In this episode of Sipping Success, host Casey Haakinson sits down with Mark Clinard, the esteemed owner of Both Barrels Wine, to uncork the secrets of the wine distribution business. Mark takes us on a journey from his unexpected start as a wine program manager to becoming a key player in wine importing and distribution, emphasizing the pivotal trends that have shaped the wine industry over the years. From the surge of Australian wines in the early ’90s to the current fascination with old-world wines and Mediterranean blends, Mark provides a deep dive into the dynamics of wine preferences and market shifts.
Key Topics Discussed:
• 1:00 Min Mark’s Origin Story in Wine: Starting as a bartender and thrust unexpectedly into managing a wine program, Mark shares how his passion for wine led him from retail to founding Both Barrels Wine, focusing on importing and distributing fine wines.
• 3:00 Min Evolving Wine Trends: Insights into how wine trends have shifted from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere, with a current emphasis on old-world wines such as Pervalstra, Jose, and wines from Spain and Italy.
• 8:00 Min Business Strategies for Success: Mark reveals his strategies for capitalizing on the seasonal peaks of the Miami market, focusing on independent restaurants and retailers to maximize distribution efficiency and profitability.
• 11:00 Min Adapting to Challenges: From overcoming the anti-French wine sentiment to navigating the impacts of COVID-19, Mark discusses the resilience and adaptability required to thrive in the wine industry.
Conclusion:
Mark Clinard’s wealth of experience and innovative approaches to wine distribution offer invaluable lessons on market adaptation, trend anticipation, and strategic partnerships. His journey from bartender to wine distribution leader underscores the importance of passion, resilience, and a keen eye for evolving consumer preferences in achieving success in the competitive world of wine. As the beverage industry continues to evolve, Mark’s insights provide a roadmap for emerging and established professionals alike to navigate the shifting tides of consumer taste and market dynamics.
Mushroom Media
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Both Barrels Wine
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-clinard-66589a195/
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Thing mushroom media has a solution for you all right uh thank you Mark linard for joining us here Mark is the owner of both barrels wine uh great to have you on nice to be here thanks for having me Casey thank you so much and uh you’re
Joining us uh from Florida is that right right yeah I’m in Miami okay wonderful well um let’s get into your background here could you uh tell us a little bit about your history and background um you are of course a distributor of Fine Wines so could you tell us how you got
Into the industry sure um well I started out as a a bartender as a lot of people in the industry did and um the manager at my the restaurant where I was working was fire one day and and the owner came in and turned around to me and said
You’re in charge of the wine program and then he left the building and so it was a very uh abrupt uh jump into the industry um so I ended up just reading everything I could about wine this is Circ 1989 by the way okay and um and end
Up getting recruited out of that position into U fine wine sales uh for a local distributor in Greensboro North Carolina and then I worked in the wholesale side for a little while while and then I got into the supplier side in the early 990s uh back when Australian
Wine was kind of becoming the hot category and I was stayed in that side of the business mostly the on the imported side as a regional rep for uh seven years and then and bought into a company out of Seattle called The Click wine group and they had a more diverse
Portfolio including some Australian wines and some French wines and Spanish uh products and so I did that for quite some time and pretty much stay on the importing side for most of my career and as of late as of the last you know five years adding the wholesale distribution to the imported
Side okay great so you had mentioned uh when when you were getting started in the 90s Australia was um a a really hot uh location to bring wine into the US uh uh can you kind of Enlighten us on the trends right now yeah the trends right now um uh it’s
Interesting how the sort of pendulum swings back and forth between you know Southern Hemisphere and Northern Hemisphere I would say that nor Northern Hemisphere with what’s happening in the provance Ros category uh salair white burgundy uh vertino uh Southern Italian Reds pretty much anything from Spain including
Alberino and Trix sadura I think the old world is kind of charming people away from maybe uh categories that were more entrenched with California New Zealand Argentina and Australia so I see that happening now okay and then um let’s kind of maybe dive into the day-to-day of your
Business can you um kind of walk us through your your overall business strategy like at the beginning of the of the year or maybe as we kind of sit into the fourth quarter here what are maybe some strategies you’re looking to end the year strong with yeah well you know
Miami is quite a unique Market because it’s even though there’s a lot of yearr round residents here they still very dependent on season which you know kicks up when all the other areas start to see some snowfall so from November through April it’s the big season and for some
Distributors including myself it’s at least 50% of their total revenue if not profit certainly Revenue um and so uh you know this the strategy from my side is you know gearing up for that season making sure that I’m aware of what’s going on in the industry what the hot
