Ole Imports Phone System Success Story
 RingCentral Online spoke with Patrick Mata of New York-based Ole Imports about how he uses RingCentral to give wines a "voice," providing the missing piece to the beverage's role in our five senses.
You're using RingCentral as an interesting marketing tool, to provide information about your Spanish wines. How?
PM: Basically, what we wanted to do is to make wines that appeal to the five senses so not only wines that you can taste, touch, and see, but wines that you can hear. We use it to give wines a voice.
I'm with you. Please explain how, and what prompted you to create this marketing effort?
 PM: Well, when people go to the stores, sometimes they're intimidated by so many wines and they don't really know how to choose one. "Why this wine and not another wine?" It's helpful to hear something that explains a little bit more about wine rather than judge them by looking at the label and looking at the grape. So we decided to have an extension for each of the wines. We have 100 wines and we would like to develop 100 extensions. Right now we have five extensions for five different wines.
How does the public use it?
PM: The toll-free number and extensions are written on the back labels of the wine, so as we print new labels, all of those extensions will be available for all 100 wines. On the back label, it says, "Hear me out. Call Ole Vino at 888-OLEVINO." This also appears on the cases, our Web site, and it appears on some shelf talkers.
What do your wines say?
 PM: Each recording is a personification of each wine. So, the recording can say, "Hello, I'm G1 and I'm from Costa Brava. I'm made with 100% grenacha grapes and I go very well with..." They're appealing. Wine is something that's very rigid. It doesn't move, it doesn't talk. If that product could possibily talk, it's just more interesting and it appeals to you in a much bigger way, especially when you're deciding if you want to buy it.
So a customer would dial the toll-free number while they're in the store, is that the idea?
 PM: They can do it from the store, from a restaurant, from home. Also, we have 680 salespeople in the nation and they can dial the number and learn about the wine before they make a presentation. And when they make the presentation, they can dial the number and put the phone to a speaker so everyone can hear what the wine is all about. All of the recordings are downloadable from our Web site and can be put on an iPod.
Fantastic. By the way, what do you mean by GI, G2, etc.?
PM: They are the names of the wine. G wines are a series of wines made with 100% granacha, which is called grenache in France. Granacha grows in a lot of different parts in Spain. The wines are named according to where the grapes were grown: G1, G2, G3, G4, G5. All of them are made with the same grape but grown in different areas. And of course, that makes a huge difference in the wines.
Can you tell me a little about Ole Imports?
 PM: Basically we import about 100 different wines from all over Spain and sell them in 34 different states in the U.S. Out of many importers of Spanish wines in the U.S., we are one of the few who specialize in only Spanish wines.
You're from Spain, is that right?
PM: Yes, I am from Malaga, from the south.
Your marketing tool is also an educational tool.
PM: This is very educational. We are very committed to importing wines but also making sure that people understand what is behind the label, which is one of the reasons why we wanted these wines to have a voice.
Do you make some of the wines that you sell?
 PM: Yes, we also make some wines in Spain. We started in 1999 when I was in college. I came from Spain to go to college in this country and from my dorm room in Florida, I started importing Spanish wines. Basically things went very well, very fast in the beginning, and I graduated and moved to New York and 8 years later we're in 34 states, and we're in 3rd or 4th place in the nation for Spanish wines.
Do you think people need this type of information?
 PM:You can't give enough information about your product especially when a lot of people are looking to learn more about wine. So this is one way of providing useful information to the final consumer. Even though all of this information is available online and on our back labels, the fact that you can hear it makes these wines more appealing to the consumer. The consumer can relate much more to a wine that has a voice than to a wine that is mute.
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