Today we’d like to introduce you to Zack Armen.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m an American-Armenian born and raised in Long Island, NY. My Armenian ethnicity and heritage have always been an important part of my life — I grew up attending Sunday School at our local Armenian Church, spending summers at an Armenian summer camp, and participating in social events within the Armenian community. My father started a philanthropic organization in 2001 that is based in Armenia, called the Children of Armenia Fund (COAF). Involvement with COAF brought me to Armenia often, and it was on one of my trips in 2017 when I noticed that the wine in Armenia was all of a sudden burst onto the scene, and was of a very high quality.
This intrigued me enough to seek out some of the leaders of this wine movement, during which time I met Vahe and Aimee Keushguerian, who are the founders of WineWorks Armenia and the brand owners of Keush and Zulal Wines. They gave me the full download on the rich history of Armenian wine, how Armenia is one of the birthplaces of wine, and how because of Armenia’s gaining independence from the Soviet Union there was a rediscovery of ancient grape varietals and an influx of top quality winemakers from around the world in setting up wineries and planting vineyards around the country’s wine regions. Vahe’s perspective, which I shared, was that for Armenian wine to “be a thing globally,” it needed to penetrate the US market in a smart, scalable fashion. This compelled me to start Storica Wines, with the mission to bring Armenian wines to the US consumer.
We incorporated the company in 2018, made our first investment in the 2018 vintage of Areni and Voskehat grapes, and began setting up our sales and distribution infrastructure. We officially launched with first sales in 2020, and have since grown to a national distribution footprint of 20 states carrying our portfolio of six brands and 15 SKUs (products). Our team includes wine industry veterans who serve as our sales and brand managers, alongside a marketing team who handles our digital/social presence, liaises with PR entities and wine publications, and produces beautiful content and collateral for in-store placements and events. We also have a legal, finance, and logistics team who handles all inventory movement and management, and ensures we service our customers at the highest level of quality.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We climbed and are still climbing a steep learning curve when it comes to the US Wine & Spirits Industry, which is the most complex and difficult to penetrate wine market in the world. My background is in finance, venture investing, and life sciences – so I started this company with no background in wine, and was fortunate enough to hire excellent people who understand how the industry operates. We are also seeking to bring a set of products from an unknown place with little wine history by contemporary standards to a highly competitive market, which has been tough — there have been many instances where distributors wouldn’t return our phone calls/emails, misplace samples we’d sent to them, and ultimately decline our requests to showcase our portfolio to them for reasons having nothing to do with the attributes of our offering.
We also launched our first sales the week prior to Covid-19, which effectively cut off 50% of our market instantly (all on-premise business disappeared for the rest of 2020 and still hasn’t fully returned even at the end of 2021). All of these struggles have made us a strong, resilient company and set us up for strong, exponential growth in the future!
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Storica Wines?
We are the leading import, sales and marketing company for Armenian Wines to the US. We have exclusive national brand rights to six brands that represent the top quality brands in Armenia. Armenia is the “oldest new wine region in history,” as one of our distribution partners refers to it — meaning, by modern/contemporary standards, Armenia is new to the wine game, however, it is one of the oldest winemaking places, with artifacts of winemaking discovered from over 6000 years ago in a cave in Armenia (the oldest known winery discovered). Throughout ancient history, Armenian wine has been recognized for its quality — during Babylonian and Roman Empires, and even in the Bible (Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Ararat, in ancient Armenia, and the story goes that he planted wine vines and drank what was likely wine from the same grapes we are selling from today). We are proud to be a part of this wine renaissance for Armenia, and to bring these beautiful wines to the biggest wine market in the world, the United States.
We purchase finished product (bottles of wine in 12-pack cases) from Armenia, and handle all transport, logistics, customs/tax related to bringing those products into the US. We then sell these wines to distribution companies around the country, who are then responsible for selling the wines on to retail shops, restaurants, hospitality groups, etc. within their respective states. As importer, we also participate in the marketing and sales activities at the consumer level, through digital/social (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tik-Tok, LinkedIn), events and trade shows, conferences, etc. We have a “wine team” made up of six experienced wine industry members across the country (located in MA, NY, NJ, CA, TX, and FL) whos role is to work with our state-level distributors to drive sales and awareness. Our General Manager (Ara Sarkissian) manages the team and works with the wineries/suppliers in Armenia to make product enhancements more attractive to the US market, both in terms of style of wine/product design, etc., We also have a content team who creates audio/visual content, that we use in marketing collateral.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
A lot of credit goes to my father, Garo – I’ve watched him build businesses since I was a kid, and try to emulate the way he approaches business, leading people, and building a mission and vision that can impact lives and create economic value. I was also fortunate to begin my career in the financial services industry within a high performance culture at Goldman Sachs – my experience at GS taught me a lot of the key skills I use in the financial and operational side of businesses, in managing a profit/loss statement, and in projecting the future returns of a business as it grows. My time in business school at MIT Sloan was also hugely influential, as it gave me a world-class network and exposure to the brightest minds in entrepreneurship and innovation. After MIT, I worked at Flagship Pioneering, a leading life sciences venture creation firm, which gave me the tools to understand how investors think, how operators have to think and behave to translate an idea on PowerPoint slides into a real company, and many of the other key “ins and outs” of scaling a business. I’ve been lucky to have had all of these experiences and to have found a way to utilize them in a project like Storica, that can be so impactful to my homeland and heritage, and not to mention really fun and rewarding on a day to day basis!
Contact Info:
- Email: zack@storicawines.com
- Website: www.storicawines.com
- Instagram: @storica_wines
