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When drinks need an ID -Women’s trinkets tag wineglasses

All they wanted to do was make enough
money to get back to California’s wine country.

Instead, Ellen Petti
and Derri Greene
launched a
business that
logged $6.5 million in
sales in its second
full year, hired both
their husbands
away from their
full-time jobs and
increased their
workforce more
than 150 percent
over the past eight
months.

By Daisy Whitney
Special to The Denver Post

They did it all with
trinkets for
wineglasses.

Petti, 39, and
Greene, 42, are the
founders of
Centennial-based
That Wine Is Mine.
The business
creates charms that
loop around
wineglass stems for
easy identification at parties.

While wine charms can be found in many gift shops and liquor
stores today, three years ago the pair was among the first to
capitalize on what has become a trend in wine accessories.

In October 1998, the friends and their husbands took a trip to
California. Like many people, they mixed up their glasses during
tastings.

Petti created an earring loop with a charm attached to distinguish
wineglasses. She made a set of six and gave them to Greene for
her birthday.

Friends and neighbors hankered after the sets and the pair soon
decided to pour $7,000 of their savings into a business. The
stay-at-home moms pictured themselves sitting at the kitchen
table while the kids were in school and making wine charms to
sell to local businesses.

"We knew nothing and flew by the

seat of our pants," Petti said.

They began selling to local stores in May 1999. One of the
company’s first customers, a local gourmet market, ordered four
sets on a Thursday afternoon and had sold out of them the next
morning.

The two assembled the sets at home, during swim meets and at
the dentist’s office. They recouped their initial investment later
that summer and ended the first year with $247,000 in sales. In
2000, the business generated sales of $2.6 million, followed by
$6.5 million in 2001. Sales for 2002 are projected to reach $8
million to $8.5 million.

"Functional and fanciful’

At the beginning of this year, they had sold their millionth set.
They now maintain more than 4,000 sales accounts.

"We imagined it keeping us busy, but not like this," Greene said.

They also aren’t working from the kitchen table anymore.

They’ve hired an assembly company and sales representatives
across the country. Petti’s husband is now director of sales and
marketing, while Greene’s husband is treasurer. Last fall, they
moved from their basements into an office in Centennial and
increased the staff from seven, including the two couples, to 19.

Homefest, a home store in Greenwood Village, was the first to
sell That Wine is Mine wineglass tags, and it still carries them.

"It’s functional and also fanciful, and the combination of those
two things is what catches the consumers’ eyes," owner Mike
DiPaulo said.

The market has slowed down somewhat since the early days as
more players have introduced similar products, but That Wine is
Mine is still the best-looking and best made, he said.

Lukas Liquors in Lone Tree has sold about 600 to 800 sets each
year in the two years it has carried the product and expects to
increase its sales to 1,000 to 1,200 this year, said Bennie Hurst,
who handles the gift area of the store.

The charms serve as a conversation piece, she said.

The steady growth in wine accessories has been driven by the
increase in the appreciation of wine over the past decade – since
its health benefits for the heart have been documented in
studies, said Elliott Mackay, vice president and publisher with the
Wine Appreciation Guild in San Francisco, which publishes
books on wine and distributes wine accessories to wineries.

Expansion plans

The market for accessories is large. According to a 2000 Gallup
poll, 64 percent of Americans identified themselves as
consumers of alcohol and 31 percent of those said they were
wine drinkers, according to the Wine Institute in San Francisco,
which represents 600 California wineries.

That Wine is Mine also makes decorative corks and recently
introduced "I Think That’s My Drink," a clip-on identifier for
glasses and cups without stems. The company plans to expand
into other entertainment-related products, such as glassware
and picnic items, Petti said.

http://www.denverpost.com/framework/0%2C1918%2C36%257E33%257E617102%257E%2C00.html

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