Here we are 3 years later and we have a successful international business, providing personalized, custom boxed wine accessories and waiters tools. With a minimal staff and low overhead this has become a very profitable venture.

A few years ago, as the WEB first became a reality, we saw the possibilities of our specialty being able to be accessed by a potentially huge audience across the country and around the world. We are confident of this from our own experience with professional sommeliers, restaurant owners, caterers, and others stumbling upon our retail operation and every single one of them responding "why isn't there a Corkscrew Store in....Tokyo, New York, or Sagebrush Nebraska!" We have a modestly successful catalog business but we face the dilemma of limited space and very high expense. In addition, we sell the type of products that you don't need, until you do. We felt that if we could establish a presence on the WEB that a lot of the concerns with expansion and catalog costs could be addressed.

The Journey Begins
Starting the process of learning about doing business on the Web began seriously in August 1997 at a Wine Shows and Wine Tastings in Sonoma, Orlando and Washington. Multimedia was the buzzword then but a few small groups were in attendance spreading the word about the Internet and the possibilities available. I spent numerous hours reading literature and talking with vendors just learning the language, at that point I didn't even know the questions much less the answers.

Over the next several months I became convinced that we needed to be involved but the more I learned the more difficult, and important, the questions of database searching and management became. We stock over 1,000 items: Without the ability of being able to browse our site like the shelves of a store (looking for just the right automatic corkscrew), or grab the help of a search on some key word or part of a title (such as looking for a unique corkscrew like the Capitanos or Chateau Laguioles), our site could not reproduce the benefits of our store.

My research suggested that we needed to raise a significant amount of cash to build the site and purchase a server. We would need a dedicated, high speed connection or a provider that would allow us to co-locate. We would need to hire a database programmer to design and build our site. We would need to have a staff person to constantly look after the technical/database issues. We would need at least $100,000 for the first year just to get started. We would need a partner! Although this was a bit daunting, I had met enough people that were doing it, at least partially, that I felt we should continue.

Starting in January, 1996 we invested considerable time (and money) in developing a Web site design and a marketing strategy which involved some accessory manufacturers themselves as advertisers/investors. We even built and put up a "temporary" site to show off our ideas and attempt to sell the wine accessories and waiters tools. By the summer of 1996 it was clear our potential customers were not going to bite. We shelved the idea of a sponsor driven site and I went back to the drawing board. I didn't want to do a half-assed job but we could not afford to do what I knew we needed to do without either money, or a partner.

Who is NSA?
Sometime in early September, 1996, I get a sales call from some guy that introduces himself as "Noel" from an web developement firm named NSA over in Florida. Seeing as how this guy actually seems to know the store (and says nice things) and that our specialty was a "natural for the Web" (as if I didn't know) I decided to give him a few minutes. Actually, I think I might be able to learn a few things from him and then show him the door. So, over he comes to the store with a very nice color brochure and sales pitch, fortunately he's not particularly hard sell and we get to talking about my frustrations and experience trying to launch our site. And then I learn:

Gee, these guys have a database engine and design for the web which they call, "Miva Applications", and it sounds like it just might work for a wine accessories and waiters tools site. (We don't have to program?!) There whole business is based on a database engine so we would just fit right in. (no server?!) They would build the site, the database search system to our specs, provide us with on-line access to update, add, or whatever. All for less than the cost of the server alone, much less the cost of a full time technical person on our staff!

The Payoff
So what else could I do but sign up. No, it didn't happen overnight; No, we don't have 5000 hits a day: But, we have an extraordinary site with fantastic potential.

It's completely searchable by category, name, item number, and eventually (when we get all the data entered) by keyword against a description field or the index.

It has an editor which allows us to maintain our own database over the web.

It has a forum feature to encourage the kinds of connections which take place in our store.

It has a shopping basket and a secure commerce server.

In short, we are light years ahead of our Web Competition in the wine accessories industry.

It's now in our own ballpark to market our site but I'm pleased to say NSA is being extremely supportive. Noel has worked extensively with us through a couple of redesigns. Recently, Noel and I developed a referral system which allows us to pay site owners who refer customers to us. We attended the recent Wine Accessories show in the Moscone Center in San Francisco together and arranged a few very important referral links.