BerserkerDay 10 (as featured in Forbes!) Master Thread - MASSIVE RECORDS SET!!!

(update 1/26/19: THIS is the forum where you want to be, as THIS is the forum where all the offers will be posted! Stay tuned…as it starts at 7:30 am Pacific! More information in this post, and the rest of this thread…)

This will be the principal thread for all discussions related to BerserkerDay 10 #BD10 - a buying extravaganza unrivaled in any other wine community, anywhere. One day (two, if including the Grand Cru Crü Advance Purchase Day) where over $500,000 in wine and wine-related goods are sold to eager wine lovers throughout this community. (new record set last year!)

First of all, BerserkerDay (full history posted below) is a celebration of the founding of this amazing and vibrant community of wine lovers around the world, and it started on the first anniversary of our founding, 10 years ago. The idea is to have a day-long celebration by introducing wine and wine-related products to the community at large, at deals that you CANNOT find elsewhere, primarily because those making the offer are so small that they don’t have ‘sales’. It’s a fantastic way to introduce yourself to some new small wineries, in particular, and I can attest - as can thousands of others who have bought on BerserkerDay - that I’ve found some of my favorite producers this way.

How does BerserkerDay work?

Anybody - registered member or not - can view the BerserkerDay subforum (where you are now) and the offers that wineries, retailers, and other wine-related product sellers will have posted. It starts approximately 7:30 am PST on January 27th, and each offer will have its own thread. I will be posting them in chunks of approximately 10, in intervals of approximately 20-30 minutes. Threads from prior launch groups will NOT bump to the top of the forum when replies are made, preserving the current launch group’s space ‘in line’, pegging that launch group at the top. One exception: the Tier 3 Sponsors of BerserkerDay (those participants who have contributed to the PR campaign currently underway) will have their listings pegged at the top of the BerserkerDay forum for the entire day. There are 8 such Sponsors, so it will be a much smaller group pegged atop the forum.

Discussion - as always - is HIGHLY encouraged. That’s part of the fun! Share this event with your friends, on your social media accounts! Our Twitter handle is @WineBerserkers for those that tweet, and the more you share, the more fun we ALL have here!! I want to see some tagging on Facebook and Twitter, folks!
(Offers are made by the wineries, businesses, retailers, etc, and each offer has its own specific order parameters, which will be outlined in the offer itself. Wine Berserkers does not take any orders, has no e-commerce capabilities, nor licenses to sell wine, so each offer posted will have the directions on how to order)

Categories, specific to BD10: Last year we had Newbie features, and this year we’ll be doing it a little differently. We have several participating wineries/companies that have stepped up as sponsors of the PR campaign (as mentioned above, in launch times) that we’ve run to spread the word to a broader audience. We will have special topic icon category images to highlight the following categories: BerserkerDay Sponsors (all 3 tiers, more information below), 10-year Participants, and Newbies.

Last year, we honored those wineries/retailers who have participated in 5 or more BerserkerDays with a special thread icon, and for the first time, we’ll have a small number of 10-year participants! These champions have participated in the very first BerserkerDay, and most of this small group have participated in EVERY BerserkerDay since! Here is the thread icon that we will use to highlight them:

Newbies have been featured the last few years, and it’s important to highlight them a bit because BerserkerDay is such madness, they easily and quickly get lost in the shuffle. We’ve had features/bios on them in the past, and I’m hoping we can do the same this year, with a separate ‘Newbie Intros’ subforum, as has been done in the past, giving the buying public a few days to look in on these newcomers to BerserkerDay.

Sponsors - because of the PR campaign I elected to run (after consulting with several of our VIP participating wineries/retailers) in order to spread the word about BerserkerDay to a much larger/broader audience, all participants were invited to contribute to the campaign, as they stand to benefit most from it. Each Sponsor will have some combination of special treatment this year as a result. Each will have a feature on our Facebook page (Wine Berserkers | Facebook) and this will begin soon, highlighting their winery/business both there and on a subforum within this BerserkerDay forum in the weeks before BerserkerDay. Tier 2 receives the ‘premier launch time’ in addition to the feature, exact time is yet to be determined. Tier 3 receives the pegged listing, keeping them atop BerserkerDay forum for the entire event. The topic icons for the Sponsors will be the following:

Preview Day/Early Purchase Offers

On January 26th, Saturday, Grand Cru Crü member will have access to the Pre-Launch forum to see ALL the offers, and plan their buying strategies. NO PURCHASES CAN BE MADE FROM THAT FORUM, and violators stand to lose the ability to participate in future BerserkerDays. There are, however, ‘Early Purchase Offers’, wherein BerserkerBusiness members, in a separate forum, can sell their offer on the same day as Preview Day, Jan 26th. Only Grand Cru Crü members will have access to Preview Day and Early Purchase Offers, everybody else (guests and registered members) will be eligible on Jan 27th. Both will be open around the same time

