thing if you were talking to a business owner who might have might be might have plateaued in their business. You know, we have a lot of business owners that talk you know, we talk to. They’re probably on average, you know, five to ten years in the business. A lot of businesses that we talk to, you know, they hit a plateau.
Right? They found success. They’re sustainable. Mhmm. So they got over the hump.
Right? That that’s hardest part of getting over the hump and becoming sustainable. But now, they wanna, you know, you know, you have to grow because if you’re not growing, you’re dying Mhmm. As you pointed out there. So, what what is one thing that you would say to them?
I mean, you’ve given a lot of great examples here, but what’s something you might
Bryan: tell Well, people to I think I I mean, ask your customers what they want and ask them for what I call the dirty. Ask them for the hard news. Tell me what I’m doing good, yes, but also tell me what I’m doing wrong and make the potentially difficult operational switch to deliver on that. Got it. And then publicize it, right?
Once you make those changes, tell all the customers, I made these changes for you.
Peter: For you.
Bryan: You told me to make these changes. Sometimes I know the customers want the change. They don’t actually tell me I make the change and then I tell them we did this because you said to do it. Yeah. I don’t know if they were I just knew they wanted it.
Peter: Got it. Well, and as you pointed out, you’re making the club that you wanna be a part of and continue to be a member of.
Bryan: Every allocation. Would I wanna receive this allocation?
Peter: Right.
Bryan: Would I wanna read this material?
Peter: Right.
Bryan: Does it represent fat cork? It drives my staff probably a little crazy.
Peter: Brian, this fat cork sounds amazing. So, you know, we’ve got a lot of listeners in the Seattle area. We’ve got listeners throughout The US and maybe even beyond. How do we, how do they, get in touch with you or how do they find out more about Fat Quark and what you have to offer and how do they sign up?
Bryan: Yeah. Well, fatquark.com, if you’re not in the Seattle area or if you are in Seattle, come down to our cave, Lower Queen Anne, just look it up on Google, Fat Cork, F A T C O R K. My email is Brian, B R Y A N, the proper way to spell Brian.
Peter: There we go.
Bryan: FatCork. I love talking to other business owners and people that have questions.
Peter: Okay. Great. Excellent. Well, I appreciate your time today. Thank you very much, and this has been great.
Bryan: Yeah. Cheers.
Peter: Thanks. Cheers. Thanks for listening to the field guide. If you have questions, topic ideas, or guest suggestions, we wanna hear from you. Email us anytime, podcast@bizmarketing.com.
You can find this episode and all past episodes on our website at bizmarketing.com. Just head to free resources to catch up or revisit anything you missed. And if you need help marketing your service business, whether that’s getting more leads, improving follow-up, or fixing what’s not working, you can schedule a free consultation with our team. Just go to bizmarketing.com and click the let’s talk button. I’m Peter Wilson of Biz Marketing.
Thanks for spending your time with us. We’ll see you next time on the field guide.
