For instance, when living in Suzhou, China I "wikied" the city to learn some random facts. Suzhou's sister cities in the United States include such places as Jacksonville, Florida and Portland Oregon. Go figure?
The concept of sister cities never crossed my mind again, that is until I read this great article and learned that Stina's Cellars, a vineyard from Tacoma, Washington managed to break into the China market via their sister city of Fuzhou, China.
After three consecutive delegations of representatives from Fuzhou, China visited the vineyard and sampled the wine, calls started coming in and Stina's Cellars suddenly found it self with 224 cases in new orders from a market they never thought they would be selling to. One importer recently emailed the Washington Vintner and asked "What’s the maximum capacity of the winery? I want to know how much I can get."
It is clear there is untapped demand in China for a variety of products. The real challenge for vintners, agents and exporters is to find away to connect buyers and sellers. There are websites like Alibaba and Chinabusinesworld, but the internet only extends so far.
Here are a few excerpts from the article:
“When I got the call about the tastings I was like, well, it was worth taking a chance on,” Preston said. “The market over there is expanding, and I want to expand. Hopefully, we’ll be able to expand together. And it was just one city, instead of all of China. If it would have been all of China, I would have said, ‘No thanks.’”
About a month later Preston learned that the population of Fuzhou tops 6.6 million – slightly larger than the state of Washington.
To say Perry and Penny Preston, and their son, Ethan, grew Stina’s Cellars from humble beginnings doesn’t do justice to their story.
The old joke in the wine industry goes, “Q: How do you make a small fortune in the winery business? A: Start with a large fortune.”
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