Reflections on 2008

We don't get a lot of chances to blog during the holiday season, mostly because we're busy as Shiite. On the peak days leading up to Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve, we're seeing hundreds of customers daily. Even on days when the stores aren't teeming with customers, we're placing orders for the 1,500 items that we carry, receiving and getting them out onto the shelves. It's a crazy six weeks or so.

One of the things that's interesting about the holidays is that, in addition to our beloved regulars, who we see throughout the year, we see a lot of new customers - many of whom are in our stores for the first time. Since these Dog newbies aren't up to speed on what we do, nearly all of them have questions.

The most frequent question we get is [picture a customer holding up a bottle of wine] "Is this any good?" We must admit to always being surprised at this question, as it seems readily apparent to us that we wouldn't be selling something that we don't think is any good. But upon reflection, we realize that there isn't anyone actually tasting the products at the grocery stores, or even (sadly) at most liquor stores.

And this brings us back to what I like to think of as the two distinct Philosophies of Business, the predominant one being what I call the Spider Web Philosophy.

Spider Webbers see consumers simply as a huge collective beast that needs products and services. Webbers focus their business efforts on placing sales outlets in the best locations possible, just as spiders build their webs in places where they believe there will be lots of insect air traffic. The underlying premise is "I sell widgets. I'll put my widget store where lots o' people pass by, and they'll buy my widgets."

It's a fine philosophy, and it works well for a lot of merchants. Think of just about every chain store on the planet, and you see this theory at work.

But we are adherents to the minority philosphy, which I'll call the Build a Better Mousetrap School. We believe that the most desirable customers are those who will overlook mere convenience in a quest for something better. These folks want variety, information, a pleasant environment, and real service. They want to be challenged, and they want to grow. These are the customers we're targeting.

Do we have customers who reliably come in every week and buy the same thing? Sure, in many cases because we're simply the most convenient store for them. But we like to think that the reason that we've been successful is that we concentrate on doing things in order to make them better for you, rather than easier for us.

This is why we organize our wines according to flavor profiles rather than just by country of origin. It's why we offer so many specialty beers and spirits. It's why we take the time to write a card describing each of our hundreds of wines. Heck, we even organize our beer by flavor profile.

2008 was a challenging year in our business, but it was our best year ever. We know that more challenges await us in 2009, and we're ready for them. Thanks so much for your business.