 Welcome to Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee, owner of Kathleen Lee Consulting, and I am your host for this program. Think Tech Hawaii is currently live streamed on ThinkTechHawaii.com, as well as on Think Tech Hawaii's Facebook and YouTube channels. And for viewers out there that are watching us live, you may email us questions to questions at ThinkTechHawaii.com. For this show, I am excited to introduce the owner, multi-hyphenate, I'm kidding, owner, founder, head sommelier, Ari Wood, who founded the sommelier's box. So, Ari, welcome to the show. Thanks, Kathleen. Thanks for having me today. Absolutely. So, tell us about yourself. So, as it pertains to this company, I've been working the last 10, 11 years in the fine wine industry here on Oahu. I have been working for a large beverage distributor, selling fine wines to retail establishments and restaurants around the island. I got into the wine industry originally as a side gig as I was going to law school. I was working at a little fine dining restaurant, some of you are Oahu visitors or viewers might know. They beat you out in New York Valley. Great little restaurant. I worked there part-time, waiting tables, and eventually after I got through law school and practiced for a couple of years, decided the law was not my cup of tea. I went back there full-time and started working more with the wine list and tasting more wines and really got in love with the wine industry and decided to move into that more full-time. So, also needed to get out of working nights, so got into a day job selling wine and kind of been there ever since. So, it was a good training and now with this position that I've had for the last 10 years has exposed me to so many wines I can't even tell you, it's thousands of wines throughout my career, so it's been fun. Sounds like the best job ever. Yeah, pretty good. Before we go into the sommelier's box, could you educate our viewers on what it takes for someone to be a sommelier? Yeah, so sommelier, there's different levels of sommelier. I'm what's considered a level two sommelier, so it's a matter of studying and going for a couple of days of exams and testing. You have to do blind tasting, which is being able to identify a wine without knowing what it is, just based on color and the smell and taste, as well as some theory being able to identify different regions, different varietals, it's like a multiple choice kind of exam, and then if you go past that, you can get into the advanced sommelier's and the master's psalms that really dedicate their lives to knowing Burgundy from north to south and east to west and all of the in-between little nooks and crannies. I never felt that I needed that much, but working in the industry for as many years as I have allowed me to get the kind of knowledge that not a lot of people get to have, so I'm lucky in that way. That's wonderful. So let's get into your business, the sommelier's box. When we talk previous to the show, you mentioned that you started this last year, and last year was even in the midst of a pandemic. I mean, we still are, but I'd love for you to go over how you started out. Like, where did the idea come from and where is it now? Yeah, actually, you know, the original sort of genesis of the idea started even before the pandemic hit. It was early 2019, and I was hanging out with a friend of mine, this guy, Seth Kripe, was a winemaker, great little winery in Napa named Lola. And he was mentioning, we were just chatting and he said, you know, I get this monthly wine subscription from this buddy of mine who's a sommelier. And it was like, the light bulb went off. I was like, wow, that's a brilliant idea. Because nobody had really been doing that here in Hawaii. Like, I'd never heard of anybody offering a monthly subscription box to local residents. So that was sort of the genesis of the idea. And then it really, as the more I thought about it and started, you know, brainstorming it, it really solved some of the problems and the issues that I had had with the way wine was sold to average consumers, your retail stores here on Oahu. And I thought maybe I could I could fix some of those problems because there's there's some great independent retailers out there. You know, some little ones that are fantastic little boutique neighborhood stores, you know, but a lot of people that go shopping at either the grocery store or some of the bigger, you know, you know, the names, the tours and things like that. It can be hard to find something special and unique and feel confident in what you're getting. And unfortunately, a lot of the staff there don't get the opportunity to taste a lot of the wines that they're selling. So they might have a lot of great wine knowledge in general. But, you know, if you're asking them about a specific wine, it might hit or miss whether they know anything about it. So that was one of the issues that I kept running up against. And then also from from the other side of being a distributor, I knew that there were tons of delicious wines that really I couldn't get into people's hands very easily. A lot of retailers are very reticent to pick up something that's off the beaten path, you know, if it if it's not the right varietal or from the right region, you know, if it's too weird or too unknown. A lot of times those wines just end up sitting on the shelf, right? And so retailers don't want to bring them in. And even if they do, they don't sell. So even though I knew as someone who had tasted the wines, that they were fantastic, I knew that your average consumer had no idea what was sitting on the shelf there. So, you know, all of these little bits and pieces kind of added up. And I figured, you know, if I can do this, plus add the convenience of shipping it to somebody's house or their business or office and getting wines that I know are great into people's homes and into their glasses, you