STORViNO
About the Client
Wine enthusiast and entrepreneur Bob Stonhaus found himself in a small house with 250 bottles of wine that were tucked away in cardboard boxes in closets and under stairwells. Not only was it disorganized, but it also prevented bottles from lying properly on their sides. Stonhaus knew there other people like him who didn’t need big, expensive refrigerated wine coolers but wanted an affordable and scalable wine storage system that would fit virtually anywhere. So, after two and a half years of designing, prototyping, testing and filing patents, Stonhaus launched STORViNO, the first modular and transportable wine storage system.
Objectives
After ten product revisions over two and a half years, Bob Stonhaus was ready to launch STORViNO on a national scale in early 2007. He had experimented with print advertisements and a television infomercial—but neither had generated results. Instead, he hired Galvin Communications to generate the buzz necessary to convince brick-and-mortar retailers to stock the product and consumers to buy it.
Results
In three short months, Galvin Communications generated publicity for STORViNO that helped get the product on retailers’ shelves (e.g., Costco) and into consumers’ shopping carts.
STORViNO was featured in major dailies such as the San Francisco Chronicle, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Baltimore Sun, Columbus Dispatch, Orlando Sentinel, Charlotte Observer and Cincinnati Enquirer. It also appeared in specialty journals, e.g., The Wine News, and community papers, e.g., Chicago Free Press.
Galvin Communications also reached out to wine and shopping blogs and STORViNO received favorable coverage on blogs such as “Apartment Therapy,” “Contra Costa Corkheads” and “Hope’s Bag.”
Lastly, Galvin Communications arranged for Bob Stonhaus to appear as a guest on the number one business talk program in the San Francisco Bay Area, KNBR 680 AM’s “The Gary Allen Show,” to discuss how he developed and implemented his idea for STORViNO.