Originally published on September 5,2009.
There’s a video making the rounds among wine folk on Facebook called Wine Sales 101. It features little animated wine salespeople talking in freaky robotic voices about shoving overpriced, not-so-fabulous wines into the retail accounts on which they call. Sadly, it’s not a work of fiction. This conversation takes place frequently among real life salespeople in real life voices….generally at the end of every month. And certainly at their suppliers’ fiscal year ends.
As a tiny store, I don’t get a lot of these requests to bring in crap wine at inflated prices. I’d like to think it’s because my suppliers know I won’t do it, so they don’t even ask. But the real reason is I’m just not big enough to move the needle on their year end numbers.
So rather then dread the requests to “stock this schlock” that the big retailers get to contend with, I can look forward to the good things that come with fiscal year ends….like the urge to do a little spring cleaning (or winter, summer, or fall cleaning, depending on when the accounting year ends.)
This is when many importers and distributors take the opportunity to get rid of their bin ends – the random 2 cases of this, 5 cases of that taking up space in their warehouses. Sure, many of these random cases may be over-aged whites that should just be sold as fancy vinegar. But just as often, they could be very good wines in such small quantities that they fly under everyone’s radar. At least until the end of the fiscal year when most operations managers just want them to go away. Close out lists appear and eagle-eyed store owners (I prefer “eagle-eyed” to “cheap”) can pour over them, pick out the goodies, and offer the gems to their customers at great prices for as long as they last.
This is where the ever repeated adage to find a retailer you trust comes in.
Because sometimes these “get them while they last” deals are truly great deals (toot-my-own-horn-alert) – such as at Frankly Wines.
And sometimes they’re the sort of deals you can only get from freaky robotic-voiced sales people practicing Wine Sales 101. And while they may be funny to watch, you really don’t want to be drinking their wine!