know, this could actually be something that maybe people would would respond to. And I think so far they have. So, you know, I'm pretty happy with the way it's turned out. Yeah. So, Aubrey, where do you you talk about you touch upon these different types of wines? Like, where do you source them from? And how do you go about it? Is it just you do local wines, national wines, like wines from all over the world? Like, how do you decide? Well, I decide by tasting them is the first part, right? Best job ever. It's not a bad gig. But, you know, for me, the wines first and foremost, they have to be delicious. So, I taste everything before it goes into one of my boxes. But as far as where the wines come from, really, it's all over the world. You know, it can be domestic wines. It can be, you know, European wines, Italian, French wines from Australia. It really doesn't matter to me where they come from. My biggest thing is I don't need to sell you a wine that you can find at the grocery store, the market, the big name stuff. Like, those wines, some of them are great, some of them are OK, but they all sell well enough on their own. I'm really looking for those little special bottles that are made by small producers and really boutique sort of handcrafted ways that don't have the big, you know, critical scores and acclaim and the big names behind them. So, you know, those wines, you can find them and they're fine. Go buy them if you love them. That's great. But I wanted to really make a platform for these smaller producers that really do an amazing job with their wines to have an outlet to the market and really have to be able to give access to those wines to the Hawaii consumers. So that's where I'm coming from. Do you, and I just thought about this, do you find yourself to be in competition with, like, the retailers or, you know, the specialty wine sellers here in the state? Not so much because, you know, like I mentioned, the wines that I'm usually buying and putting into my box are not the wines that other stores are really looking for that often. They're, you know, it's weird things. It's Garnacha Blanca and Palagrello Nero and things you've never heard of, things that I have sometimes have never heard of. They're like, what is this? It's delicious. But that's what I want to do, right, is to put those kind of interesting things. And the other part is because I have connections in the industry and I have friends and different distributors, you know, some of the wines, a lot of the wines actually that I'm bringing in are not in Hawaii yet. They're wines that are maybe carried by the parent company in California. But nobody's brought them into Hawaii. And I know, from my experience as a distributor, a lot of times we would taste wines like that and be like, this is great, but I can't sell it, right? Like, who's going to buy it? Like, you know, maybe some of the great restaurants of Sineas and a lot of these and things like that. You get a couple bottles on the list, but, you know, that doesn't help your person that wants to buy a bottle and take it home or buy a bottle and take it to your friend's house for dinner. So that was really the issue that I was seeing. And so being able to have those connections and say, hey, can we look at what your inventory is in California and bring things in? I've never been in Hawaii before is a pretty fun part of the business too. Let's delve more into what the Smale's box offers. So I initially thought when I actually saw the wines that your business was posting on Instagram, just wanted to let everyone know. Social media is a great platform for business. We're on that. Right? So I thought it was just a subscription box, but it is not. Can you tell us more about like the offerings that the Smale's box has? Yes. So the initial focus and so my main focus is really that monthly subscription because I think it's the easiest way for people to access the wines and not have to do too much investigation on their own. But we do offer all of our wines are also available for sale on the website for individual purchase. So you can go there by one bottle, three bottles, eight bottles. And a lot of people do take advantage of that opportunity. You know, and one of the nice things, and I'm sure we'll get into the website later is there's a lot of information there for people to look at and check out and kind of figure out what they might like. Great. You have it on here that it's your company is offering free delivery to all of Oahu. Yep. Absolutely. So, you know, we'll either deliver it hand deliver it or put it into FedEx and ship it out to you kind of depending on time and where you live and all that stuff. But yeah, we're trying to reduce the barriers to entry and make it easier for people to sign up and get their wines. So, yeah. But if people do live on the neighbor islands, they, that's still pay shipping, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, neighbor islands were not actually shipping to yet. So there's, there's, you know, we're a restricted industry. And there's liquor commissions and all of that. So that's something we haven't tackled yet. But, you know, hopefully down the line we'll be able to ship to the Oahu. Let's, let's go into that after the break. Cause I feel like that may take more than a few minutes, which is what we have. So when we come back, I would love for you to talk about some of the challenges that you ran into in building this business, especially during the time of a pandemic and with all the permitting that comes with it and like where you are now and future plans as well. So we will be right back. Thank you so much for watching our show. We'll see you then. Aloha. Welcome back to connecting Hawaii business on think tech Hawaii. Our guest for today is Audrey Wood, owner of the state of clean energy on think tech Hawaii. Hawaii, the state of clean energy is about following the many