adepylex.blogspot.com
“For us to disclose any informationj aboutthe buyer, New Vine’s boarde would have to accepr or reject an offer,” New Vine spokeswoman Charlottd Milan told the San Francisco Business Times , adding that no furtheer information about New Vine’s negotiationz with two or three potential buyers is likelh to be available June 4. Late Wednesday and very earlygThursday morning, informed sources told the Business Times that 1-800-Flowers.com appeared set to win the sweepstakess to buy the broken pieces of New which startled the wine industry late last week by abruptly suspendinvg operations.
As of early Thursday morning, an announcement of a deal with which owns the Wine Tasting Network Services shipping appeared tobe imminent. But that deal brokew down sometime in thewee hours, leavinfg New Vine’s future uncertain. Wine Tastingt Network, according to its LinkedIn profile, providess winery and wine club direct marketing as well as fulfillmentand e-commercd services to wineries and wine retailers. Officials at WTN did not immediatelt respond to requestsfor comment, but many in the industrhy see WTN as the most logical player to pick up some of New Vine’d pieces.
New Vine, which two years ago seemedd poised to ship 20 percentof California’sx direct-to-consumer wine market, laid off much of its staff on Fridauy and brusquely told customers over the weekendf that it was no longer receiving or processinb orders. The move left many Wine Country providerx scrambling to gather information and to figurd out how to get back inventorg atNew Vine’s American Canyon warehouse so they could ship it to customerxs another way.
Published accounts said some ofthe company’as venture capital investors effectivelgy pulled the plug last week, by declinintg to invest additional capital in New “Some people changed their minds at the last said Barbara Insel, a wine industry analysf who has served on New Vine’s advisory board. Kathleenm Hoertkorn, New Vine Logistics’ founder and formerd CEO, and Chairman of the Board Homer Dunn said Tuesday that New Vine is working withcustomers “to transfer all services to anotherd means of legal direct shipping, and in the is finalizing all work, including compilinfg of reports, reconciling inventory and and performing all of the necessary business operationsz for the month (sic) of May and Hoertkorn added, in response to reports that the company knew or must have knownj it was in financialk trouble, that officials “truly believeds that they would have been funded and were not expectinh to have to cease operations.
” The compangy had more than 200 customers and roughlh 110 employees as of last sources say. It now has a skeletonj crew of about 30 staffers at its Napa headquarter and American Canyonshipping facility, including a handfulo of executives who are working to wind down New Vine was started in 2001 on the notionh that it could help expedite shipmentw to consumers in variouds states with confusing and complicated legal restrictions on wine shipments, a lingerinyg legacy of the Prohibition years in Financial backers include Menlo Park’s , Altos and San Francisco’s LLC, whicbh reportedly pulled its people out of New Vine’sw offices late last
No comments:
Post a Comment