New restaurants are who the retail players are and and and keep in mind my my area is quite small I’m just selling basically to two counties I’m not I’m not a Statewide distributor uh I plan to at some point but uh right now I’m really focusing on uh the same areas
That Michelin is is focusing on which is you know Miami Dade County basically so um you know I’m looking for you know uh restaurants that are not part of any national chain that are independent can make their own decisions um and that have a a Savvy wine program where stuff
That I’m bringing in would make a difference okay great so that that allows you it’s almost like you’re I mean I know Miami is a big city but as far as like a business and a in and in a strategy it almost probably feels like a small town to you just because you’re
Just hitting that one particular market right yeah it’s uh it’s 6.2 million people um so it’s bigger than Boston it’s bigger than the DC Metro Area including Baltimore uh it’s become a pretty massive town it’s also an extremely international town uh and there’s a lot of you it’s something like
A third of all Spanish wine sold in America or sold in this County oh wow yeah it’s there’s some very interesting reasons why you’d want to be an importer here and it’s it’s no coincidence that southern glazers started in Miami and was able to build a 26 billion company
Off the heels of their success here and so tell me like with your being in the industry um since the the late 80s early 90s how how what are some things that you’ve done to adapt over the years well uh the first thing I do is
Don’t listen to the media um if the media is talking about something it means the trend is already happened uh I like to be sort of at the Forefront and you know the fine wine uh business is very very closely aligned with the fine restaurant industry um if you’re
Spending time in the stores uh and you’re trying to build a brand in the stores uh in the retail environment you’re a little bit too late so you really have to be talking to Psalms talking to um you know attention forming uh restaurant tours that are on The Cutting Edge of
Cuisine so give you an example um Greek wines which have been sort of a tertiary you know old world business here in the US have now become one of the most interesting parts of my portfolio because the hot trend is Mediterranean uh all the new restaurants
Here uh save two or three are have that Mediterranean style or they’re blending you know Turkish and Lebanese and Greek uh a little bit of Italian but much more into the sort of Eastern side of the aan and Mediterranean side and so uh those Trends I see as being something that
Might last for quite some time okay uh what specific maybe tactics or tools are you using to to grow your business within that two count region you you have been talking about you know one of the things that I’ve done over the years um is you know when you when you get a
Lead and you find for instance an account that that’s maybe in a part of of town that you do don’t normally travel to you kind of have to assess what what’s around it because logistically I have to be careful about spending you know where I’m sending the
Product you know it’s could be a very most Distributors lose a lot of income trying to run around the territory and burning up you know Logistics money and time and and paying drivers to deliver one case to a customer that’s across the county
So what I try to do is find out if if you know from that lead are there other accounts in the area that I could sell to have a pretty big portfolio so I look at the whole neighborhood as a holistic approach to selling is there a good
Independent wine shop there is there a caterer there is there a maybe an independent Hotel um so Soup To Nuts trying to find you know trying to carve out a mini territory within my territory so that when my truck stops there it’s hitting five six accounts and it’s much more
Profitable okay yeah that makes a lot of sense um can you talk about um really I mean at any point whether it be recent or uh in the past like any particular challenges or obstacles you faced you overcame and you know something that you’re proud of um well we can certainly
Talk about some of the challenges I don’t know how well I overcame them but we had a little thing called the anti-french sentiment that happened you you probably I don’t I don’t need to belver the point everybody remembers the freedom fries and I had the fastest growing French wine
Brand in the country uh at the time and uh it was selling about a half million cases a year okay and was you know 75% of the profit of the company at the time and then all of the retailers took it out to support our our quest for weapons of mass
Destruction and uh pretty much killed the company so that was challenging so that was not something I recovered from however uh I landed on my feet in terms of I I sold my shares in the company to my other partners uh and I ended up starting a
New company and was able to capture some different Trends I got out of the French category for a while because it was really a mess to be honest with you and I was able to Pivot and get into Spanish wine uh which was kind of becoming a
Real curiosity with a lot of Fine Wine buyers out there and that was sort of my salvation on that end of it now another challenge that happened and I’m not alone in this is uh the co uh when covid hit it didn’t it helped the stores but
You know my my company is always been on premise oriented uh in fact at the time I was selling you know 90% of my goods to restaurants and so they all shut down this was in the DC area by the way and so I decided to move to the one part of
The world that didn’t that seem to have shaking off the covid you know regulations and they were open for business and so I started the company in Miami okay okay so that that was the impetus for starting up in Miami that’s right and so you you’ve talked you’ve