clean energy initiatives in Hawaii. Hawaii, the state of clean energy appears weekly on think tech Hawaii at 4pm on Wednesdays. Audrey Wood, owner of the Somalia's box. When we left off, we wanted to delve more into the challenges that he faced starting this wonderfully awesome business that is filling a niche in the state right now. So Audrey, what are some challenges that you came across during the pandemic or even just starting a business that involves things like permitting because it is, you know, it does require handling liquor. Yeah. Yeah, so there's a little more red tape that goes into a business like a wine store liquor store. We needed to do all the permitting with liquor commission. We had to get zoning clearances and we had to do all the permitting with the liquor commission. We had to get the drone drawn up at the, the, our office. So a lot of, a lot of paperwork that went into that. And it did take a little longer, I think than normal with COVID. There were some backlogs at the liquor commission and things like that. So, you know, they used to tell you three to six months and it was probably more like eight or nine before they got around to us. So definitely some challenges with timetables on that end. So, you know, if any of your audience are entrepreneurs themselves or started a business, there's, there's always, especially with that first business, there's always a lot more that goes into it than you initially think there is. And then it's not until you start digging into it that you realize, oh, I need to do that. And I need to get this clearance. So now I need to do that. So, so, you know, it was a fun process, you know, building a company is it can be, if you don't take it too seriously to be a lot of fun at the same time with it. Yeah, definitely timetables, you need to be forgiving on and, and allow it to happen as it happens, I guess. And I love how when we were talking about your business, you brought up the educational aspect of it. So if we could pull up the website, tell us more about how you tie in educating folks that are, you know, ordering these wines. Yeah. So that was one of the other sort of pieces that really inspired me to start this business. Because I realized that, you know, most people, they buy a bottle of wine. Some people don't want to know anything about it. They just want to drink it. That's great too. I hope that if you buy one of our wines, you just enjoy it. That's great. But a lot of people do want to know a little bit more. And they want to know, you know, where it's from or, or, you know, what it pairs with or whatever. Right. And, and I realized that it was really hard to find that unless you're really into it, you want to go to the website of the winery and track down all the tech sheets and all of that. It can be kind of hard to find that information easily. So with our website, I wanted to make it easily accessible. So every wine that we sell has its own, its own page on our website with tasting notes. There's producer notes. There's information about the winemaking and how it was made. There's a lot of information, some pictures, all of that good stuff. So the idea there is that if you are interested in, especially if you're kind of new to wine and you want to know more about wines and sort of figure out what you like, what you don't like, you can go to the website and it's, you know, especially if you're getting one of our boxes, you go to the website, all of the wines that are in your box are right there. You can click on them, learn a little bit about them. And it's not, you know, it's not a 10 minute read. It's a couple, a couple of minutes break. I'm going to give you the basics of what it is. And that way you can learn a little bit about the wines and you know, if you start tasting in the wines and you realize, okay, I like the, like that wine last month, and I liked this one this month, and I liked that wine. Hey, guess what? They're all from Italy. Well, now you know, you like Italian wines, right? Or, you know, they're all lighter-bodied styles. So you know, you like lighter-bodied red wines, whatever it is. Right. So that was kind of the idea is give you some resources that accessible and digestible, whether you're new to the wine world or if you know what you're doing and just want to dig into the details that's all there for you. So you're the one that composes and does all the research with that information? Yeah, so it's pulled from a number of different sources. A lot of the tasting notes are my own sort of notes on how what I taste, but a lot of the technical details are pulled from those resources that you got to go dig for, the tech sheets and the winery info. And trust me, the domestic ones are pretty good, but some of those import wineries are hard to find information on. So try to make it easy for everybody. So for people who are watching and who may be watching this in the next couple of weeks, do you have any specials right now? I do. So we're at the end of January now and we've got Valentine's Day coming up. So I put together a little two-pack box of wines that I can grab, show you here. We usually do for special holidays, we did a box for Thanksgiving, we did a box for Christmas, holiday season, whatever. So this coming month, we're going to have our two-pack of Valentine's Day wines. And these are a little homage to my wife, my partner, who's a strong dynamic woman. And so I picked out wines that reminded me of her. So this is pretty cool. This is a Rosé of Mencia from Northern Spain. And one of the reasons I thought about this is all of the proceeds for this wine go to charity. So there's three different charities that they've picked out, the owners of this winery, and they donate all the proceeds. And since my wife is a charitable woman, it gets back a lot to the community that's reminded me of her. And then this is a cool wine. This is Lely Cabernet, serving down