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Community Corner

Gary Vaynerchuk: Virtual WIne Merchant To The World

A small family business that grew into an international enterprise.

Gary Vaynerchuk grew up in Hunterdon County as the child of two immigrants. Longtime Springfield residents will remember his father's store as Shoppers Discount Liquor located on Millburn Avenue near Morris. The store's parking lot is still at the same location, but the monumental Wine Library was built around the site in 2003. (Bonus points to anyone who remembers the Morris Avenue Burger King that used to inhabit that spot.)

Vaynerchuk was the kind of kid who was always buying and selling—baseball cards were an early passion. He recently told Patch "I didn't process until I was in my late teens, that what I did with swapping baseball cards, I was naturally doing for the wine store. But by the time I was 15 I knew I wanted to take over my father's store and grow it.

"My parents are from Belarus and are very eastern European in their outlook. My dad was super-happy that I had ambitions—he was proud of me and gave me a lot of freedom to be creative. I started working for my father when I was only 14—he was about my current age (there's only 22 years in age difference between us) and he was letting me make real business decisions.

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"I'm first generation" he said, "My parents came to this country and achieved all that they did, and that gave me the options I have had. I'm not easily inspired except by my parents—How wise my mom is, how hard my dad works. There's no distant second, no businessmen or women or athlete."

In 1997, Vaynerchuk's father invested $20,000 and gave the go-ahead to launch a website for Wine Library. It was a big gamble at the time on a then-unproved technology. Vaynerchuk told Patch about operating in the infancy of e-commerce. "We used the site more like an electronic catalog for people to see what we had in inventory." Today Wine Library is a top-rated electronic merchant. The site offers bottles, of course, but also is a mini-encyclopedia teaching different types of wine at all price points and it ships all over the globe.

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The Wine Library's 10,000 square foot warehouse is located in the store's basement, and holds 10,000 cases of wine or 120,000 bottles from vineyards all over the world, ranging from boutiques to the biggest businesses.

In 2005 Vaynerchuk started an ancillary food department, Gourmet Library. He said "Most gourmet items are overpriced, my vision is to bring quality items at discount prices."

If you're curious and looking to sample some of Gourmet Library's incredible cheeses or other items such as pesto, olive oil, cookies or pate—make a quick right as you enter the store. There is usually an enticing array of samples. A Wine Library open house is scheduled for July 10, which is expected to draw over 250, many from out of state.

Since Vaynerchuk has become well-known as an early technology adopter, he's been enjoying a second career as a New Media expert. "Twitter is a new chapter," he told us. "I leveraged social media to build Wine Library and get a lot of credit for being early."

The technology story began in earnest almost a decade ago. "In 2001, Erik Kastner and John K. the two lead developers for the website, sat next to me in the old store when we built our first site. We learned by being in the trenches. Back then we all had PCs, but now we're a Mac shop." More social media developments followed.

"I began to blog in 2006 and now I have 850,000 Twitter followers. I'm a big Twitter fan and I knew I wanted to be part of that community early on. Years ago, when I was first on Twitter, I was serving on jury duty in New York City. We had an hour lunch break, and I tweeted that I was going out for pizza if anyone wanted to meet. Within twenty minutes a dozen people showed up."

This year, Vaynerchuk's social media expertise led to his giving a keynote address at SXSW (a technorati must-go-to conference). "The networking and parties were important" he said. "I got to meet and spend time with incredible people such as Evan Williams from Twitter; Jason Fried, author of Rework; Tony (Hsieh) Shea CEO of Zappos. Amazing people. Dennis Crowley of foursquare is another person I spoke with there. There was a real meeting of the minds, a great opportunity. I also got to hang out with the kid from Kansas who's a fan. I'm very social, I like people to want to say hello."

Although he's operating on the world stage now, Vaynerchuk appreciates his roots and is proud of his Springfield business. "Wine Library" he told Patch, "is a world-class business, one of a handful of the best wine shops in the country. I'm proud of it." 

His second floor office window overlooks Morris Avenue and he can look out and see the neighboring shops, stores and offices. "I see Bed, Bath and Beyond," he said, speaking of the original store of the big national chain, which is located right down the block, "And I'm glad that Wine Library is part of the same Springfield success story."

Wine Library employs approximately 85 people—many are Springfield residents. The store is usually hiring part-time help, so if your college student is home for the summer, send them over. It could be the start of a new (media!) career.  

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