Given us some good uh points of interest in terms of like Trends from when you started um and I thought was interesting like one of your uh talking points there was you know don’t listen to the media and whatnot um how do you stay up to date on latest trends and development
Um can you shed some more light on that I mean honestly um you know when I it’s interesting when I I deal with a lot of Caterers and uh it’s always interesting to see how much the their list is the change excuse me I should say uh from
Month to month you it was a time where you know they you had to have bellinis and you had to have uh you know mimosas and you had to you know I’m speaking more in terms of General Li but when it comes to Wine it was you
Know oky chardonay y y but when you when you see when these Caterers are doing parties they’re getting specific requests from consumers about what they want to have at the party and so it’s it changes almost every six months now you got to have perol Ros you got to have
Salair or some sort of L soia Blanc you you got to have uh they want rioa they they want pazle Robel cab they don’t want Napa cab so I listen those Caterers and and quite honestly my portfolio changes has changed I should say over the last year to to mirror what those
Consumer requests are uh even though I profess to be an expert in all things from all areas if you have too big of a portfolio that tries to be all things to all people a good chunk of it’s not going to sell and it’s going to be dead
Inventory and it’s going to kill the company so I’m trying to sort of pick the eyes out of the trends that are going on right now the other thing that I would say is when I go to restaurants uh I sit at a bar and I look
Around the room and I see what’s going out um I mean this is this is not you know some some massive secret everybody in my industry does it to some expect to some extent but I think it’s really important to go to Cutting Edge restaurants and see what people are
Ordering uh look at the bartender see the the cocktail Trends see the wines that people are asking for um by name you know PA Brands ainio and chardonay and Cabernet are PA Brands Soo Blanc has of late has become the number one interest in fine wine dining um salair
Even though most people don’t know that it’s also syian Blanc that’s become a hot item so I listened to what uh consumers in restaurant environments are are asking for um and uh and I I don’t listen to the media great yeah um so let’s discuss uh any Partnerships or collaborations
You’ve formed so this could be to help your current uh business uh there that you have right now or anything significant in the past that you know partnership wise or collaboration that made a difference for you yeah you know in every in every country that that I uh
Bring wine in from uh I have uh either an export manager of a company that I trust or I have a person on the ground that I pay to manage the flow of business business um uh it’s it’s it’s critical to First have a direct buying relationship with a winery not just a
Guy with a brand to put it to put it like that it’s there’s a lot of people with a lot of Brands you really need to drill down to who’s running the winery operation and have a direct dialogue with them but then also have a man on
The ground that can kind of execute for you when you’re not there uh the other partner ship that I have is with a label designer uh because some of the brands that I do are agency Brands and the other ones and several of them I should say are owned Brands brands that I’ve
Created from scratch oh um and I have a history of creating brands for the US market and so I have about five different artists that I go to I put the tender out to them to show them the opportunity the brand brief and then they come back to me with ideas and
They’re all they know that I’m serious so they tend to show me good designs without me having an necess pay for it up front they know that if I choose them it’s going to be I’m going to pay them well and um so that that kind of collaboration with designers I think is
Critical so being able to create brands does that give you a leg up on strengthening relationships with with wineries then uh yes and no it depends on the in the the size of the winery it’s a big Winery they want everything they want their own Brands they want
Your Brands they they want to burn through the product that’s in those tanks and barrels and they got you know Harvest coming up so they need to space if it’s a small Winery they’re wary of somebody else’s brand and I’m and then you have to be careful with that because
Uh yeah they may have better juice and and I I love dealing with small wineries because the juice tends to be way better but I have to be careful because they don’t always put the best juice in my label um I’ve had many situations where we tasted the product it was fantastic
And then I moment I left the country they put something else in the bottle not naming names just saying sure it can be very tricky plus don’t forget you own that inventory now nobody else is gonna it’s not gonna be sold anywhere else
It’s up to you to buy it it’s up to you to sell it yeah so all the risk is on you okay exactly so um with with all your experiences what um what would you what sort of advice would you give to somebody coming into importing and distributing fine
Wine yeah I think it’s um if you’re coming in from another industry um it’s very tough to take um with very few exceptions it’s very tough to take experiences from other Industries and apply it to this one a because it’s so compliance heavy don’t underestimate the powder keg of money
You’re going to need to to be able to sell properly if you’re going to selling as a national importer um don’t underestimate the kind of margins you’re going to need to scale up the business uh most people will tell you it’s a 30% business but that’s for the big established Distributors that were
