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+--- Thread: MY LETTER TO G&W (/thread-2878.html)
- Jerry D Mead - 03-31-1999
//You too can send a missive to G&W at services@geerwade.com //
Your support for the Orrin Hatch bill is not only disgustingly self-serving, but extremely short-sighted. You are supporting people who are not just anti-interstate shipping, but anti-wine and anti-alcohol period.
One of the supporters, through your fellow monopolists the wholesalers, is ARAA which has already come out against even the "intrastate" shipping on which you flourish.
To support anti-wine, anti-free trade, legislation simply to enhance what you see as a short term competitive advantage is not just simply stupid...it is dangerous to all wine lovers.
As a result, I will do whatever I can to discourage wine lovers doing any business with you for so long as your persist in supporting the bad guys. Lay down with dogs...get up with fleas! I'd say you already have them (fleas)...next thing you know you'll be barking too.
Jerry D. Mead
Nationally Syndicated Columnist
Editor & Publisher, The Wine Trader
Box 1598
Carson City, NV 89702
(775) 884-2648
E-mail: winetrader@aol.com
- WineAndCigar - 04-06-1999
JDM,
Interesting angle on your letter to G&W. I for one, continue to believe that the Wine Industry needs a little opening up. But your last parragraph ... with "fleas" and "dogs barking" ... will 'they' take you seriously? Haaa, but you must know something else re: G&W, that I don't.
Thanks for the morning smile!
WCT
- Jerry D Mead - 04-07-1999
What I mean my the "dogs and fleas" line is that it is shortsighted of G&W to join forces with enemies of wine like Hatch, and enemies of free commerce like the wholesaler lobby. (These latter two representing the "dogs".)
Because they may wake up and discover that the very same forces which seek to stop interstate shipments may in the future use the same arguments to block INTRASTATE shipments, which is the way G&W does business...and then they'll not only have "fleas:..but ticks and mites.
The Critter Curmudgeon
- WineAndCigar - 04-07-1999
Appreciate the clarification. Makes sense! Can't wait to see the "ticks" and "mites" in the future!
By-the-way, have you heard anything more about the NAXON initiative? The PR guy is avoiding me, and their web sight does not e:mail me back. Is the concept still moving forward? I can't find much on this subject ... on the internet.
Regards,
WCT
- Jerry D Mead - 04-09-1999
Re NAXON I don't know any more than you, but the fact that it is supported by the wholesalers is immediate cause to be suspect.
I personally do not believe that NAXON can do what it claims it will do...and in those cases where it does deliver it appears to me we will have traded a 3-tier monopoly for a 4-tier monopoly.
JDM
- amshih - 04-12-1999
Another concern with the Naxon model is that (IMHO) there seem to be some serious antitrust issues. When wholesalers from different states start pooling together pricing and inventory data, I think there's an increased potential for price-fixing and collusion, particularly if only a few behomoth wholesalers participate. We're not just talking about a state-by-state monopoly anymore with the Naxon model; we're talking about a *nationwide* wholesaler controlled monopoly.
- amshih - 04-12-1999
Naxon update -- a clip from today's news:
...[W]holesalers are hedging their bets with the Wineshopper arrangement. Wineshopper, formerly called Naxon, is developing a national database of wholesalers' wine inventory in exchange for the right to sell those products online. The company will operate within the three-tier system, funneling orders through existing distributors, according to CEO Peter Sisson, a 36-year-old former securities analyst who worked at Bell Labs. Sisson says he's raised $46 million in funding commitments from Kleiner Perkins and another investor he declines to name.
Wineshopper will offer small wineries national distribution when it launches sometime this year, according to Sisson. "We don't have any political agendas," he says. "There are plenty of wineries that want to get to market that wholesalers don't want to pick up. We can sell those wines."...
Folks, look at the contradiction in these two paragraphs -- on the one hand, Wineshopper will "funnel orders through existing distributors". On the other hand, Wineshopper can supposedly sell wines that wholesalers "don't want to pick up". Um, if the wholesalers don't want to pick up certain wines, then why would they want to help Wineshopper funnel them through?
[This message has been edited by amshih (edited 04-12-99).]
- amshih - 04-12-1999
Hey Curmy --
Talked with Jay Essa at G&W (yes, I wrote a letter); he mentioned arguing with you for two hours. Just wanted to see what you thought.
- Jerry D Mead - 04-13-1999
I tried to convince him that by siding with the wholesalers and the Utah anti-alcohol bunch he was risking those folks using the same arguments they use against interstate shipping against the intrastate shipping that he does.
Doubt that I convinced him, but he does listen.
JDM