It is hard for me to believe that it was just five years ago on May 24, 2003, that we launched our business. From a home based business out of our garage to a 4,000 square foot store, we have seen a lot of changes. In November 2005, I penned a short history of Fine Vine Wines, LLC, The Wine Maker's Toy Store and our philosophy. That was 2-1/2 years ago, so I felt it was a good time to tell all of our wonderful customers about our history and re-iterate our philosophy.
Before I start, I should tell you that my name is George Cornelius and I am the owner of The Wine Maker's Toy Store. It is a family business that I started and for the first 2 years, I did everything from taking orders to managing the website to shipping boxes. During the third year, my brother, Mark, joined me. Chances are very good that if you call the store, you will get one of us on the phone.
This venture started on September 27, 2001 when I had a heart attack at the ripe old age of 46. It was the result of bad genes, not taking care of myself and working way too many hours. I am a CPA by trade and at the time of the heart attack, I was the Vice-President of Finance and Information Systems for a small company, working 60-80 hours per week and going nowhere! After the attack, my doctor suggested I drink 1-2 glasses of red wine per day. My wife wanted to help me stay well, so we started sharing a bottle of wine each night. At $10-15 per bottle, the cost started to add up and the wines were not always good. As a result, I went on the Internet looking for ways to save money on my wine consumption. I don't remember exactly how I stumbled onto home wine making, but I wound up at grapestompers.com. After a lot of reading and looking at other sites, I went back to grapestompers and purchased my starter kit.
I started my first batch, a Vino del Vida 7 liter Cabernet/Merlot blend on December 16, 2001 and bottled it on January 13, 2002 (and I still have 1 bottle left!). I was so impressed with the quality of the wine that by the end of April, I had 8 carboys going and in desperate need of a wine cellar. In May, I took 45 square feet from the garage and built my wine cellar. Later that month, we also traveled to North Carolina to personally meet Tom Burgess the owner of grapestompers to talk about opening a home wine making store in Dallas. At that time, there were only 3 local home brew stores (LHBS) in the entire Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex of 5,000,000 people and all three were focused almost entirely on home beer making, not wine making. With this information, I decided Dallas needed another LHBS, but one dedicated to wine making only.
My wife, Janna, and I incorporated the business in July of 2002 and started putting together the business plan. As an aside, Janna is a CPA, as well. We decided to start with an internet only business to build a clientele that could support the business while it grew and helped us keep the overhead down. Therefore, in the spring of 2003, I started building the web site (Yes, I am the webmaster, as well.) and we went live on the internet on Memorial Day 2003 working out of our home. The wine kits were stored in the home office and the garage became the warehouse. If you come to the retail store, I will show you the shelf that held all of our wine kits (all 40 of them). We now maintain an inventory of 1,000 wine kits.
On June 6, 2003, I was laid off from the job that contributed to my heart attack. The plan had been for me to stay employed until such time as Fine Vine Wines could replace my income. Obviously, that did not happen! I spent the next 6 months trying to grow the store while looking for another job. On December 13, 2003, I started working as a Controller for another small company in Dallas.
As the Toy Store continued to grow, we decided it was time to open the retail store and in July of 2004, we started construction and opened the doors on October 9. I steadily grew disenchanted with my job as Controller and; consequently, resigned on October 31, 2004. At that time, I decided to work contract while the Toy Store continued to grow. On April 4, 2005, I left my contract job and started devoting all my time to the business.
In October 2005, my brother, Mark, joined the team. For the next 2 years, it was just the 2 of us. Mark managed the shipping, which gave me more time to talk to customers, manage the web site and keep the books. Last fall, we hired a college student, Nick Pozderac, to help us with the heavy lifting and in May of this year we added another employee, Rick Suarez, to help with the shipping and wine making. I would be negligent to forget my 17 year old daughter, Ali, who comes in 3-4 days a week after school to help process the orders.
During the summer of 2007, it became clear we were out of space and needed more room. Despite the "efforts" of our future landlord and their real estate agent, we were finally able to execute a lease for our current space and moved in on October 15, 2007.
As to our philosophy, it is quite simple. I want to prove that you can give excellent customer service, take excellent care of our employees and still make money. It seems that so many companies these days don't care about their customers or their employees. All they care about is making as much money as fast as they can. I want to disprove their philosophy. In that end, I am not trying to be another Neiman-Marcus, but I definitely do not want to be the Wal-Mart of the home wine making stores. My objective is to be the store that you can count on to give you a fair price with unsurpassed customer service.
The second facet of our philosophy is our 100% money back guarantee. Besides the fact that this is the correct approach, I do this because I believe in what I sell and I want you to get involved and stay involved in the hobby. Obviously, I make more money if you keep buying from me, DUH!!! But that being said, whether you continue to buy from me or not, I want you to walk away (surf away!) from Fine Vine Wines with a good taste in your mouth (pardon the pun) and I want you to tell your friends that you did business with at least one store that treated you like you were important. That is why my beginner's starter package is so complete. Unlike other home wine making stores that do not sell you the correct equipment, i.e., a 5-gallon carboy when the wine kits specifically say to make the wine in a 6-gallon carboy or they include a cheap plastic corker that is junk, when they could include a nice metal corker for just a few dollars more, a starter package from Fine Vine Wines will give you the best opportunity to make a quality wine while making the process fun and enjoyable.
This leads to the final facet of our philosophy, price. During the creation of our business plan, we identified 2 groups of potential customers. The first group is the customer that is only interested in the cheapest price. This group is difficult to use as a solid base because, if they look hard enough, they will always be able to find a cheaper price on individual items. Being the "price leader" requires one to spend an inordinate amount of time tracking everyone else's prices and will significantly impact one's ability to be profitable. In addition, price leaders do not make enough money to offer customer service. The second group of potential customers are those where price is a factor, but who also consider other factors as well. It should also be pointed out that you rarely see value based companies in the bankruptcy court. On the other hand, "price leaders" are there all of the time. As a result of the above, we decided to offer competitive pricing, periodic sales, reward programs and outstanding customer service.
As I indicated, it has been 2-1/2 years since my last article about my company and its philosophy. During that time, The Wine Maker's Toy Store has grown by 400%. Based on that growth and the feedback I constantly receive from our thousands of satisfied customers, I have to conclude that my philosophies are not only working but appreciated; therefore, there is little chance of us changing our ways anytime soon!
At this time, I would like to thank every one of you that has supported us over the first 5 years. You are helping me to achieve my dream of being the best home wine making store, anywhere. We don't want to be the biggest store, just the BEST!
Cheers!
George Cornelius, President
Fine Vine Wines, LLC, The Wine Maker's Toy Store
