I’m trying to help out the shop I work at again. It’s got a very good but small wine selection and sells lots of shelf-stable gourmet foods, so their thought is to develop a wine club that ships a wine and food basket every quarter.
Do you guys who have a club use a particular kind of software to handle it? Does that depend on the size of the club? If not software, how do you handle details?
What are some of the things you do to make the club interesting for members? Discounts on product? On tastings? Special communications? What works best?
One thing they’re thinking of is using wines that are special, and not in our store stock.
Wine & food shipments: Not sure you can really ship these together (I’m thinking about packing & adult signature). I’ve never seen them put together anyway. Shipping separate means they’ll arrive at different times.
S/W: Depends on the size of the club. A few dozen can be handled with a spreadsheet or a database pgm. Does your store’s POS have a wine club add-on maybe?
Member benefits: Some are good for local members (free tastings, events). Others like discounts work for anywhere. Something like 25% off your wine shipment (or whatever % you wish to use) and any re-orders of the same wines within a month. 15% on any other wine orders. Maybe have a couple levels of clubs. You could start with a “four bottle a quarter club” (or whatever) then once you’re underway and have things ironed out offer a “case a quarter club” with a better discount.
Planning ahead: Assume your club with be successful and have hundreds, maybe thousands of members. This will mean sophisticated WC s/w and someone to run it on possibly a full- or near full-time basis. With a small club you can do lots of hand-holding and special orders. That is, if you plan on letting the member pick whatever wines they want or to substitute if they don’t want something you plan on sending that’ll work with a small club, but once you get large it’ll be a lot of work and tough to manage (and higher costs to you).
Thank you for the insights. I’m not sure about the club add-on, but I don’t think so. POS does have a customer database, so that may be a help. I do know that one of the specific questions they’ve had is what’s necessary contractually with members.
As for the shipping together aspect… gift baskets are shipped as a single unit all the time; wine included. Lots of crunched up newsprint, airbag pillows and/or styrofoam peanuts. The adult signature is for the wine, but there’s no reason other things can’t be in the package.
