I have an admission to make. Until recently, I had no idea what a “shared generosity experience” was. But if it means I can make the world a better place while drinking fabulous Washington state wines, I am ready to share and share generously. Happily, Sozo Friends is ready to help me.
Sozo is a Seattle-based company that produces high-quality wines, chocolate and coffee for corporate gifts. A percentage of the sales price goes to charity. The idea is to build customer loyalty not only by giving someone a box of scrumptious goodies, but also by letting them know that someone else is benefitting from the fact they got a box of scrumptious goodies. For example, every time someone buys a car at Lexus of Seattle, that person gets a Sozo gift box. Packed along with the good stuff is a note that lets them know a percentage of Sozo’s proceeds is donated to Medical Teams International.
That, my friends, is a “shared generosity experience.”
I recently sat down with Martin Barrett, a cofounder of Sozo, to learn more about the business. Here are some excerpts from our chat [along with a few of my comments, purely for clarification]:
Q: What is Sozo, exactly?
A: We are a brand-building business. We work with other business to create gifts for their customers. Each gift has a give-back component, allowing the business and their customers to enter into a shared generosity experience. We use our wine, coffee and chocolate as a platform, and our products have to be great or else the whole model falls apart. We know it is working because we have seen our clients’ customer satisfaction scores and loyalty rise.
Q: Tell me a little about your wines:
A: We believe that someone shouldn’t have to suffer through lower-quality products just because there is a charitable component. At Sozo, we produce award-winning wines with grapes from the Pacific Northwest. The majority of our wine is from Washington, with our Pinots coming from Oregon. We buy juice from the best growers. Our winemaker, Cheryl Barber-Jones, blends it to her exacting standard. [SB note: Barber-Jones is the former head winemaker at Chateau St. Michelle, so she knows a thing or two about wine.] Today we produce 11 wines. One of them is a Chardonnay and the rest are red blends.
We have a unique business model in that we own no equipment nor vineyards. Thus, we can take advantage of the excess capacity in the market, mitigate our risk and make consistent high-quality wines. Most of the time we buy our juice from our partners [for example, Lange Estate Winery in Oregon or Hedges Family Estate in Washington] and use their facilities to blend and produce our wines.
Q: What is the average retail price of a bottle?
A: It ranges between $15 and $125 with most wines around $20.
Q: How can people get Sozo wine?
A: You can be the recipient of a corporate gift or you can go to a limited number of local restaurants [including Canlis, Serafina and Barking Frog] or you can buy our wines on our website. [SB note: given that I have no plans to buy a Lexus anytime soon, this is good news!]
Q: If I buy a bottle of Sozo wine what gets contributed to whom?
A: If you get the wine at a restaurant or as a corporate gift, the restaurant or company gets to choose who the proceeds go to. If you buy the wine on the site, we pick who to send the donation to. It’s usually someone like Rescue Freedom [helps women and children out of sexual slavery] or Olive Crest [helps prevent child abuse]. Overall, 10 percent of the retail price is donated.
Drink Wine, Save the World
So there you have it, dear readers: an approach to saving the world while drinking great wine (I know it’s a bit of a lazy person’s approach, but still, every bit counts). Now all you need to do is buy a bottle and/or leave a comment and I believe we may have a shared generosity experience.
Cheers!