WineOnline and Aaron Bick
by Malcolm Jolley

Aaron Bick has been working since he was in high school and says he's been an entrepreneur the whole time. Five years ago, he started WineOnline.ca, a wine import business that would market the labels it represented directly to consumers. This was a radical departure from alcohol retailing in Ontario, and an uphill battle given the strength of the LCBO. WineOnline was immediately restricted to sales of 12 bottles at a time, and cannot by law warehouse its products. Still, after five years and thousands of sales, WineOnline's founder is pleased with his success and optimistic about the future. I spoke to Bick in his Liberty Village loft offices on a busy morning last week to find out how he did it.

The Interview

Malcolm Jolley: So, you started WineOnline five years ago?

Aaron Bick: Yup. we sold our first case of wine on May 2nd, 2004. We started with 13 products. Now we're up to 330.

MJ: But where did you get this idea that you could sell wine online? In Ontario, no less?

AB: Well, I was in New York from '97 to 2002, and I didn't know a lot about wine. But in New York you could go online, buy wine and it would show up at your door in half an hour to forty five minutes. And the cool thing about that was you could actually learn about the wine before you bought it: where it's from, who made it, what foods it went well with. So, when I moved back to Ontario in 2002, I was dismayed that not only were a lot of the wines I liked in New York weren't available here, but that the only place to buy wine was the LCBO. Other than the agents, but the agents don't really market to the public.

MJ: Isn't part of the reason they don't market to the public is that it's really difficult to sell wine, if you're not the LCBO.

AB: Yes, the rules make it very difficult. The customer is obligated to buy a case of wine, for instance. There's also no warehousing of wine, so you're not really a retailer, you're an agent. No one was doing it here, and we thought this is a huge business in the UK, a huge business in the US, so we decided to try it out and see if it works. And the we sold a few cases of wine on our launch date and then didn't sell anymore wine online for about three months!

MJ: Wow. How did you pay the rent?

AB: It was all hand selling.

MJ: To restuarants?

AB: Yeah, actually the first "person" to actually buy a case of wine online was La Castile Steak House. And it was a $5,000 order! So we were pretty excited, even though we had to call them because the system wasn't set up for licensees.

But then it started to catch on. People liked it and came back to use it. And it worked really well for people in rural areas that aren't served very well by the LCBO for wine. If you go to a small town, they might have 20 wines, and they're all the top selling wineries of the world so it's the basic, basic wine. So if you live in one of these small towns you were pretty much at the mercy of what they had in the store until we came along.

MJ: And you'll go anywhere?

AB: We deliver anywhere with a post office in Ontario. And Alberta, for that matter.

MJ: Not the same things though, right?

AB: We can't ship across provincial borders (don't ask me why), so we have a different set of products for each province.

MJ: How much of what you do is just figuring out provincial regulation?

AB: Well, when we started in Ontario, a lot of people thought what we were doing wasn't legit. So we had the AGCO [Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario] come into our offices a bunch of times and go through all of our documentation to make sure every thing WAS legit. Of course it was because we made sure it was before we launched and we knew we'd be highly scrutinised.

MJ: And you don't just import wines, you also sell Ontario ones?

AB: Yeah, we've tried to pick and choose the best ones. Not that there aren't a lot of really good ones that we don't represent, there are. But we try only to stock the best products from Ontario.

MJ: Who are your customers?

AB: Our customers are people who love wine. A lot of them are busy professionals who don't really want to go to the LCBO and fight that battle. If they come onto WineOnline order a case, it shows up at their door two or three days later and they cut out an unpleasant trip from their life. Some customers like being able to order something different and actually be able to find out something about the product before they buy it. They are people who like a high level of customer service. We really try and provide the best customer service. And we really try and bring in great wines.

MJ: I'll disclose that I have been a customer and it struck me that even though you have this very high-tech website to sell the wine, at the end of the day I was dealing with a real person calling me to make sure they could deliver the wine.

AB: Yup. We're here from 9 to 6 and we get lots of calls from customers. We're happy to answer any questions, and some people prefer to buy wine on the phone. That's fine. Some people like to talk to real person, so we're here.

MJ: And what happens if I order q case and some of the bottles are corked?

AB: We have a refund or replace on all corked bottles. I mean, we're not happy unless our customers are happy. So we understand that buying a case of wine is a big commitment. It's probably 12 bottles of wine you've never tasted before. So we have a return policy if you don't like it. We want you to come back and buy more wine from us, so if you drink a bottle and you don't really like it, then we'd much rather take the case back and replace it with something you'd rather or get a refund. We try and make it as painless as possible.

MJ: You sell everything from a $20 bottle to $300 bottle. How does that work?

AB: Actually it ranges from $8 to, I don't know, $2,500 bottles. So, we definitely have connoisseur customers who know exactly what they want. They're very well educated and they come to the site, buy what they want and leave right away. But the website really serves best the novice to intermediate wine drinker. The person who knows a little about what they like, but wants to learn a little bit more about what they're drinking - being able to read the back label.

MJ: When you go to producers as an Ontario importer and tell them you don't deal with the LCBO, what do they say?

AB: Well, it's not quite true that we don't deal with the LCBO. We like to say we're in "co-opetition" with the LCBO. They are, by law, the importer of record on every bottle we bring in. You can't bring anything into Ontario without their help. But people love the idea that their wines are going to be available to everyone in Ontario through a channel that's not traditional. Producers love it because the LCBO can be whimsical on what they decide to order, so there's no continuity. So we can to a producer that we'll take this many cases from you year in, year out, pending the quality is there.

MJ: And you have had wines for all of the five years?

AB: Yeah. Take the Barbabelle. It's been our best selling wine for five years straight. Sadly, their whole production is coming to an end.

MJ: What?

AB: The Barbabelle was made from young vines - that's why it was priced so cheaply. But now the vines are mature enough to be used in the more expensive wines. So, instead of $12.95 a bottle, those wines are $19.95 or $24.95, which will make a difference when you're buying a case. It's too bad. We would take the whole production of any year - but I think '06 is the last. Get it while you can, we've got about 150 cases left.

MJ: Will you have another $12 bottle to replace it?

AB: Well that one's hard to replace because it's biodynamic and the winemaker, Marc Kreydenweiss, takes such care. And it's so versatile. You can drink it with steak or fish... But we're looking. We have a Malbec coming in after Christmas called Tilia, which we're pretty excited about.

MJ: What's next? What are you going to do in the next five years?

AB: I think about 98% of the people in Ontario don't know we exist. We're not a big company, so we don't have a big marketing budget. So we're trying to spread the word that we're here and you don't have to go to the LCBO to buy wine.

MJ: Do you feel settled, like you know what you're doing after five years?

AB: No. My goal is to make WineOnline a household name. I think this is such a great way to buy wine, I just want people to be exposed to it, to know that there is another option out there.

WineOnline's address is www.wineonline.ca.

Malcolm Jolley is the editor of Good Food Revelation.