A Matter of Taste
Wine Frog fosters trust among its international clientele
That’s why, when the couple decided to enter an inexpensive bottle of Champagne Thiénot into a local blind taste testing of non-vintage champagnes last fall, they knew their pick would win.
And it did.
“Ours was the least expensive and it was chosen No. 1,” Natalie said. “That’s a perfect example of what the Wine Frog represents – something that nobody’s heard of, but that in a blind tasting is going to be better than anything else that people drink and it’s also going to be less expensive.”
Natalie, 35, and Jacques, 38, own and operate the Wine Frog, which is an importer and distributor of lesser-known wines to such Fort Worth entities as Majestic Liquor Store, Central Market grocery store, KingÂ’s Liquor stores and Del FriscoÂ’s Double Eagle Steak House.
The couple opened the Wine Frog, located at 3625 East Vickery St., two years ago, after Jacques grew weary of working for other import businesses and decided he wanted to work for himself. Natalie and Jacques import wines from around the world and distribute them to retailers both locally and throughout the nation. But their hearts, Natalie said, are always in Fort Worth.
“We love doing business here in Fort Worth,” she said. “So many people are happy to help a new business get a good start, and since we carry niche wines, places like Central Market and Majestic are perfect retail locations for our products. I think Fort Worth loves us too – even though they may not know who the Wine Frog is, they know and love to drink the wines we bring in from around the world.”
Jacques said the name of the business was an intentional derogating dig at his French background and a pun alluding to NatalieÂ’s educational background at Texas Christian University, where the mascot is the horned frog.
“When I was trying to name the business, I knew that I wanted something light,” Jacques said. “The British call the French ‘frogs’ as a derogatory term and Nat and I both believe there is a bit of snobbism attached to wine, which is perpetuated by major companies, that if you don’t know about fine wines then you can’t appreciate it. But there is a real wine revolution in this country right now, and as in any revolution, it’s the base that’s taking over. Wine has to remain light and convivial and if I describe myself as a frog, it takes away the arrogance of it. The frog was a perfect match for Texas and the TCU horned frog, so it was perfect. Plus, it’s a funny name and it shows that we don’t think we are better than anyone. We’re just two people who enjoy wine.”
Natalie said it is hard for a new company to break into the wine business because it cannot reinvent the wheel. The trick, she said, was for the Wine Frog to find its reason for existence and appeal to it.
“We are a smaller business so we aren’t going to carry wine from huge wineries,” Natalie said. “So what we found ourselves doing pretty quickly is trying to add value in the existing marketplace by finding wines that stand out in a quiet way. Overall we carry wines from small, family-owned and operated wineries – people who actually work in the fields to produce their own wine.”
Jonathan Clark, wine and beer manager for Central Market, said he buys wine ranging from $5.99 to $85.99 from the Wine Frog and he has always been satisfied.
“Natalie stands behind every bottle and it’s all fantastic,” Clark said. “She has bottles from wine producers who produce 2,000 cases and some who produce 200 – and she backs up every one of them.”
Clark recalls a recent frantic phone call he made to Natalie from a wine tasting room in Oregon.
“We found a great wine that wasn’t in Texas at all and I knew we had to have it,” he said. “I have Natalie’s cell phone and she has mine, so I called her and told her we had to get this wine, and before I knew it, I had the wine maker standing in my showroom.”
Natalie said she is also careful to import wine only from those winemakers who produce wine on land that is supposed to yield that wine. Pinot Noir, for example, is a delicate grape and cannot be grown in the desert, Natalie said. But since the movie Sideways – a 2004 movie that popularized the Pinot Noir segment of the wine market – many people are trying to plant pinot grapes in places not suited for their growth.
“Pinot originated in Burgundy and there is no secret – if you go to Burgundy and grab a handful of soil, it’s rich and it really favors the grape,” Jacques said. “… we are trying to be true to the wine’s origin, which helps to ensure that the consumer of that wine will be satisfied with the taste of it.”
When he decided to start the business, Jacques said he knew he wanted to be an importer for an array of wines from around the world. What he didnÂ’t know was the role an old family friend would play in the Wine FrogÂ’s future.
“When I first planned out the Wine Frog, I wanted to have an import company, but I thought we should probably do some distribution as well,” Jacques said. “I went to France to talk with some contacts there to import some of their wine and an old family friend, Alain Thiénot, said he wanted to be a partner in an import-only business where I would import his champagne into the U.S. That meant that I needed to focus on a new business, which we call Champagnes and Chateaux, but Nat and I still wanted to do the Wine Frog. We just thought we would try to do both. The other thing is more international based. The Wine Frog is our backyard; it’s Texas.”
As Jacques continued to jumpstart his champagne import business, Natalie said they both knew plans for the Wine Frog were being set aside.
“I kept being critical saying ‘who’s taking care of this,’ and ‘what’s happening with that,’ and Jacques finally looked at me and said, ‘look, if you’ve got it all figured out, then why don’t you just come in here and do it because I need some help.’ It was almost a dare,” Natalie said, laughing.
