WINE INDUSTRY BUSINESS JOURNAL: Top wine bottle executive Harrop starts own firm

BY JEFF QUACKENBUSH
STAFF REPORTER

NAPA – Erica Harrop has been brokering imported wine bottles and brands for most of her 25 years in the business and helped launch West Coast operations for French companies Demptos and Saverglass.

Now, she's putting all that sales and entrepreneurial experience, plus work in wine and brandy making, to use with her new firm, Global Package LLC. The consulting firm aims to help high-end wineries and distillers overcome difficulties with differentiating their brands in an increasingly more crowded wine market.

Expanding disposable income among baby boomers and Generation Xers and their need to express their personality through the brands they choose is driving sales growth for ultrapremium alcoholic beverages and creating demand for diversification in packaging, according to Ms. Harrop.

"In the next five years, we will not see as much standard packaging on store shelves," Ms. Harrop said.

She is helping wineries obtain custom bottles in Europe, where the smaller-run plants can make molds for $12,000 to $25,000 apiece versus $50,000 each for North American plants.

Being a second-generation German-American fluent in French helped Ms. Harrop develop tact in communicating the long-term view of European bottlemakers to American winemakers and vice versa.

"My role for the past 25 years is communicating the needs of both sides of the Atlantic," she said.

In April, Ms. Harrop left her 11-year post as vice president of sales and marketing in Saverglass' Napa-based North American distribution office to start her firm. In her first year at Saverglass, she increased company sales by 50 percent and maintained double-digit annual growth thereafter. Sales topped 3 million bottles a year when she departed.

Saverglass hired Ms. Harrop away from Demptos, where she was president of the West Coast division. She started the group two years before, and division sales increased from $3.5 million to $9.5 million during that time.

Demptos actually had rehired Ms. Harrop for that position. From 1987 to 1991, she had been the lone West Coast sales representative in the early stages of the Wine Country venture. Sales for the West Coast group grew to $6.5 million from $600,000 when she started.

Just as Demptos had hired her back in a higher position, New York-based Remy Amerique, the U.S. arm of French wine and spirits giant Remy Cointreau, did the same. Her proficiency in translating French into English landed her an internship at Remy as she was pursuing an enology certificate at the University of Bordeaux in France.

With that certificate in 1982 and an undergraduate degree in fermentation science from the University of California at Davis in 1983, Remy Amerique and Schramsberg hired Ms. Harrop the following year as a research enologist at their RMS brandy distillery in Napa Carneros.

In 1991, Remy rehired her as brandymaker and manager of the distillery, which was called Carneros Alambic at that point and is now owned by Foster's Wine Estates.

Personal goal: Wineries and spirits companies spend a lot of money in packaging, and it is my aim to assist buyers to be better informed.

Most admired businessperson: I admire people who stick to their principles and state clearly what is expected. Dawneen Sample Dyer was a pioneer for women as Domaine Chandon’s winemaker for many years and was always very personable and engaging.

Current reading: "The Lady and the Unicorn" by Tracy Chevalier, "Creativity in Business" by Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers and "Trading Up" by Michael Silverstein

Most want to meet: Bill Clinton for his charisma and Kofi Annan for his humanitarianism. I hope to wrestle alligators one day with Steve Irwin in heaven.

Stress relievers: Running

Favorite hobbies: Playing sports, coaching my boys in soccer, making wine in a garage, known as a "garagiste," camping and traveling the world

Words that best describe you: Goal-oriented, direct, energetic