Since the ancient Greeks and Dionysus, wine was considered the drink of the gods.
Welcome back to DomainGang, Bruce! It’s been a while – since the Missouri.me days.
So you’ve been rolling out Grape.com, a property of the Castello brothers. What’s the business plan?
Bruce Marler: The sales plan for the site is based on traveling to all of the thousands of wineries throughout the US, I have determined that it is best to start during the winter months with wineries in Hawaii and then move northward as summer progresses. I feel that sampling multiple wines from each of the wineries is the best way to truly understand the needs of our winery customers.
Cool. Tell us about the real product: wine. I personally enjoy a glass of red wine once in a while.
Bruce Marler: With the rising obesity rates worldwide we felt that increasing peoples wine consumption would help people benefit from the natural chemicals in wine. Its well documented in many studies that people that drink wine live longer and have decreased risk of heart problems.
Isnt’ that the truth. And what else?
Bruce Marler: We felt that giving people easier access to wine tours through Grape.com was a great way for people to get past the tough times in today’s economy and also experience the benefits of increased Resveratrol consumption to increase their lifespan.
How come you guys didn’t stick to familiar territory, dot .ME ?
Bruce Marler: Although we would have liked to deploy the #1 winery tour site in the nation on a .ME domain name we decided that working with the Castello Brothers in a partnership was a path that would work well. Plus we have determined the synergies of a party that combines free giveaways from both Whisky.com and Grape.com would allow us to decrease the cost in joint Christmas parties.
Sounds like you’re going full-force with Grape.com. What other methods do you utilize in your marketing approach?
Bruce Marler: Our mission is to provide a nationwide resource for people to plan their winery tours and vacations no matter what region they are in. We are also adding a nationwide hotel directory, golf course directory, and more. Anyone can rate their favorite winery. We encourage our visitors to use Facebook to Like their winery choices or hit the Tweet button to send out information on their favorite wineries to their followers. Most of the winery sites online today are not helping wineries to market themselves and are more hobby sites than true destination sites for people wanting to plan a trip. We wanted to give a resource that provided social media integration with great content to help people plan wine tours with today’s technology.
That’s fantastic. I’m sure the synergy of LocalTek and the Castello brothers network will produce some outstanding results.
Bruce Marler: Correct. The site has really had a mind of its own since starting, we have been mentioned on winery sites from New York to California and continue to get surprise Tweets and more that we see from leaders in the tourism field in the various areas of the country. Plus we already have our first customers lined up. The site was not developed to be just a website, the partnership with the Castello Brothers was based on building a business. This meant that before choosing a development path we first had to make sure their was a real business opportunity.
Best of luck Bruce and to the Castello brothers, with Grape.com ! 😀
I’m lying in bed sick as a dog and this made me laugh. Good job 🙂
Bruce,
Where did you get the design for Grape.com? It looks like a great directory site, can I pick up a working copy of it somewhere, or at least something similar, or is all custom?
Troy
David – Get well soon!
David,
Get better bud!
Troy,
Shoot me an email through http://brucemarler.com and I will send the details.
Bruce