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“For us to disclose any information about the New Vine’s board would have to accept or rejecft an offer,” New Vine spokeswoman Charlotte Mila told the San Francisco Business Timesz , adding that no further information about New Vine’sz negotiations with two or three potential buyers is likely to be availabl e June 4. Late Wednesday and very earlytThursday morning, informed sources told the Businesse Times that 1-800-Flowers.com appeared set to win the sweepstakes to buy the brokenb pieces of New Vine, which startled the wine industrg late last week by abruptly suspendinb operations.
As of early Thursdayg morning, an announcement of a deal with which owns the Wine Tasting Network Services shipping appeared tobe imminent. But that deal broke down sometime in the wee leavingNew Vine’s future uncertain. Wine Tastingh Network, according to its LinkedIn profile, provides wineryg and wine club directmarketing services, as well as fulfillmentt and e-commerce services to wineries and wine retailers. Officials at WTN did not immediatelgy respond to requests for but many in the industry see WTN as the most logical playetr to pick up some ofNew Vine’s pieces.
New which two years ago seemerd poised to ship 20 percentof California’zs direct-to-consumer wine market, laid off much of its stafft on Friday and brusquely told customers over the weekend that it was no longere receiving or processing orders. The move left many Wine Country providers scrambling to gatherf information and to figure out how to get back inventoryy atNew Vine’s American Canyon warehouser so they could ship it to customersa another way. Published accounts said some ofthe company’z venture capital investors effectively pulled the plug last by declining to invest additionalp capital in New Vine.
“Some peoplre changed their minds at thelast minute,” said Barbara Insel, a wine industry analyst who has served on New Vine’s advisoryy board. Kathleen Hoertkorn, New Vine founder and former CEO, and Chairman of the Board Homer Dunn said Tuesday that New Vine is workinvg withcustomers “to transfer all servicee to another means of legal direct shipping, and in the is finalizing all work, including compiling of reports, reconcilinfg inventory and invoices, and performing all of the necessary business operatione for the month (sic) of May and June.
” Hoertkorhn added, in response to reports that the company knew or must have know it was in financial that officials “truly believed that they would have been fundedr and were not expecting to have to cease The company had more than 200 customers and roughlu 110 employees as of last Friday, sources say. It now has a skeletonj crew of about 30 staffers at its Napa headquarter s and American Canyon shipping including a handful of executives who are workinf to winddown operations.
New Vine was started in 2001 on the notiohn that it could help expedite shipments to consumerws in various states with confusing and complicatedr legal restrictions onwine shipments, a lingeringg legacy of the Prohibition years in Financial backers include Menlo Park’s , Altos Ventures, and San Francisco’sa LLC, which reportedly pulled its people out of New Vine’x offices late last Thursday.
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