Interview Justin Dry, Vinomofo

RETAIL RENEGADE

Drinks Trade sat down with Justin Dry, the entrepreneurial mind behind online wine retail company, Vinomofo, at the buzzy, uber-modern headquarters in Melbourne. We talked about being brave, leaning in, and getting out of your comfort zone to achieve real success in business.

Drinks Trade: Explain the business model of Vinomofo that makes it unique and therefore successful in the hugely competitive liquor retail space?

Justin Dry: We launched Vinomofo in 2011 off the back of four other businesses.

I felt online was the way everything was heading. I loved this Facebook thing, the community side, building a network.

We started the first one called Qwoff in 2006. It was sort of Facebook for wine and we built a great audience of younger wine drinkers. I think we got to 30,000 but we didn’t have the producer side sorted out.

We tried, but the suppliers were funny about people talking about their wine. They only wanted critics talking about their wine. What about the people drinking your wine? What seems silly now, back then was really hard to convince people.

The wine industry was a lot different to what it is now. It was all bow ties and bullshit and we were anti that. We were passionate about wine but wanted to get rid of the intimidation and talk about wine in a different way.

DT: In the documentary film The New Hustle your passion shines through, but it paints a picture of you and your business partner, brother-in-law, Andre, at rock bottom before you came up with the winning formula. How has this shaped the way you approach your retail business?

JD: When we started we were so poor. We had no money. (The New Hustle features Justin’s sister, who was with small children have her credit card rejected at the super market). That was true and happened to her many times.

That was hard because it was pressure. If it was just me, that’s fine. I’m poor. That’s ok. I didn’t have kids. Jodes and Andre had kids, a young family, one income, because Jodes had given up her career. She was quite a successful actress. So Andre was meant to be the breadwinner and we weren’t winning much bread!

So I had this other idea… Let’s get an old Combi and travel around Australia visiting wineries. We can film it and get sponsorship. That was awesome because it was so much fun and also helped us build this great network of producers. We were spending weeks at a time with these rock stars, the up and coming winemakers, and brand owners.

The first stage was building the audience, the second was building the network, in hindsight I didn’t know what I was doing but it worked.

DT: Tell us about the launch of Vinomofo and coming up with that business name.

JD: We had trademark issues so it wasn’t all smooth sailing to start with. Originally it was going to be Vinomojo, you know, get your wine mojo working.

We registered it and started doing our social campaigns and started to spend some money and because we had our audience already we had 1000 sign ups.

We were two days out from launch. It was a Friday afternoon and we got a letter from a legal firm to say we couldn’t launch it.

There was an individual wine brand in a different category called Mojo.

We called the CEO but they believed it was an issue for them.

So we decided to change the name. We opened a couple of bottles of wine and as the night went on we got sillier.

We said, what about Vinomofo for the ‘mofo’ trying to steal our mojo? Can we? No we can’t. Actually we could, and it would be funny, and we could always change it back when we win, and it’s a cool kind of story, and we can tell the whole thing on the website page. When we launched people loved it. They were calling themselves vinomofo’s and mofettes.

By then it was happening so quickly and I loved it more than the original name anyway.

DT: What is your secret to success in business?

JD: One of our principles is to be brave. You have to be to stand out. The more fame and success you get the more people want to take you down. The tall poppy syndrome is alive and well. It’s a reality when you become more visible. I had to deal with that. I didn’t want to get in front of the camera. That is not me, but you have to. Social is exploding. Video is huge. This is the best opportunity at the moment in the market. It is coming and it is a tidal wave and I just knew it. Andre had an acting background, he was fine, a natural. I was never in front of the camera. When we started we thought about getting other hosts, not us. I doubted myself because back then I hadn’t done many things outside my comfort zone. I was hesitant and fearful. I knew it should be us representing our brand and Andre said let’s have a crack at it.

I was super uncomfortable but it got better and now I just lean in. Being brave is in our DNA at Vinomofo. I lead by example - make mistakes, learn from it, encourage learning.

My entire business life is stepping out of my comfort zone so that is what we do well.

DT: If you were to advise up and coming liquor retailers what would you say?

JD: There is a lot to think about.

Online is a huge part of wine retail. It is growing so fast and will get more and more about the speed of delivery. With Uber and Deliveroo and even Australia Post, people are starting to pay for convenience over price.

I think bricks and mortar is very powerful but I think it has to change or look different to what it looks like.

I don’t know what the answers are but I am thinking about it very deeply because there are real opportunities. The driving force is convenience and speed.

My mornings now, I order my coffee on Uber and I pay $5 delivery fee. The coffee is only $4 and I am drinking an $8 coffee but I will do it because they will deliver it to my door and they will deliver it in 15 minutes. I don’t have to leave. I don’t have to do anything and that will happen more and more.

Our path has been, let’s go global. We have offices in Melbourne and Adelaide. We have warehouses in Singapore and New Zealand. I’m in each market five or six times a year. We probably will have people in those markets eventually but at this stage this is the engine room and everything is done from here.

The US is the one that we have done the most planning on. We are just working through the licensing. The legal side is really complicated. It has taken longer than we had planned. We should be ready to go soon but we don’t want to go to early and spread our resources too thin.

DT: What is your favourite wine?

JD: Aussie Chardonnay. Chardonnay is life.