debt | The Barefoot Spirit

How Crowdsourcing Built The World’s #1 Wine Brand

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Mon, 08 Jul 2019 14:39:35 +0000

Hi! We are Michael and Bonnie, the founders of the world’s largest wine brand. Did you know that we used crowdsourcing to build Barefoot Wine? Sure, it wasn’t called “Crowdsourcing” back then, but it was the secret to our success!

If Necessity is the Mother of Invention, Being Undercapitalized is Surely the Father!

It all started with an opportunity to turn a debt into a business. Our friend, a grape grower, hadn’t been paid for his grapes for three years. The only thing we could get out of the winery that owed him the money was a trade: debt for goods and services. The goods were bulk wine, and the services were bottling services.

We were undercapitalized and astonishingly deficient in industry knowledge. Then, all of a sudden, we had $300,000 worth of grapes and bottling services, but no clue as to what to do to convert those assets into cash. We were humbled. We started asking questions, lots of questions. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were crowdsourcing.

To read the complete article, please visit Crowd Sourcing Week

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Taste California Travel!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 15:46:29 +0000

The Barefoot Spirit Review by Dan Clarke

The Barefoot Spirit succeeds on several levels.

Those in or around the wine business will enjoy some of the inside scoop on how a young couple naively entered their industry, made predictable mistakes and yet survived. And eventually prospered. Actually, though the product was wine, their journey might serve as a blueprint smart people with boundless energy and dogged persistence could apply to any business. There’s also a “feel good” element to the Barefoot story. Houlihan and Harvey found ways to “do well by doing good.” when they applied their social consciousness in helping causes they thought worthy—and did it in ways that helped build their brand.

When a winemaker friend was owed money by a bankrupt Sonoma County winery in 1985, the couple came up with a novel way to make him whole. They convinced the winery, which was cash poor, but did have a couple of unrealized assets—unbottled wine in tanks and a functional bottling line—to resolve their debt in wine and bottling services. They would help their friend out by selling the wine. After all, it was good wine. How difficult could it be?

To read the complete review, please visit Taste California Travel

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Wine Business Monthly

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Wed, 29 May 2013 19:48:41 +0000

by Cyril Penn | May 24, 2013 | 2:35 PM

So I finished reading my advance copy of The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart built America’s #1 Wine Brand (written with Rick Kushman). It was officially released last week.

These days, Barefoot is owned by E&J Gallo and is a six-million case brand. It wasn’t always that way.

Most people aren’t familiar with the improbable story of how Barefoot started. Back in 1985, when Chateau Souverain was taken over by creditors, it owed grower Mark Lyons (now Sebastiani’s winemaker) for 300 tons of grapes. Mark’s friend Michael Houlihan tried to help. Houlihan, who knew absolutely nothing about the wine industry, paid Souverain a visit hoping to help Lyons recover something – anything. Houlihan naively figured he could help Lyons bottle and sell wine to earn the lost money back. He made a deal for 18,000 cases of wine. In those days, the bulk market for wine wasn’t what it is today. Souverain’s people had no guarantee the wine in their tanks would ever get sold and were happy to have the debt off the books. Next thing you know, Houlihan is in the wine business.

To read the complete article, please click HERE

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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When Success Means Being Turned Down by the Bank

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 19 May 2013 17:13:49 +0000

By Ben Steverman

You’d think selling your wine brand to E&J Gallo would put you squarely on Easy Street. As accidental wine merchants Bonnie Harvey and Michael Houlihan found out, personal finance and entrepreneurship can make an awkward pair.

Before the mid-1980s, the married couple’s main experience with wine was drinking it. Then, while working as a consultant on office management to a wine maker without a brand of his own, Harvey learned that a winery owed her client a lot of money. She brought in Houlihan, a business consultant, who discovered that the indebted winery couldn’t pay cash — but could repay the debt with bulk wine and bottling services.

The couple developed a plan for the client to use those resources to set up a brand. When the client passed on the idea, Harvey and Houlihan took over the debt and launched Barefoot Wine in 1986. They sold the company for an undisclosed sum in 2005. Their book about the 20 years spent building the brand, “The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand,” will be published on May 21. Here are excerpts of their reflections on life and money.

Michael Houlihan: We like to say we fell backwards into the wine business. We didn’t know enough to realize what was involved.

Bonnie Harvey: Ignorance is bliss.

To read the complete interview, please visit Bloomberg News

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

The post When Success Means Being Turned Down by the Bank appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.