The Importance of OND

Acronyms have always been a part of our dialect.  Shortening up words into quick phrases that are easily understood is something of an art form.  A few that come to mind (compliments of my two teenagers) are LOL ("no mom, it's not lots of love!"), POS ("parent over shoulder", not the printed materials used to help sell wine) and WTF (this one's obvious...).   A quick search on Google reveals an entirely new language is being spoken by the newest generation - check out http://www.urbandictionary.com/ if you don't believe me.

This brings me to one of my more embarrassing moments in the wine industry.  As a young twenty something working for the winery, I thought I was pretty hot stuff.  There I was, out there on the streets of San Francisco, selling wine, making deals and entertaining customers. I even had a company credit card.  I was cool. But, as I know now, one can have certain experiences that will knock you down a few pegs.  And, wine sales is one of them. 

Perhaps the busiest selling time for our industry is the three month period beginning in October and carrying on through December - October, November and December-better known as "OND."  Being the hot shot that I thought I was, I recall having more than a few conversations about this key selling period.  Everyone was talking about it.  OND this and OND that.  The problem was, I didn't have a clue what OND meant.   You have to picture it - me and a bunch of my industry counterparts discussing how important OND is and I'm clueless as to what everyone is talking about.  Fortunately, no one asked me a serious question about my strategy for OND.  

Years have passed yet OND remains a very busy and important time for our industry.   And while the impact of these three months have lessened over the years with the proliferation of so many wine brands, the holiday selling season  is still a critical time for us.  This is particularly true for sparkling wine producers. Did you know that 60% of all sparkling wine/champagne is sold during OND?  Talk about sweating bullets.

As we enter December with OND nearly behind us, the majority of our sales work is done. Distributor orders have been placed, retailers have finalized their promotions, and restaurants have stocked up on wines for the holiday season. Now it's time to start planning for next year. The next few weeks will be spent recapping our sales, finalizing projections for 2011, and preparing our budgets for the coming year. Think MPB (meetings, projections, and budgets) instead of OND.  Then, before we know it, it's JFM (January, February, and March) and time to start all over again.