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Few family businesses survive their transfer to a third generation, as has been successfully achieved by the Čarman family.
Gašper Čarman is the Director of eVino. ”eVino began in 2005, during deliberations between a physical and online store, and so the first online wine shop was born,” he recalls. Last year, eVino saw €5 million in revenue and more than €450,000 of net profit. Gašper and his sister Nina also co-own the eVino Danilo company, which manages the restaurant that ignited the family business success story.
Our company’s name includes the letter ‘e’. I think I hadn’t fully realized what this means for our business, which is why I will focus on improving our online store and increasing the visibility of our brand in the next two years.
Mother was a pioneer of the slow food movement in Slovenia
In the early 1960s, Danilo Kosmačin, Gašper’s grandfather and Vesna’s father, bought an old restaurant called Pr’ Tilh. He renamed it Gostilna pri Danilu and began cooking traditional regional dishes. In 1991 his daughter Vesna, a legendary cook and pioneer of the slow food movement in Slovenia, took over the restaurant and began writing a new chapter. “My goal was to raise the quality of food and offer our guests a new way of eating based on the slow food philosophy, while staying true to traditional regional cuisine. One of the main points of slow food is to cook with local ingredients, to find old, forgotten dishes and bring them back to life,” explains Vesna. Vesna and her husband decided to take over the family business practically overnight, as her father already had a buyer lined up for the restaurant.
Her children, daughter Nina and son Gašper, quickly became part of the family story. “When I was four, I followed grandpa around the restaurant,” remembers Gašper. He started tending the bar when he was 14 and then decided to go to the hospitality high school in Ljubljana. “I was very surprised by my son’s decision to work in hospitality, but I can understand completely. I also wanted to build upon my parents’ work,” comments Vesna.
There were several sleepless nights in the next few years, adds Gašper. “When I started working at the family restaurant, I had to work every weekend. Even if I went out the night before, I had to get up in the morning and go to work. Today I’m grateful to my parents for instilling this work habit, as it is very useful when running your own business.”
In 2016, Vesna transferred ownership of the restaurant to her children, but has remained involved in the business. Nina took over the management of the eVino Danilo company, encompassing the Danilo restaurant, and Gašper takes care of the eVino wine shop, where Nina is also his partner. She is Head of Hospitality at eVino and manages the bar and the Best Buyers’ club. “We are a very close-knit family and we are all still involved in the business, which makes me very happy,” explains Gašper.
Gašper wines are sold in 16 countries, including Russia and Brasil, which Gašper is especially proud of.
A business that began in a restaurant’s garden shed
Working in the family restaurant encouraged Gašper to focus on wines. The Čarman family restaurant has always been famous not only for its excellent food, but also for its high-quality wines, and the guests always loved to visit the wine cellar where Gašper and his father Dušan kept an exclusive selection of the best Slovenian wines. “The restaurant guests would often ask me where they could buy more bottles of a wine they had liked. So, I asked the winemakers to bring more bottles with their next delivery and the guest was able to choose them at the restaurant. This is how the business started,” says Gašper, whose first wine shop was housed in his father’s shed in the garden of the family restaurant in Reteče.
What does wine mean to Gašper? He says that it is definitely one of his biggest passions, right next to food and good company. Wine is an “extremely interesting world, you can never learn everything”. At eVino he receives up to 100 different wine samples every month and only around three of these make it to the shop. “We organize monthly wine tastings and invest time, dedication and care to make sure our customers can enjoy themselves at home.”
Today Gašper is one of the greatest wine experts in Slovenia. He entered the world of oenology as a teenager, when he completed the exams for a sommelier of first and second degree. Later he expanded this knowledge and studied abroad, at the world-famous Wine & Spirits Education Trust school in London. In 2012 he began preparing for the Master of Wine title, awarded by the British Institute of Masters of Wine, which is recognized as the highest achievement in the world of wine. Gašper has not yet attained this title, but he says that the process of studying for it has greatly enriched him.
Online wine sales increased 12-fold during the coronavirus pandemic.
A fish is their trademark symbol
In 2005 Gašper opened the first online wine shop, offering eight Slovenian wines. As online shopping had not yet taken hold at the time, he also focused on the distribution of wine to restaurants. As this wholesale business grew, he moved eVino to a new location in Ljubljana. This turned out to be a good business move and the company thrived.
The next logical step was to create his own brand of wines. Encouraged by the retailer Hofer, he came up with the Gašper brand, designed in collaboration with Darinko Ribolica, an oenologist from Goriška Brda. At the beginning in 2013 they started with four wines of Slovenian winemakers. Today, Gašper wines are sold in 16 countries, including Russia and Brasil, which Gašper is especially proud of. They sell most wine to the UK and are also very successful in the Austrian and Swiss markets.
“When we first started collaborating with the Brda Wine Cellar, our bottled output was 3000. Last year there were almost 200,000,” says Gašper to illustrate the brand’s success. Gašper wines are also known for having fish illustrations on the labels. This fish is drawn by a different Slovenian artist every year. “My first idea was to have a donkey on the label, but then our designer came up with the fish. I liked this idea as fish were also a mascot of the Danilo restaurant when it was still managed by my grandparents. This year our labels will carry an illustration by Tobias Putrih, one of the best-known Slovenian artists in America,” says Gašper.
Last year eVino had €5 billion of revenue and more than €450,000 net profit.
Online sales exploded during the pandemic
During the coronavirus pandemic Gašper could only be glad of the decision to put his wine shop online, as sales exploded. “Suddenly everyone, including the large retailers, was asking about our wines and we had to work hard to meet the demand. Wine sales have increased 12-fold during the pandemic,” explains Gašper. In June, wine sales were 10% higher than the same month last year, but the restaurant only brought in a third of previous sales under the same comparison.
Gašper says that their first action, when everything closed due to the coronavirus, was to send an e-mail to all their clients reassuring them that they did not have to settle their outstanding invoices during the quarantine. The response was overwhelming and full of gratitude. “My instructions were that we should not call anyone with the intention of selling or getting payment. We were only calling to ask if everyone was OK and healthy.”
He also adds: “If not for the quarantine, I would spend half my time abroad but now we have moved everything online. For me the quarantine was a great time, as I could spend it with my family, my wife and daughter. I was home by 4 p.m. every day. We had picnics, drank some good wine and relaxed.”
The aim is to become the leading regional wine seller in the former Yugoslavia
Gašper has daring plans for the future. His goal is to make eVino one of the most recognizable online wine sellers in Europe and the leading seller in the former Yugoslav region, where they are now only present as representatives of foreign wine brands. Their first step will be to strengthen the brand image in Slovenia and abroad, which is why they have increased their investment in online marketing.
“Fifteen years ago, few sellers decided to set up online shops. Today everyone wants to move their business online. Our company’s name includes the letter ‘e’. I think I hadn’t fully realized what this means for our business, which is why I will focus on improving our online store and increasing the visibility of our brand in the next two years,” concludes Gašper.
Gašper Čarman, owner
Company name: eVino, d. o. o.
Number of employees (2019): 18
Net sales revenue (2019): €4.8 million
Interviewee:
Gašper Čarman, Director and owner of eVino and co-owner of eVino Danilo
Summary
eVino in a nutshell: family, tradition, boldness, responsiveness, ambition.
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