Leveraging chip designing to make wine

And, how a blogger saved this company's business

Greg Snell, CEO of Provina, had been designing chips for 15 years. One day, he decided to parlay his chip-designing skills into a product that created wine. Greg was reading about "specifications on what a customer was looking for for a chip plant," he said, realizing that the "PH density and acid" specifications were very similar to wine specifications. Then it hit him. "Man, wouldn’t it be neat if I could create a machine that would make wine for people as opposed to doing something in the chip-making environment." That's when he created ProVina, which, according to the company profile on Vator, designs and manufactures unique consumer oriented products for the $80 billion wine industry. ProVina's first product is WinePod, the world's first personal winery.

But along the way to creating this business, Greg had challenges, not least of which was going out of business. "As much as I thought this company would take off, we ran out of money," he said. It was a "gut-wrenching experience," he added. Upon being in the dumps, Greg contacted a blogger. Greg needed someone who could help him take a survey and show demand for his product. The blogger wrote the story and helped to show customers and importantly investors that ProVina was worth investing in. The lesson here? "Keep your marketing ahead of product development to show demand." Wise words.

Oh, and who was that blogger?

Tom Wark at Fermentation.