Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nia Ruth. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Nia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

I couldn’t agree more, it took over a year to come up with the name Few & Far for my business! I was very intentional about naming my business because I wanted the name to describe the ethos of the brand and allow consumers to connect with the brand and the feelings they get when they drink my wines. However, despite not having a name for my business for months on end, I still launched my business but launched as a personal brand, because as we all know, messy action is better than inaction in the world of entrepreneurship. Though I of course wish the name would have come to me sooner, I used the time running my business as a personal brand to gather information about what worked and what didn’t in the business, learn about my consumers and see what resonated most with them, and ultimately used what I learned to guide me to the name of the business. So, one day during the week of Thanksgiving last year while my family was visiting, my husband, sister-in-law, and I were in the hot tub with a glass of wine and started firing off business name ideas. Our motto was that there are no bad ideas in a brainstorm, and through the (many!) bad ideas we came up with that day, the name Few & Far immediately felt right. The wines represent “the few” as all of the bottles we source are small production and made using low-intervention practices in the vineyard and winery, and “the far” represents the fact that the wines are sourced from faraway vineyards all around the world. The aha moment of knowing in my gut that without a doubt Few & Far was the perfect name for the brand was the BEST feeling, and made it absolutely worth the wait!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Few & Far is a boutique wine club, wine shop, and event wine curator born out of a love for small production wines, building community, and giving back. The wine club delivers three bottles of hard-to-find small-batch wines from boutique producers around the world to members’ doorsteps at a frequency of their choosing. Each club release is curated by theme and each bottle comes with a custom tag that shares information about the wine and the producer to enhance members’ sipping experiences and understanding of the wines while they enjoy them.

I also source limited production wines from vineyards around the world and offer them in my digital wine shop. In addition to offering single bottles, we curate bundles for special occasions, holidays, by region, etc. The Few & Far wine shop is the perfect place to find unique bottles to expand your palate, and occasion and holiday bottles make the perfect gift!

Finally, we work with event planners and organizations large and small to curate wine selections for events from farm-to-table chef-paired dinners to large corporate events, to local pop-ups! We’re also proud that Few & Far supports small producers by getting their wine into the hands of wine lovers across the country, and that we have a philanthropic component to the club and donate $1 from each membership to a member selected cause every month.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Being a part of the (smaller than you might think!) Coachella Valley community, I was told by other small business owners early on that building my reputation locally would be really important to the success of my business. To be honest, it was phrased to me as “this is a small town, so don’t mess up”. Certainly a bit ominous, but it’s held true!

What I’ve learned is that at the end of the day, what’s most important is that you’re completely yourself. We hear all of the time that people buy from people, not from businesses, and that couldn’t be more true. It’s been crucial to my business for me to get out into the community and get to know wine lovers and other local small business owners – the number of partnerships and collaborations that have come from networking is tenfold what I ever imagined!

Another crucial element to reputation building is providing a high quality product that you’re really proud of. I take a great deal of time and care in sampling and hand-selecting every bottle that I bring into my shop and club, and I’m genuinely passionate, excited, and proud of every bottle I offer! My exhaustive and careful curation process has been instrumental to building Few & Far’s reputation!

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

I love keeping everyone in the loop on what I’m up to and showing the behind the scenes of all of the exciting things I’m working on in my business primarily through social media and my email newsletter. Taking people along with me on the journey and evolutions of my business has kept people more involved, invested, and engaged with Few & Far. I also use social media and my email newsletter to provide value in the form of wine tips and education, sharing food pairings, showcasing regional spotlights, highlighting new wines in the shop and club, etc., as educating wine consumers and as a result improving consumers’ wine sipping experiences is really important to me! Finally, I really enjoy starting conversations with people on social media, and it’s been so cool to see those digital relationships turn into in-person friendships, collaborations, and customers! Having conversations helps people understand my mission and values in a deeper way than can be understood by just reading about the business, and has proven to be incredibly valuable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://fewandfarwine.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sipfewandfar/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sipfewandfar
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nia-ruth-wine/

Image Credits
Caroline Polly Photography