STARKVILLE — If there’s one word that Barefoot Wine co-founders Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey want you to know, it’s “multifaceted.”
“People ask, what is the single thing that made Barefoot so successful?” Harvey said. “It’s multifaceted.”
Mr. Houlihan and Mr. Harvey were keynote speakers Friday afternoon at a ribbon cutting for the expansion of Mississippi State University’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach. They made Barefoot one of the best-selling brands in the country.
“The Barefoot style is an approach that interweaves every decision we make,” Houlihan said. “It’s how you deal with people, it’s also about being resourceful and looking at your assets and hidden resources.”
Harvey said she and Houlihan became interested in the winery after the owner went bankrupt. Despite their inexperience in the field, they decided to take on the winery and its debts and turn it into a going concern.
“How difficult would that be?” Houlihan joked.
Houlihan said he contacted the area’s largest wine buyer and asked what the company needs to do to get it on store shelves.
“He said he wanted it to be the same name as the logo so he could see it from 4 feet away when ‘she’ was pushing a shopping cart,” Houlihan said. “Her. I mean the female viewers. He also said he’d put it in a pig – we later found out it was a 1.5 liter bottle and the one we see a lot. At 750 mL, the fifth bottle is twice as large.
That was a very important lesson, Houlihan said.
“We asked,” he said. “What if you first created a product and then tried to sell it? That information was a resource.”
Barefoot then ran into a hurdle with the same seller. They didn’t want to risk selling their product without extensive advertising. Barefoot didn’t have the money to spend on advertising, so the owners had to look for a different approach.
The answer, Houlihan said, is “worthy cause” marketing.
Barefoot had products in small stores, but they didn’t sell well. When the winery agreed to supply wine for events held by the nonprofit, Harvey and Houlihan noticed a sudden increase in sales in the neighborhood where the nonprofit operated.
“Members of this nonprofit neighborhood association now have a social reason to promote our products,” Houlihan said. “They told everyone about it. So we tried it in different areas and in different areas.”
Harvey said another aspect of Barefoot’s approach is listening to its employees, regardless of their role within the company. For example, when the company was trying to enter the Florida grocery store chain Publix, they were allowed to put it on store shelves with the expectation that it would sell a certain amount in a short period of time.
The problem is that the barefoot bottle is placed on the bottom shelf, which is the least desirable placement.
“We had a meeting with all of our employees and someone suggested we put a big red paw decal on the floor that goes from the front door all the way down to the wine aisle,” Harvey said. “Then (the decal) rotated to face the wine shelf. And when they looked down, there was a big sign that said ‘Barefoot.'”
Harvey said the idea came from a 75-year-old receptionist, not a marketer.
Barefoot went on to become one of the best-selling wines in the United States, and Houlihan and Harvey sold it to E&J Gallo in 2005. Currently, the two work as entrepreneurship coaches.
After speaking, Houlihan and Harvey joined the judges for the MSU Startup Summit final competition, where students pitch investment products and business ideas.
Brian Jones is a local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes counties.
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