Auctions

Auctions will commence around noon, finishing in at 8pm Pacific. Save some money for auctions, as many of our participating wineries and businesses offer auction items to the community, as thanks for the benefits they get during BerserkerDay, since there is no cost to participate (there is no cost to participate because this maximizes the discounts offered to the community! Rather than take a percentage of sales, the auctions are the way to financially support the community, throughout the year, and are a lot more fun than taking a slice from the deals being offered!)

HISTORY OF BERSERKERDAY:

WHAT IS BERSERKERDAY??

For those who do not know, BerserkerDay was named for the day it was founded at its current location on the web - January 27 - with the URL wineberserkers.com. Each year, on the 27th, I invite wineries, retailers, and other peddlers of the wine industry to offer berserk deals on their wares. Each is posted throughout the day, in groups of about 10, in roughly 30-minute increments, spreading out the fun throughout the day, ending with an auction of even more fantastic items. This day of deals is a fantastic way for those ITB to give back to consumers, and also the reverse, as many, many new and exciting wineries/producers/wines are discovered by Berserkers on BerserkerDay, with purchases made, and discussions from those who might have experience with them. There is NO revenue sharing or cost to any participating winery or retailer, as to do that would raise the prices in the offers - this way, the maximum discount is given to all those who show up on this magical day. It’s also a way for me to give back to what makes Wine Berserkers what it is - the community! All the fantastic content on WB is from you, and here’s a way for me to setup a virtual party for everyone - current and future community members.

History of Wine Berserkers: It’s a common question, so I like to list the history during BerserkerDay. The name ‘Berserkers’ actually comes from Mark Squires (the image below shows when/how the original group of 15 or so was named by him), before the word that bore our community became a banned word on that website and forum. Our growth has never stopped over the past 10 years (there was half a year on another domain name as well) and we’re currently nearly 25,000 registered members strong.


This year, be sure to tell your friends, as I’m opening the BerserkerDay X forum up to anyone who wants to see it - you don’t HAVE to be registered (unless you have an order that requires you to PM the winery, in that case, you better register!) to see the deals. We’ll have a Twitter hashtag of #berserkerday and #BD10 and hope that you can post your favorite threads on Facebook as well on the 27th. PLEASE help point it out to me, so I can see when folks are sharing. My Twitter handle is @toddfrench, so please tag me, and on Facebook, I’m easy to find.

Our PR campaign worked, and now BerserkerDay has been featured by a number of online publications, with hopefully more to come! I’ll update this list as they publish:

Forbes: Where To Find The Best Wine Deals: BerserkerDay January 27
Orange Coast Magazine: Todd French Celebrates 10 Years of Wine Berserkers, World’s Largest Online Wine Community

26th is Saturday

fixed.

So much info on one thread I had to copy/paste and had all the Subscriber/GCC things to switch, as well as BDIX/BD10 etc

Todd,

Curious if you can provide some stats for us:

  1. How many new folks have joined on the site since Jan 1, 2018?
  2. How many more ‘active members’ do we have in that time - folks who post X times per year?

Cheers!

I’m moving this to the BD10 Master Thread [wink.gif]

The Member list in Quick links lists all of them, including inactive ones, but looks like around 2,500 registrations since last BerserkerDay - less than half have been activated. As for activity, that’s tougher to determine, but you can sort by activity in that Member list, just not those who have registered in the last year. I’ll point out, however, that lurkers make up a big percentage of the participation in terms of buying BerserkerDay :wink:

Last year I was checking in on winery because they weren’t seeing much activity in their offer thread. I called them and they answered the phone and said “can we talk later? We’re slammed!”

OK then… [thumbs-up.gif]

Classic.

Why BD10 rather than BDX? Don’t want to confuse the Francophiles?

sort of the opposite of what apple did with the iphone.

Better to use BD10, as BDX confuses the frequent flyers on this site. neener

People who can’t differentiate between a wine and an airport should probably stay home and not fly.

Yup

Poor souls.

It’s still pronounced “BD ten”

It’s actually pronounced “throat-warbler mangrove.”

That’s hilarious, Brian.

How was last years pronouced?

“B-Dix,” of course.

Well I hear this year your will be able to breed your own cattle for Bryan to dry age for you to your liking, sort of a beef futures campaign