Support Hip Chicks do Wine: Portland's Oldest Urban Winery
Donation protected
Help support Portland's Oldest Urban Winery.
We started Hip Chicks do Wine in 1999 in Portland, OR. Our goal was to make wine fun and fun wine. We think we've done a pretty good job of that over the last 25 years. Unfortunately COVID closures hit us hard and frankly we haven't bounced back.
Why is that you may ask? We think that there are a lot of factors at play.
- The tourism to the city of Portland, OR is suffering! We do believe it will come back better than ever but there is no overnight solution. Tourism visits to our winery is significantly down.
- Local support is down. Maybe folks feel like now that business is back open that we are getting plenty of walk in traffic. When in reality our Walk In sales for 2024 are down overall by 39%. Additionally Walk In sales for June 2024 are down by 26% and July down by 76%.
- Off-site event attendance and sales are down. Even though some of the events we attend off site "look busy" in reality they are not as busy as in previous years and many of the off site events sales we have had are down by at least 25%
- Shipping costs continue to rise. We get emails almost weekly from customers in other states who would like to order wine from us but cannot justify the costs we have to pass on from our shipping partner.
- Rising costs in our economy are just hitting folks harder than expected. We depend on our amazing wine club members for ongoing support. The number of members who have had to cancel and apologizing to us that they can't buy our wines anymore because of their own financial insecurities is heartbreaking.
So with all of that being said we need some support. At this point we are down by $12,000 for the year and it is only half over. We have tried putting wines on sale (and yes our big push in May was amazing and if we hadn't done that we would be down $20,000 for the year), given out countless buy 1 get 1 free wine tasting coupons and frankly tightened our belts as much as possible.
We would rather sell you bottles or case of wine. We would rather have you come in our door and enjoy a flight or a glass of wine. We would rather have you come to an event. And if you can do those things please do!
But if you can't come visit and buying a bottle is not feasible at this time, then any support you are able to give us is appreciated. We do not ask for this support lightly, we ask it as a last resort.
Organizer
Laurie A. Lewis
Organizer
Portland, OR