WINESUPPORTER.COM
COMPLETE SERVICE FOR THE ORGANIZERS OF WINE COMPETITIONS
AND THEIR PARTICIPANTS
In addition to the preparation of trade fair presentations and live educational tastings for various wine entities, associations or embassies, the main part of our activities in the field of wine marketing is organizing the joint participation of winemakers at world competitions.
We started offering this service in 2007 to winemakers from the Czech Republic and soon expanded our offer to Slovakia. So far, we have cooperated with winemakers from Austria, Hungary, Germany, Moldova, and the USA, whose wines we have exported to competitions in the USA, Canada, Argentina, South Africa, Israel, Turkey, South Korea, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal.
So, what’s the magic?
We are in constant contact with the organizers of the competitions, having known each other personally for many years. We have organized competitions ourselves, so we know their needs and we know how we can best help them. We have first-hand, timely information about the deadlines, we inform the winemakers about them at the right time as well as ensure communication between them and the organizer.
We translate the rules for participation, list of classes, and other documents, helping them overcome the language barrier.
We concentrate the registrations on our server and process them into a clear file in the cloud and forward them in an agreed form so that the organizer just imports the verified and checked data into their database.
We are proven partners of competition organizers; in many cases, we are their official ambassadors for the Czech Republic and surrounding Europe. We handle their promotion, collect registrations, organize consolidated transport, ensure payment of the entry fee in a single payment, order medals, cups, and medal decals, whose shipment we clear with customs and then distribute among the awarded winemakers. We print A3 diplomas in high quality for the awarded wineries and in some cases, we buy the license and print the small medals on the bottles directly in Europe, which significantly reduces the delivery time. And believe it or not – many overseas competitions are successfully using diplomas and certificates created by our Czech artists without the world knowing.
Equally beneficial are our services for small, medium, and large winemakers.
We handle winery registration with the FDA for competitions in the USA, COLA waiver, prior notice, and customs clearance in the country of destination.
Winemakers drop off their wines at collection points in the wine regions where we pick them up ourselves or they ship them to our address. We arrange for them to be repackaged in certified cartons, customs labeled, cleared, and shipped via air cargo, sea freight, or truck freight.
This saves the participants a considerable amount: the price for shipping a six-hundred-kilogram Euro-pallet overseas by air is only slightly more expensive than shipping two or three individually shipped cartons with world-renowned branded carriers. We can take advantage of special offers and ship wines at a fraction of the counter price.
By saving the organizers a lot of work and actually delivering the competition wines “on a silver platter”, we can claim certain incentive benefits from them – allowing extra samples to be added to the fully paid collection for free, reducing the number of bottles required per sample, which clearly reduces shipping costs, sometimes even a discount on the entry fee.
In addition, we provide the organizers with professionally qualified and linguistically equipped tasters, whom we know well and whose education we take care of. We give our junior tasters the chance to participate in major international and world competitions.
Activities provided to Czech winemakers are largely covered by the marketing support chapter of the Winemakers Fund of the Czech Republic; Slovak winemakers are helped from time to time by their association (Zväz).
It is a textbook example of a win-win strategy.
On the one hand, we help competition organizers obtain and transport samples of what are usually excellent wines. On the other hand, we help winemakers participate in world competitions at a minimum cost and without any worries.
All they have to do is fill in a power of attorney, complete the registration form, submit the wine … and wait for the medals. The rest is up to us.
And when the medal comes, we kick-start the agency’s coverage, informing the media, news agencies, social networks, and the general public about the success of winning wines. The advantage is that the recipients have gotten used to this service for years and count on it in their editorial plans.
Winesupporter.com complements similar activities of the National Wine Centre in Valtice in mutual good cooperation. It is mainly focused on competitions in the EU and the UK. We have learned from the USA, Canada, Israel, South Africa, and Asian competitions, we have covered Vinandino in Argentina and now the challenge is the Catad´or in Chile.
Winesupporter.com is a joint venture initiative of several like-minded individuals and institutions in Europe and the USA – GastroPress Ltd, PragMatic Agency, Raise a Glass Inc., Deutsche Wein Marketing, etc.
The face of the initiative is Luboš Bárta, a professor of wine marketing and communication, wine lecturer, wine writer awarded with a number of prizes including the Prix de l’OIV for the best wine economics book of 2014 “Be smart in Wine PR”, an experienced and valued wine judge as well as a wine event organizer.
We are winesupporter.com.
We help you succeed.