Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/116287
APRIL NEWS Experiments With Crowd Sourcing While challenging, crowd funding has been successful for some small wineries S an Rafael, Calif.—When Mark Henry was starting his business in 2005 he had a vision of his own winery but little winemaking equipment. After a few years of running a winery out of his home in the small Sierra Nevada Foothills town of Chicago Park, Calif., he eventually built a small winery in 2008. One of the neighboring winemakers in the area had an old screw press that could handle 2 tons, and the winemaker was willing to hand it down to Henry for $2,000. Henry, the owner of Montoliva Vineyard & Winery, said he grew to love the loud, rather inefficient press that had been modified to run on an old gas engine. But by the 2012 vintage, when he was pressing 35 tons, he had finally outgrown the old press. Henry, like a few other owners of small wineries in the United States, decided to turn to the crowd-funding website Kickstarter to raise the $25,000 he needed for a new SK Group membrane press. William Allen of Two Shepherds Vineyards samples Grenache Blanc from a concrete vessel he was able to buy with money raised through a Kickstarter funding campaign. He found most equipment financers aren't quick to help at that level. Banks also aren't eager to help a small company purchase an expensive piece of equipment that's only used two to three weeks per year. Every Kickstarter campaign offers those who pledge money rewards for their contributions. The challenge, however, is that Kickstarter doesn't allow firms to give away alcohol as a reward— quite the hurdle winesandvines.com for a winery. It's Learn more: Search keywords one of the ob"Crowd sourcing." stacles winemakers say they have to overcome to make crowd funding effective. Kickstarter makes its money by taking a 5% cut of the total funding, and Amazon will take between 3% and 5% to process the payment. Projects are only funded if they reach the stated goal, and the funding comes with no ownership stake. Other websites like Indigogo, Razoo and Rocket Hub operate with a similar model but some different conditions. Rocket Hub, for example, allows someone to collect any money raised even if they don't reach their goal, though the company will take a larger fee if the campaign doesn't hit its goal. —Andrew Adams Win es & V i n es A PRI L 20 13 19