No matter how bad the
economy gets, people
will keep drinking. That’s what helps make Winery
Exchange Inc., the company
Peter Byck co-founded in 1999
with two partners, recession-proof.
“People aren’t going out to
restaurants as much, but they
still want that nice bottle of
wine or some premium vodka
— they’ll just drink it at
home,” says Byck, the company’s president and CEO. “That
saves them money, but they
still get to enjoy that luxury
item. We’re kind of recession-resistant.”
The company has proved
that, growing from $4.2 million
in 2002 sales to $44 million in
2007, and Byck expects sales
for 2008 to top $60 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Byck about how you can
determine if a new direction is
worth your time and why you
have to make a decision when
something isn’t gaining traction.
Q. How have you dealt with
the company’s exponential
growth?
We’re a management team
that can adapt. We started as a
(business-to-business) with four
businesses. One was trading
bulk wine and grapes online
back in the exchange day. We
also sold supplies online. We
did private-label wine, and we
had strategic information for
the wine business.
We constantly evaluate
what’s happening, so we
quickly cut off the things that
didn’t work — which was the
trading of the bulk wine and
grapes and the selling of the
supplies. They were B-to-B
models, and the wine industry
is too relationship-driven.
But then we focused on the
private-label wine and the
strategic information, and
we’ve really been focused on
that ever since. We’ve expanded; we constantly adapt.
Q. How do you determine
which ideas to pursue?
We’re open to all ideas,
because I can’t think of
everything. You have to
evaluate ideas based on
what the economics are
and how it fits with the
overall business model.
We’ve created a core
engine at this company,
which is the ability to
rapidly develop these
private-label programs
from all over the world.
If the idea can augment the engine and we
can get a good return
for the engine that we’ve
built, that’s going to be
something we look at
closely. It comes down
to, ‘Do we get a good
ROI from what these
ideas are?’
