Barefoot Wine founders urge young entrepreneurs to be ‘multifaceted’

STARKVILLE — If there’s one word Barefoot Wine co-founders Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey want you to know, it’s “multifaceted.”

“People ask us what the one thing is that made Barefoot so successful,” Harvey said. “It’s being multifaceted.”

Houlihan and Harvey were keynote speakers Friday afternoon at the ribbon-cutting for the Mississippi State University Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach’s expansion. They have made Barefoot one of the top-selling brands in the country.

“The Barefoot style is an approach that weaves its way through every decision that we made,” Houlihan said. “It’s how you deal with people, and it’s also being resourceful and looking at your assets and hidden resources.”

Harvey said she and Houlihan ended up with an interest in a winery after its owners went bankrupt. They decided to take on the winery — and its debt — and turn it into a going concern, in spite of their inexperience in the field.

“How hard could it be?” Houlihan joked.

Houlihan said he approached the largest wine buyer in the area and asked what the company needed to do to get on the shelves.

“He says he wants to have the name the same as the logo so ‘she’ can see it from four feet away when she’s pushing a shopping cart,” Houlihan said. “She. So that meant a female audience. He also said (to) put it in a pig — I learned later that’s a 1.5 liter bottle, twice the size of the 750mL fifth we’re used to seeing.”

That was a very important lesson, Houlihan said.

“We asked,” he said. “What if we had just created a product first and then tried to sell it? That information was a resource.”

Later, Barefoot hit a hurdle with that same seller because he didn’t want to risk trying to place a product without a big advertising push behind it. Barefoot didn’t have the money for advertising, so owners had to look for a different approach.

The answer to that, Houlihan said, was “worthy cause” marketing.

Barefoot had its products in smaller stores, but they weren’t selling. When the winery agreed to give wine to an event put on by a nonprofit, Harvey and Houlihan noticed their sales suddenly took off in the neighborhood where the nonprofit operated.

“The members of this nonprofit neighborhood association now had a social reason to advertise our product,” Houlihan said. “They told everybody about it. So we tried that in another neighborhood, and another.”

Harvey said another facet of Barefoot’s approach was to listen to the employees, regardless of that employee’s role in the company. For example, when the company was trying to break into the Publix grocery store chain in Florida, they were allowed onto the shelves with the expectation they would sell a certain volume within a short time.

The problem was the Barefoot bottles were on the bottom shelf, which is the least desirable placement.

“We had a meeting with all our employees, and somebody suggested decals of a big red foot on the floor that started at the front door and led to the wine aisle,” Harvey said. “Then the (decals) turn and face the wine shelf. Then they look down, and there’s a big sign that says ‘Barefoot.’”

That idea came from a 75-year-old receptionist, not a marketing person, Harvey said.

Barefoot went on to become one of the nation’s best selling wines, and Houlihan and Harvey sold it to E&J Gallo in 2005. They now work as entrepreneurship coaches.

Houlihan and Harvey, after their address, participated in judging the MSU Startup Summit Final Competition, where students pitched products and business ideas for investment.

Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.