About Me

Hi, I’m Bruce

Bruce McGechan (pronounced mc-gec-kin). I’m a wine internet marketing consultant and researcher.

I’ve owned a JV website with a local wine retailer, built wine eCommerce websites, and over a 20 year marketing career run many a large marketing campaign for multinationals and small retailers. On this blog I am showing wine retailers around the world how they can sell wine online themselves. Please go here to see what my service is about, otherwise read on!

Bruce

I built this fantastic wine retail website using the latest and greatest software (magento) and then found that I got very little traffic (groan – what I now call the “build in and they will come” assumption).

So I spend the rest of the year boosting traffic and converting it into sales.

Along the way I worked out the best process for a wine retailer to sell wine online.

Now I’ll admit that I’m a bit of a geek

I left a high profile alcoholic beverages marketing job to build technology systems at one of the world’s biggest companies. To a corporate marketer this may seem like a crazy move!

But at the end of the day I love three things – wine, marketing and internet technology. I just keep coming back to these three things.

So why not do something you really love? and that’s why I do what I do…

I help small business wine retailers sell their wine online

Not large liquor chains, or supermarkets, or toy retailers, or multi-nationals. Just small wine retailers. All round the world but particularly in the US.

For more about me check out my linkedin, twitter, OpenWineConsortium, Wine2.0 or facebook pages listed in the sidebar.

Or you can Contact Me.

My Story – the looong version

I had this great idea.

I’d create a website that appealed to all those wine connoisseurs who loved niche wines.

I’d work with wine retailers around the world, to offer niches, to wine lovers around the world. Central Otago Pinot Noir with a Central Otago wine store, Napa Valley Merlot with a Napa Valley wine store, the best of Bordeaux with a Paris, ahhh no wait, a London wine store (errr… make that wine retailers and drinkers who could speak English!).

I’d help wine drinkers explore little known varietals from little known regions. I’d work with Masters of Wine, wineries, regional wine trade organizations to show the world how exciting wine was, using the best of technology, and the best of online marketing.

I created a business plan, I had (actually have) a live website that tested the idea, I spent $10,000s on the technology from eCommerce to internet marketing.

I actually was achieving some remarkable results. I was on the first page of Google for my chosen keyword terms, my Google Adwords had a high CTR and a low bid price, given the size of the business and the lack of price competitiveness (about 10% higher than the market) I was getting good conversions – not enough to make a living but respectable for a tiny niche from a small store in a small town.

This was 2008. Then I did some detailed competitive analysis in my major market – the US.

Bugger.

A Silicon Valley funded company, snooth.com, had bet me to the market by a couple of months! Not only had they deep pockets of venture capital cash but they were miles ahead of me in their understanding of the legal shipping compliance issues in the US market…

I had a wine or two.

Not one to give up I then looked for a gap in the online wine market.

Heck, I’m 42 years old and have worked for major Fortune 500 companies such as Vodafone and Heineken. Over the last 5 years I’ve worked with small companies – owner operators mainly in Central Otago, New Zealand.

I have a unique background and intense interest in technology, alcoholic beverages and marketing. Indeed I had recently driven my marketing budgets almost completely online away from newspapers, magazines and radio – because online was “showing me the money”.

I knew it and had experienced it from the professional and very corporate, to making desperately poor advertising budgets work from the backroom (or retail counter) of a small business.

I’ve lived in Colorado to Tokyo, and Perth to Auckland. I’ve done business all round the world from Indonesia to London, and Taiwan to Frankfurt. I even went to an international university in Japan full of Brits, Americans, Canadians, mainland Chinese, Europeans and SE Asians.

If anyone could make this work out I could! …

But actually I couldn’t see the gap. Sign up to my email series to see a looong email about online wine competitors. In short it’s well covered.

Apart from one gap that the large online wine retailers could never fill.

Local wine drinkers who want wine today from their trusted local wine retailer. The large national online wine retailers could not offer pick up or deliver same day. Their advantage was the overhead cost saving of not having expensive retail space – but it was also their Achilles heel.

So I started doing various tests to do with locally targeted Adwords. Sure enough my response rates were taking off!

My problem was I couldn’t offer local service. But I could help others who could. And that’s what I’m doing – helping small local wine retailers exploit their local advantage in a market full of expert national online wine retailers.

You can get lots of free information on this website or even email me if you have a question.

Or if you just don’t have the time or are very ambitious I offer a specialist wine retailer internet marketing service.

Okay, here’s some personal stuff. All men should skip to the bottom as it’s probably a little too much information for you. Women read on.

### start of personal stuff ###

Ben and his Dad, me

I semi retired from a high profile corporate marketing and technology career to one of the most beautiful places in the world – Central Otago, New Zealand. I bought a lifestyle property south of Wanaka, just a paddock really, and built a house, then fully irrigated the property in preparation for a small boutique vineyard. In the meantime I was working for various small businesses like the local ski resort (that was fun!).

Then my wife left me, with my son.

Thank God she moved just down the road to Cromwell. So I sold the property and after a fair amount of navel gazing I decided to do something I’d always dreamed about … see the first paragraph above … while still being involved in bringing up my little boy, Ben (born in 2006).

### end of personal stuff (okay it wasn’t that bad, only a bit soppy perhaps ) ###

I have a team of experts around the world that help me, though I am based out of Central Otago and Wellington.

The company (legally called Mobile Language Ltd of which the family trust and I are the main shareholders) has one mission,

To help small wine retailers run successful online wine businesses.

Cheers!
Bruce McGechan
Managing Director
Contact Me

What you’re still reading about me! Okay check out this post where I make a stupid, stupid mistake: I was caught up in a Frenzy of Techno Love