Excerpts:
Myrepublica.com: How has your business changed in the last two and a half years since you started out here?
Arjun Bhandari: At the beginning, it was hard to sell five cartons (of 12 bottles each) a day. Now we sell around 50 cartons a day. This week we are selling around 100 cartons a day as retailers are stocking up. During the fiscal year, we paid around Rs 35 million as customs duty. This also includes our stock for some part of this year. During the year, we sold products worth Rs 25 million.
Myrepublica.com: What are the factors that contributed to your growth?
Bhandari: We have marketed these brands very aggressively. We are visible everywhere in the market. This has helped make our brands the only names people will remember when buying wine. We also organize a lot of promotional and wine tasting programs, trainings for staff of hotels and retailers and educate people about wine culture and the best way to enjoy wine. And the trend of people going for wine has also gone up a bit.
Myrepublica.com: What is your product portfolio like?
Bhandari: From Tamburlaine, we have three brands -- Mark Davidson, Miracle and Shiraz. Each of them has different varieties. In total, we sell 24 varieties from the company. The premium wines are available in the range of Rs 850 to Rs 1,850 while the normal ones cost between Rs 400 and Rs 650. We have 13 varieties of Navarri Lopez.We have six retail stores of our own inside the valley.
Myrepublica.com: What is the deciding factor here - price or quality? Which varieties are more popular here?
Bhandari: Price is definitely the deciding factor here. Most people who go for wine look for the cheapest verity. But even our cheap varieties are higher in quality than other brands. Nepalis love sweet wine. Half of the varieties that we sell are sweet wines.
tapas@myrepublica.com
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