from Napa. And Lely is made by Lely Heron, who was one of the real pioneering women in Napa wineries, wine owning. She purchased or founded her own winery in 1995 and has been making fantastic wines in a traditionally male-dominated world ever since. So the beautiful bottle wine together, they should make a great herring for your dinner, whether you're going out or staying in. This COVID Valentine's Day season. But yeah, so those are easily accessible, they'll be out, they're not up on the website yet, but in the next week they'll be up there, 50 bucks for two and should be great for your Valentine's Day gifting. That's awesome. And I love the backstory too. First, what inspired you to pick them, which I think is so sweet and appropriate for Valentine's Day. And two, that purchasing them goes to a good cause. That is always one of my favorite things about companies that are you know, aware of like giving back. I think that's so wonderful. Do you have, oh sorry, I was going to ask for future plans, but before I ask, what are, you kind of already mentioned some of them, but what are some lessons that you learned this year? Yeah, well in the 2021, that was our launch year, right? So we launched in October. So you know, there was a lot of learning about how to get a project over the finish line and get to opening. There was a lot of learning around, you know, how do you strategize to get your, you know, you open a company, it's great, but if nobody knows you're there, it doesn't mean much, right? So how to market, how to get things, this idea, this concept out to the people. So thank you for helping with that today. But yeah, there was a lot of growth and learning and it's fun to grow as an entrepreneur throughout that process, right? You learn a lot about yourself and sort of things that come easy and things that don't come easy and growing in that way was a lot of fun and a lot of a big challenge, but I'm better because of it today. Let's put it that way. And you know, yeah, as far as like the marketing going back to that, you know, I had plans to do a lot of tastings and in store, bring people in and we all thought COVID was going to be done in June and here we are, you know, January again. So there were some challenges around that too when it comes to coronavirus, but you know, you roll with the punches, what are you going to do? Yeah, any future plans for your business? Yeah, I mean, we're just continuing to grow. We're still, you know, a young business, so we're still just pushing to get our name out there. You know, eventually as we talked about earlier, we'd like to get us set up to expand to the neighbor islands throughout at some point this year to be able to ship because we've already had a lot of inquiries, especially from Maui, you know, people over there are really excited about it as well. So I want to be able to get product over there to them and get them on board as well. Yeah, just keep chugging. You know, it's a new exciting adventure. So we'll see where it goes. Is there anything else that you would like to add before we conclude today's interview? Oh, wow. True question at the end. No, you know, I just, I hope people respond to the idea, the concept that we've got. I think it's a lot of fun. I think it's great for people that are interested in finding new things. Like if you like to travel or you like to meet out, you know, at least different things, I think this is kind of something that might fit for your lifestyle. And I hope people can find it and get access to it. And for the entrepreneurs, people out there starting businesses, I would say, you know, ages get started, if you haven't already, because that's the biggest hurdle is to go do something. You know, it's a little like go on the internet and search for your domain name or something, right? Like just whatever it is, buy a domain, get out there and get started. And then definitely just stick with it. You know, there were times where it went fast and there were times where it went slow. But if you keep just doing a little bit here and there, you know, you'll get there eventually. And yeah, good luck to everyone. Thanks, Ari. And let's pull up your website one last time. If people would like to get a hold of you, how do they go about in doing that? Yeah. So if you scroll down to the bottom of the website, there's a form there that you can get our emails. We don't send out a ton of emails, usually one or two a month. And then the best way to follow us is probably on Instagram or Facebook. You can find the links down there at the bottom of the page too, or you just find us at at SomboxHI. And we'll be, we post a lot of our, we don't put up all of the information on our lines upon on social media, but you'll get some snippets here and there. And you can check out our past months and see what we've been doing. So it's a good way to see, get a flavor of what you might expect from us. Well, thank you again for joining us, Aubrey. So this today's show has been wonderful and educational. And for the viewers out there to reiterate, today we had Aubrey Wood, owner, founder, head Somalia of the Somalia's Box. You can visit the website and there's a Valentine's special. I just want to point that out only because it's coming up. And I'm like, I know people are thinking of like what to do. So thank you for letting us know about that. Thank you, Kathleen. Yeah, we'll make it easy. I'll drop it off at your house. No worries. Thanks, Aubrey. And again, if people visit your website, it is free delivery on Oahu. So thank you again. Thank you for your, your good nature, your humor, and for sharing your knowledge to our viewers and entrepreneurs out there. And we also want to thank Jay Feidel and the entire staff at Think Tech Hawaii for making programs like this possible. Today we had Michael and Hailey who helped us produce the show. So thank you so much. And until next time, holo, holo.