Afternoon Brief, October 23rd

Feds Sue Total Wine in Southern Glazer’s ‘Antitrust’ Case: The Federal Trade Commission has filed for a federal court order to force Total Wine to comply with requests for documentation in an ongoing investigation into US distributor Southern Glazer’s...

Raise your hand if your winery enjoyed a spike in wine club acquisition in 2021. We have heard (and seen the metrics) that many wineries were able to not only keep their club members through 2020, but also saw an increase in acquisitions in 2021 with the increased traffic. Fantastic! Too bad we can’t sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labors. Now that we have your attention, it is time to consider the normal tail of attrition that follows – usually 18 to 36 months after the initial join. That means there will be several cancellations happening sometime in the next several months. Now, raise your hand if visitor counts are slowing from last year. We know all wine regions saw an overall decrease in traffic in 2022. Most likely, the actual number of new member signups is also slowing. Simple algebra will tell us if the number of new members joining is slowing, and the natural attrition spike is looming, we may have storm clouds on the horizon. The good news is that we can g