“And she didn’t wait too long,” Jacques said. “She said, ‘okay I will give it a shot, and it’s more than a shot now – she’s done everything for the last two years, and right now she is the Wine Frog.”
Natalie said she soon realized that she didnÂ’t have to know as much about wine as she knew about good business sense and tactics.
“I know about wine now, but then I knew nothing,” she said. “But it’s not about that. It’s about figuring out what businesses want and getting it for them. If the businesses are going to buy from you, they have to believe you are going to deliver.”
One of the biggest problems in the relationship between wine whole sellers and retailers, Natalie said, is that whole sellers will deliver wine that is hot – or has not been properly refrigerated in its storage – and whole sellers don’t follow up with retailers to ensure they are satisfied.
“All I had to do was talk to retailers like Majestic, who … told me these are the problems we have with other distributors, and if you can do better, then we’ll give you a shot,” Natalie said. “It’s really risky for them to work with me because if they buy my products and get them on the shelf, and then I go out of business or I deliver wine hot and they have to send it back, then that’s going to make them look bad. It’s easier to trust a bigger distributor but that’s also the great part about the Wine Frog – I am personally there every time to shake a buyer’s hand and assure them that the wine is cold and I am just a phone call away if they need anything.”
Natalie said her father was an entrepreneur and she watched as he struggled at times. After growing up with a father who owned his own business, Natalie said she didnÂ’t think she would ever follow in his footsteps, but her experience with Wine Frog has changed her perspective.
“I would tell anyone thinking about being an entrepreneur to take a chance,” she said. “If you’re really thinking about it, then you’re probably daring enough to do it well. I was never happy in an office job and now I have never been happier.”
Natalie said she didnÂ’t realize how capital-intensive a start-up business could be when she and her husband first dove into it. Though the couple started the Wine Frog with less than $15,000, Natalie said they have sold more than $1 million in wine for 2005.
“We did a lot of bootstrapping in the beginning to get this thing off the ground, but I guess that’s how you have to do it sometimes,” Natalie said. “It has definitely been as educational as it has been adventurous.”
The Wine Frog employs three full-time workers and seven commissioned sales people.
Natalie said she got most of the Wine FrogÂ’s vintages from her husbandÂ’s contacts in the early days of the business, but things have changed significantly during the past two years.
“The Wine Frog has created a reputation with our retailers and suppliers in specializing in niche, high quality wines so we’ve really branched out,” she said.
The price points for wine at the Wine Frog range from $6 to $100, but Natalie said the average price is between $10 and $30.
According to the American Wine Society, American wine consumption has grown every year since 1994 to reach a record 232 million cases of table wine in 2004.
Jacques said the growth in wine popularity has also meant many Americans have approached their local liquor retailers wanting a more specialized, niche wine.
“[Customers] want a wine that came from someplace special, and that’s really what we’re trying to do. There’s nothing wrong with mainstream like Kendall Jack, but we offer something different, unique and very special.”
Natalie said she and her husband are very invested in the brands they carry. For example, she said, if a certain wine they carry begins to demand a larger and larger order to be shipped to Texas retail, Natalie said that wine producer could be lured away by a larger distributor.
“That’s just the way it works. It’s a dirty business,” Natalie said. “We’re like artists in the recording business – if our product is ‘discovered’ by a bigger distributor, they may be able to offer something we can’t. But we knew that going in and that’s why we give people a one-on-one feeling when they’re working with us – because if that’s what they value the most, then they’ll stay with us.”
Clark said he has found great flexibility in working with the Wine Frog and he is more and more pleased to work with the company.
“I recently sat down in a meeting where they had five levels of authority in front of me,” Clark said. “If they were my whole seller and I needed a new sign made for their product, it would take a lot of OKs to make it happen versus Natalie, which I have her cell phone number and she makes it happen right then and there. It’s a huge relief. I don’t think bigger distributors can offer that level of service.”
The Wine FrogÂ’s most recent business move is a shift to endorse specific brands of wine. Natalie said she and her husband have used the businessÂ’ logo (grapes that resemble a TCU horned frog) as a label to identify the wines the business endorses.
“We’re trying to build trust with the public with the Wine Frog as a brand having endorsed a certain wine,” Natalie said. “We want to let people know that based on our knowledge of the field, these are the wines we think are the best for the money. We would like to become known as local wine professionals; the place where businesses can go to if they want to have a wine event or if they want advice on a specific wine. It’s not like we have this big company and we’re just trying to sell truckloads of wine – we’re more into the handcrafted products, wines with an authenticity.”
Jacques said he measures the success of the Wine Frog not by numbers but by the trust he and Natalie have received from local distributors.
“From the beginning, we believed in our chances and we have heard from our customers how refreshing it is to work with us and get a personal experience,” he said. “And to get a compliment such as this from a family-owned winery that values trust more than anything else, this is very special for us and it is what we had always hoped for – nothing more, nothing less – just good people trusting us to do a good job.”
Contact Claunch at aclaunch@bizpress.net.
