Almost every day, we speak with businesses that are still not convinced that their traditional, off-line retail outlet or product can benefit from going online.  When we talk with our clients about making the transition to online, their first thoughts jump to e-commerce and setting up an online shop. This can be one option, but what people tend to overlook is the thousands of other things you can do online to promote and sell your products.

One of our favourite examples of using the internet is a creative way is Wine Library. With it’s origins as a traditional wine retailer, the business experienced a major culture shock when its CEO, self-taught wine expert Gary Vaynerchuk, started taping his own reviews of their wine and posting them online. So, did his online show help sales? According to Gary,

“At first, sales decreased substantially. I was the CEO and it was culture shock for this company to lose me. I wasn’t spending 15 hours a day trying to build Wine Library retail. My day used to be calling on CEOs and six figure clients and selling them tens of thousands of dollars of wine every day. That just stopped on a dime. But it’s climbed back up. That’s the kind of business you love, right? It doesn’t rely on you at all and is still growing.

Almost 70 percent of the wines that have been on Wine Library I’ve panned. At first, I knew people would think I was just shilling wine. But what they didn’t realize I had a much bigger global thought: I was trying to build personal brand equity. There are people driving four, five or six hours just to see where I tape the show and coming to Wine Library”

He now he does five shows a week, attracts 80,000 people a day to his website and has sales in excess of $50 million.