Michael Houlihan is the Managing Partner of Great Thinks, a California-based wine and products consulting business specializing in brand creation, development and marketing concepts. He has a proven entrepreneurial track record as Founder, President and CEO of Barefoot Cellars, awarded Market Watch’s Hot Brand for two years running. He also developed proprietary software that tracks product placement and replacement at retail and offered it to other wineries.
From 2006 to present, Michael has assisted several wine and other industry companies with sales, marketing, distribution, compensation and incentive programs. He is a partner in the consulting company “Houlihan & Jones”. He is expert at the development of brand names, slogans, and taglines. He is also a partner in the development and successful marketing of a wine country pied-à-terre concept in Healdsburg, California. He has worked pro bono for several non-profits in the areas of health and conservation.
From the end 2004 until late 2005, Michael worked as a consultant to E&J Gallo Winery to help with the transition of Barefoot Wines into the Gallo portfolio. His advice was used to maintain brand integrity and provide historical perspective on the culture and success of the Barefoot brand, as well as to review other brand concepts.
From 1986 to 2005, he founded the Barefoot brand and took it to approximately 600,000 cases per year with sales in North America, Asia, and Europe. During his 19 years at the helm, he pioneered such new wine industry concepts as humorous wine labels, “velocity price-point personal house wine”, “worthy-cause marketing”, outreach to the LGBT community, the first successful non-vintage wine program, and breakthroughs in point-of-sale merchandising materials. He developed and successfully utilized an entrepreneurial-style, performance-based compensation and incentive system, which resulted in a high degree of loyalty and production. Without any initial funding, he developed cash-flow mechanisms that financed the growth of the Barefoot brand. Without any commercial advertising, he made this brand one of the best known wine label across North America.
Due to Michael’s extensive background in business, Barefoot Cellars was one of the best documented wine companies in the industry. Five-year, one-year, quarterly and monthly goals were translated into job descriptions, policies and procedures, checklists, accountability, compensation and incentive systems.
Michael and his team took Barefoot from an obscure ‘novelty’ label to a mega brand, and successfully capitalized on its brand equity through its acquisition by E&J Gallo in 2005.
From 1983 until 1986 Michael was a wine industry consultant, assisting clients with property divisions, sales, marketing, brand concepts, management and financing.
From 1972 until 1986, Michael and his partner developed the Great Lengths Hair Parlor in Berkley, California, the first uni-sex haircutting establishment in Northern California. This business became the model for all subsequent haircutting businesses appealing to both men and women. It was the best documented and managed business of its type with 15 years of solid bookings.
During that period he became the president of the Elmwood Merchants Association. He co-authored the C-1 E Limited Commercial Zoning Ordinance for the City of Berkeley that has been used as a template to define and preserve small neighborhood commercial areas across the country.
From 1968 until 1980, Michael pursued a career in local and Federal government, as well as private consultancy. In 1972, Michael worked as a consultant to various small businesses in the documentation of processes, job descriptions, goals, and compensation plans.
In 1970, Michael worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). At the Oakland Redevelopment Agency, he created extensive flow charts and process systems to administer large-scale business and residential relocation, acquisition, and redevelopment projects.
In 1968, he worked as an assistant with the City Manager of Anaheim, California who was the President of the American City Managers’ Association. His duties included planning on annexations, city budgets, council agendas and special programs including city-owned water, power, and convention center activities.
Michael studied Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley; Speech, Logic and Humanities at the University of San Francisco; and Politics, Government and Liberal Arts at the California State University at Long Beach where he graduated in 1969.
Michael has been a guest speaker and lecturer on wine marketing and entrepreneurialism at the University of California at Davis for 7 years for the Department of Viticulture and Enology’s OIV program. He has also been a speaker at the Wine Industry Financial Symposium, the Wine Industry Technology Symposium, Vin Expo in Bordeaux, the Wine Industry’s Direct to Consumer Symposium, and at numerous other businesses and non-profit organizations.
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Phone: 707.887.8787 michael@greatthinks.com Mobile 707.484.1600
