Barefoot Wine’s Founders Do Well By Doing Good The story of how Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey in 1986 launched a scrappy new brand that would transform the US wine industry is one of accidental opportunity and the vision and courage to seize it. “We fell into business backwards,” Harvey says today. And seize it [...]
Outword Magazine Interview
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The Advantages of Being a Small Start-Up – Part 2
This is the second installment in a four-part series designed to encourage small start-ups by recognizing some of their inherent advantages. Small start-ups face a myriad of challenges. They are undercapitalized, unproven and have no market traction. They are up against the status quo that will use its established power and influence in the marketplace [...]
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Positive Company Culture is critical to Growth and Survival – Part 3
This is the third part in the series about the original Barefoot culture. Culture really sets the tone, boundaries, and expectations the team has toward your company, your mission and your product. We’ve saved the best for last because having a common cause and a common challenge forges, more than any other single factor, positive company culture. When [...]
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Positive Company Culture is critical to Growth and Survival – Part 2
A company survives and grows due to sales and the loyalty of customers and staff. Sales are based on price, value, dependability, integrity, availability and perception. The basis of perception is image, networking, and more recently, the transparency of the producer. Transparency is what the brand stands for, its authenticity, its identification with higher values, [...]
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Making Mistakes Right
Everybody makes mistakes, so why not take advantage of them? If your company culture does not give permission to make mistakes, your staff will hide them. They’ll want to ‘fix’ it fast and hope you never find out. They may be the only ones who know how to fix it, and they, or someone else, [...]
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How to Build a Brand Without Advertising
Brand recognition is the life blood of any product that passes through distribution channels. Building your brand to the point of significant market share takes years, and conventional advertising can be financially infeasible, especially for new product manufacturers. In today’s world, the public demands transparency. Your customers want to know what your company stands for [...]
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10 Tips to For a Start-Up Business with No Money
OK, you need some money to get started, but you can seriously reduce the amount if you take advantage of some of these suggestions. Every one of them worked for us: Start in the garage, a spare bedroom, even the laundry room the way we did. Go anywhere you won’t have to pay rent. Get [...]
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