+- WineBoard (https://www.wines.com/wineboard)
+-- Forum: RESOURCES AND OTHER STUFF (https://www.wines.com/wineboard/forum-300.html)
+--- Forum: Wine Biz/Investment (https://www.wines.com/wineboard/forum-8.html)
+--- Thread: sell wines (/thread-3151.html)
- HECTOR - 10-30-2002
Hello my friends, I would like to start a small business thru the internet selling all types of wines from any country or just doing it inside the USA, can you help me in any way of information or direction I should take?
- hotwine - 10-31-2002
Welcome to the board, Hector. Sorry to bring you bad news, but you're in for huge headaches trying to start such a business. Why? Because each state has different laws regarding interstate shipping of alcoholic beverages. It's also against federal law to ship it through the U.S. mail. And UPS has a practice of destroying any packages that they can identify as containing wine, to avoid tripping over state laws. Your own state may have its own set of arcane rules for storage, handling and ground transport, such as requirements for licensed and bonded vehicles, drivers and warehouses which cannot be used for any other purpose (those are Texas requirements); and each license/bond must be renewed annually at considerable expense. You would need expert legal advice to ensure your compliance with the laws of each state. That can also get very expensive.
If you really want to give it a try, suggest you contact your state's alcoholic beverage control commission, an office of your state government. It goes by different names from one state to another, but it's the office charged by state government to enforce compliance with state laws regarding importation, distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages. Tell them what kind of business you want to establish, and ask them to send you a packet of information on state requirements.
[This message has been edited by hotwine (edited 10-31-2002).]
- slovakwine - 11-03-2002
HECTOR -
Sorry to say, but I could not agree more with hotwine. We are in the process of importing and selling wine right now (from Slovakia) and it is a major headache. We have been contacted by several people like you who are interested in doing this (even though we are just beginners really) because our web site has some information on importing and people found us searching on the internet for this information. Because of this, we have decided to write a series of articles on everything we have had to go through to import wine and then sell it online. The first article is up on our web site now and we will probably put up another one every couple of days.
http://www.slovakwine.com/slovak-wine-process-article1-100302.html
This article is really just an introduction, but we will go through - selecting vineyards, having the wine tasted, selecting the wines, finding a distribution system, working on COLA approvals, building a web site, dealing with shipping, ATF licenses, ..............and probably a lot more. We are about 80% through the process right now and we are learning as we go.
This is no get quick rich idea at all and there are middle men all along the way who will take chunks from your profit. (Ha! I said profit, that might only be a theoretical term until we can import multiple containers at a time).
Other than our site, you can also try freethegrapes.org and wineinstitute.org (along with atf.treas.gov).
I just found this message board today and I am definitely sticking around. It looks great. Thanks all.