The annual Miami International Wine Fair returned to the Miami Beach Convention Center this weekend for its eighth two-day exhibition, which wrapped up Sunday and attracted nearly 6,700 industry insiders and consumers. But with previous sponsors like carmaker Infiniti not returning this year, the fair’s co-founder and president, David Bernad, cut operating budgets and redirected sales efforts to attract exhibitors and attendees.
“The biggest thing we’ve seen is the lack of sponsorships from non-wine companies, and we’ve compensated by drastically reducing our costs,” Bernad said. “We have a long list of items in expense categories for things like how many people will be running the floor, exhibitor accessories, water pitchers, carpets, pipe and drape, etc. So we’ve had to increase our relationship with those vendors to reduce costs.”
Infiniti served as the presenting sponsor in 2008 with a more than 2,000-square-foot presence on the exhibit floor but pulled out of this year as a result of the economy, according to Bernad. To fill the empty space, the fair’s five-person sales team—two more than last year—put in additional time on the phone, pitching the benefits of attending both as exhibitors and buyers to wineries, distributors, and importers.
“In the past we relied more on government agencies [sponsoring the fair] and larger [wine industry] groups to communicate the message [to the industry], and this time we had to call the wineries directly,” Bernad said. In the end, nearly 1,500 wines—300 more than last year—from 20 countries had a presence on the fair’s 70,000-square-foot exhibit floor.
Other cuts included removing the Collector’s Club, an area of the exhibit floor dedicated to high-end wines, from the floor plan and using the space for the additional wineries exhibiting this year. “We don’t think it’s the right market to be dedicating such a large area on the exhibit floor to promote luxury wines that have very little rotation at this point,” Bernad said.
