An irreverent, eye-opening business memoir.
Novice winemakers upend the industry’s pretensions while taking on the jungle of the retail beverage sector in this rollicking business saga.
Houlihan and Harvey recount their adventures as founders of Barefoot Wine, which began in 1986 as a shoestring venture and swelled to a 600,000–cases-per-year success before being bought by E. & J. Gallo Winery. The book is in part a story of innovative marketing around a new image of fermented grape juice: a tasty, cheap, reliable wine that ditched haughty connoisseurship in favor of a friendly, approachable brand image—“California in a bottle”—aimed at harried supermarket shoppers. In addition to the offbeat brand name, the authors came up with a label with an iconic footprint logo instead of curlicued pseudo-French designs. They also created goofy but effective sales aids, like footprint decals marching across liquor store floors straight to the Barefoot shelf, and pioneered a “Worthy Cause Marketing” strategy of donating wine to charitable events in order to build brand awareness and goodwill. (Priceless free advertising came, they recall, when the elite French vineyard Château Lafite Rothschild threatened to sue over Barefoot’s printing “Chateau La Feet” T-shirts; the ensuing media hoopla sent sales soaring.) But it’s also a revealing look at the demanding slog of the mass market beverage business. The authors spent years making sales calls at mom-and-pop stores and trying to force their way into supermarket aisles that are usually closed to unknown brands. Houlihan and Harvey, assisted by amanuensis Kushman, distill from their experiences perennial business lessons along with tips on everything from negotiations to employee compensation, all wrapped in an entertaining, anecdotal picaresque. (“After Michael read the card carefully, he looked up and gave a slight bow, then presented Mr. Matsumoto with his Barefoot card, the one with the foot and the title, ‘Head Stomper.’ ”) Houlihan and Harvey make the wine trade seem a little less glamorous but a lot more interesting.
An irreverent, eye-opening business memoir.Pub Date: May 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9995042-0-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Footnote Press
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.
A program of cash-management techniques for aspiring entrepreneurs, aimed at a minority readership.
At the beginning of this business book, Mariga reflects on the birth of her daughter, Florence, and on the depressing prospect of returning to her corporate job and missing some of her baby’s early moments. She realized that she “wanted to show Florence…that I could, that she could, that anyone could be anything they wanted to be in this world.” To that end, she wanted to start her own business, and she “wanted to help entrepreneurs build successful businesses that provide opportunities for others.” In a sentiment reflected by others she’s interviewed, she says that she wanted to strengthen her family legacy, so she founded her own accounting firm. She paints a vivid picture of the hardscrabble early days of other minority business owners like herself, the child of an African American mother and a Chinese father who also had a family accounting business. She and others were “all hustling to acquire clients and build our businesses…and most of us had absolutely nothing to show for it.” She was inspired by Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First money management system, and the bulk of her book is devoted to an explanation of how to make this system work for minority business enterprises. (Michalowicz provides a foreword to the book.) One of the primary goals of Profit First is to build “a self-sustaining, debt-free company,” so a large part of Mariga’s work deals with the details of managing finances, building and abiding by budgets, and handling the swings of emotion that occur every step of the way. As sharply focused as these insights are, the author’s recollections of her own experiences are more rewarding, as when she tells readers of her brief time as a cut-rate accountant and learning that it was a mistake to try to compete on price. These stories, as well as financing specifics and clear encouragements (“Small changes and adjustments accumulate. Over time, they will lead you to your goal”), will make this book invaluable to entrepreneurs of all kinds.
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7357759-0-6
Page Count: 230
Publisher: The Avant-Garde Project, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
