I think some consistency in how the post subjects are formatted would really help in trying to scan through the offers. Once there were 100+ offers live, I had trouble finding where my offer was when I was trying to keep track of where it was on the page, as well as scanning through the available offers looking for ones I was interested in.
Some of us are not just a single person operation, but a single person who have day jobs, so while we should certainly do everything in our power to have everything set up for a perfect user experience, a little grace is also appreciated if it takes a bit for us to respond.
In mid-January, there was word that someone (Marcus Goodfellow?) was recruiting more small Oregon producers. I was kind of hoping we’d see two newbies offer a shared 6 pack; 3 bottles each. Logistically, that would be very challenging, and the possibility exists that by sharing a 6 pack they might prevent each other from maximizing individual sales.
My decision was to buy Newbie A, and try and fit Newbie B in next year.
(Cross promoting is rare but not unheard. If I recall correctly, Winderlea and Adelsheim used to make a Pinot from the same vineyard. They would pour each other’s version in the tasting room.)
We’re all in this together, for realz. I consider it my “civic” duty to help. I have received far more benefit than I have paid in. There are at least 3 of us so far who have expressed interest. I bet we could get a lot of stuff done in the next few weeks. Lord knows we don’t have any travel plans.
To Cris and John’s point, on how hard it can be to find an offer, that’s something I’ve struggled with in terms of finding a solution for years, FAR before we got as big as we are now. That’s definitely a limitation on the discussion forum format, so as Shawnda H suggested, perhaps something like a Shopify store format instead, sortable, etc. I do have experience with Shopify’s platform, but the only issue that an e-commerce platform forces the transactions often to run through that platform itself, which I cannot do without a license, obviously. I guess each listing COULD have a link to the individual offer on their own site, but also we miss out on the discussion, which is often fun and fevered, so what’s the solution?
I really enjoyed my first BD. One suggestion, and it may not be widely held, is that I liked and took advantage of smaller offerings from new wineries to me - 3 packs or 4 packs - to get to know their style and ideally, choose the wines I was interested in. Even better, to be able to mix and match on their website. Fine Disregard was great for this, for example. So you might look for more wineries that can offer those, especially if others agree.
I know that means its harder to offer free or flat shipping since the profit just isn’t there in the same way, but it feels like taking a lot less of a chance, and I don’t care as much about every $$ of shipping and would pay more. I have no space, don’t want a supremely angry wife (sub-supreme is better) that would see a string of $300-$400 charges in a row. Last I had a budget I was trying to stick to. Note the past tense there - that thought didn’t work so well, and I didn’t even get to all that I wanted to since well, work.
I didn’t find it hard to find offers - just use Ctrl-F on the BDay page and type in a bit of the winery name. Pretty darn easy. Maybe put that in FAQs or ???
It would be cool to have sub-forums based on the type of offer: e.g. Wines from Oregon, Pinots from California, Food, etc. I found myself not opening some of the posts because I had no idea what type of wine the winery made. While I did buy from two wineries I had never heard about before, I still didn’t look at every single offer because it was too random and there were so many offers.
I did this also. But I was concerned when a new tranche came in that I wasn’t sure if I saw everything – as I would open an offer, then go back to the main page, and often the order would have changed because of comments.
One idea is to have two threads. The first has all of the offers in alphabetical order (or something else that seems fair). No comments. Just a central place to see all of the offers. For the tranche issue, if you wanted to you could either organize them that way, or you could indicate the tranche in the subject line with a simple number, So a subject line might be “1 Liquid Farm xxxxx” or “2 Virage xxxxx” indicating that Liquid Farm was in the first tranche and Virage in the second. But this may be too much of a pain.
Back to the threads – the second thread could have all of the offers but dynamically change with comments – i.e. the current thread.
Just a thought. Of the suggestions above, I think those with the most value for little work would be: 1. Standardizing the subject line to make clear what is being offered; 2. A common discount code – though I did not have any problems this year, and when their were minor problems they were quickly remedied by the vendor; and 3. a hyperlink to purchase. On the latter, however, those who asked for email or to place the order in the thread worked very well from a purchaser point of view – I am thinking Goodfellow here, which if I recall set it up this way.
Having said all of this, this year as in year’s past went extremely well I thought. So even if nothing were changed it would still be a great event. But you asked.
I don’t know… I don’t want this to feel like online shopping. I want it to be crazy! It was my first BD and I absolutely loved it. All of it was so refreshing. Other than making sure offers/links/codes work, I wouldn’t have any requirement. Was I confused? Sure. Did the hiccups turn me off? Not at all.
Sellers are probably smart enough to figure out that if their offer didn’t sell much they need to troubleshoot and do better next year. Adam’s advice upthread is probably the most spot on in terms of what helps selling.
I don’t think I would go that far. Exploration is easier with all options in front of you. But maybe at least three categories would be useful: wine, food and gear/accessories
I don’t know if Brig/Todd do this but at least suggest to participants that they make specific call outs in their thread titles in addition to their name:
“- Oregon Pinots and more”
“- High end meats”
“- Rare and collectible wines”
Things that can give us a taste of what that seller is offering would help a lot. Or even more specific if that works like for those crazy jamon cuts. Lots do this well but some are still unclear. This is especially important for newbs trying to get noticed. You don’t want to risk missing your audience.
Being a Grand Cru member reduces a lot of the friction - between having an extra day to purchase from a subset of the offers and having a much calmer opportunity to read through all of the offers and create a list of buys, it makes the event even more fun.
Loved the suggestion of a uniform discount code - one less thing to have to remember.
On the whole, each year just gets better!
I thought it went quite smoothly. It was fun. It was easy. Congrats to the team. My advice? Don’t overwork it.Every year I have been in has gotten bigger but gone more smoothly than the previous.
See if you can get a half dozen board members to help. A few to review the regulars’ posts and a few to onboard the newbies and make sure they’ve got everything together. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding volunteers. Might be able to get everything setup earlier too.
Edit: obviously you guys can handle it, but why not make it easier for yourselves, easier on the newbies, and easier for the Berserkers buying?
Not that hard to find an offer, after all we have a search function.
Personally, I think it works pretty well. The winery I’ve purchased from most often doesn’t even have a website to submit orders. One of the others I bought this year also doesn’t. I was slammed with work the preview day and pretty much the next day and I found it pretty easy to navigate when I had the time to look.
I think it took me 3 BDs before I figured out enough of what LF was offering to actually buy. Glad I did, but remember those older offers that looked like the one you linked to … glad it’s a bit more straightforward … and that I started ordering from them!