Started after prohibition and they they’ve had already bought and sold all of their their infrastructure and they can afford to work at 30% you need to have much longer margins um because there’s going to be spoilage there’s going to be brands that don’t work there’s going to be a lot of headaches
Along the way it’s like building a house it always takes longer and costs more than you think it’s going to take yeah isn’t that the truth um so um in your business uh the way that you’ve really um you know built a nice career you know what what sort of values do you
Abide by what what helps you what’s kind of your Guiding Light in dealing with whether it be vendors employees and also customers you know you if you’re a small distributor um and you’re selling against the Giants out there you have to be nimble uh the you have to have it’s when
There’s an old expression it’s not one thing you do it’s everything you do got to have great product you got to have better Logistics and I and I stress that because we live in an age now when you know people are ordering stuff on Amazon on their phone and if it doesn’t come
The next day they’re disappointed you know being a restaurant tour um they what they don’t want to hear is you know that you know they have to get their order in by three uh to get it next week you know so um I think having a really bulletproof
Logistics um taking the logistics very seriously which a lot of find what wine distributors don’t I think is critical um you know it’s just it’s um in terms of values I I I have a very good pilot but it’s it’s not a Som palette it’s more a palette that’s that’s designed
For successful Brands like I know I kind of know where the American Consumer is now having said before like Miami consumer is not necessarily an American Consumer it’s very International so you’ve got to be wary of of what flavor profiles are going to work um and don’t
Just buy stuff that you like um buy stuff pragmatically that makes sense it’s going to sell you can always have some Pet Brands that you love that are yours you can drink them at night if nobody else does but you have to meet market demand in terms of the flavor
Profile and then more importantly you you’ve got to be better than everybody else when it comes to Logistics so are Logistics and staying Nimble are those that help separate you uh particularly right now in in Miami are there any other say differentiators you think you have over competition yeah
Now I I spent the last two years you know analyzing the Miami Market uh before I jumped into the distribution side and what I noticed was there was certain deficiencies in the marketplace um there wasn’t a good uh after two frosts back to back there wasn’t any
Salair under 20 in the wholesale price I have the best price salair in the market and everybody wants it and I could make more money on it but I use it as leverage to get everything else sold I have a vodka brand that I picked up uh
That I sell very inexpensively it’s very high quality vodka um but I sell it and I’m not a I’m not a Spirits guy but I know people I know people need it I know that restaurants need that cheap cost of goods for their well so I have certain
Sacrificial Lambs that I put out there I don’t lose money on it but I have certain things I put out there that I know folks need uh to make their whole beverage program work you got to have some sakis now I have amazing sakis that at all price points I have Korean soju
So I’m bringing those things in not because I think it makes the portfolio look pretty but I know it’s it’s um there’s speak back to the trends thing like I know there’s some trends that are happening that are bringing less traditional beverages to a more worldly
Wine list now um and so you’re seeing Jun my d jeno uh saki on a wine list that whereas years ago you would never have seen that it would just been for sushi places so I’m trying to bring in things that make a difference and kind of set me
Apart um but at the same time not have a bloated portfolio that people can’t use yeah well that’s great we could probably have a whole another episode on saki but that’s that’s some interesting Insight on the strategy of strategically carrying other types of spirits we’ve been talking with Mark
Clenard owner of both barrels wine uh mark for those in the audience uh if anybody wants to connect with you or think about partnering with you what’s the best way to reach out uh where do people find you well I’m on the net at bothar barrels
Wine.com um I’m also on all the big you know uh social media platforms you can find me pretty easily uh there’s a phone number and an email on my website feel free to reach out I’d love to talk about collaboration if some body’s got some interesting products they want to bring
To Market or even if they want to talk about you know Partnerships in growing the brand and growing the company and other areas okay well great thanks for joining us here and um this has been another episode of sipping success brought to you by mushroom media and uh Mark thanks
Again for the conversation here it’s been really insightful and uh you know Welcome to our community thank you thanks so much Casey nice to meet you and nice to chat with you and that’s a wrap on another insightful episode of sipping success brought to you by mushroom media we hope
Our discussions have left you thirsting for more knowledge in the world of Beverages and alcohol stay connected with us on social media for updates and remember the journey to success is best enjoyed one sip at a time keep exploring Trends connecting with leaders and scaling your brand until our glasses
Meet again cheers your continued success and may your cups always runneth over with inspiration we’ll catch you in the next Episode