We were lucky to catch up with Taylor Nordby recently and have shared our conversation below.

Taylor, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

For me, family business is everything. Officially, I have worked for my family for the past 8 years, but I have been subconsciously working my whole life to prepare for this career. My dad is an entrepreneur and has always owned his own business; he “retired” young and started a winery with two Partners who had been making wine as a hobby since 1980. Thus, Eight Bells Winery was formed and went commercial in 2009 which happened to be when I moved back to Seattle after college.

As a kid, I remember my dad would always ask me to smell his wine at the dinner table and describe what I smelled. I learned at a young age how to articulate smells and pin point different aromas in wine. I am by no means a wine expert, but I was exposed to this industry at a young age through my dad’s passion and love for wine. As I grew up, wine was not on my radar as a career but I volunteered at Eight Bells Winery in my free time. Professionally, I pursued business for my undergrad degree and landed at Nordstrom for a number of years; I worked in HR, L&D, Strategy, and Consumer Insights. I found myself wanting to combine my love for business with an industry I was passionate about. I decided to go back to school and get my MBA and worked for the second largest winery in Washington. Through that experience, I realized my real passion was for our small, family business. I pivoted and started working for my family at Eight Bells and in commercial real estate.

All the while, my husband and I started making wine in our basement with some friends and decided we were ready to take the plunge and become Partners at Eight Bells. We officially invested and joined the Partnership in 2021 which was when I gained the title of CEO.

For me, the best part of working for a family business is knowing everything I do has purpose and real impact. Of course there are mundane parts of the job, but it all is for the betterment of my family. It all matters. And I get to do it with the people I love most in the world.

At the same time, our strengths can become our downfall. While this job gives me so much pride and purpose, it can also be all consuming. I am learning more about creating healthy boundaries to ensure I have time to step away and be present with my husband and kids without thinking of my never ending to do list. I am also working on separating work talk with family talk. Often, we will find ourselves talking business when we are supposed to be enjoying a nice family dinner. We are getting better at this, but I think it will be an ongoing challenge!

When it’s all said and done, I would choose my family business again and again. I will never regret choosing a career that allows me to spend more time with my parents and my little family.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Eight Bells is an urban winery located in the heart of Seattle’s Roosevelt neighborhood. Established in 2009, the Partnership joined friends Tim Bates, Andy Shepherd, and Frank Michiels, along with their decades of winemaking experience, into a singular effort to produce quality wines that reflect the terroir of select Washington State vineyards. In 2021, I officially joined the team as the Eight Bells Chief Executive Officer, having worked at the winery since its inception. My husband and I also joined the Partnership and established the second generation of Eight Bells, keeping the winery a family and friends operation.

Our location is truly unique with all production and retail happening in a “speakeasy” space, down an alley off Roosevelt Way in North Seattle. The winery has a nautical theme which comes from two of the Original Partners’ careers at NOAA in oceanic science. We pride ourselves on being an approachable, neighborhood gem and we love sharing everything we know about the wine making process with every person who walks through our door. We recently won Gold for Best Winery in the PNW by The Seattle Times People’s Choice Awards. This honor meant the world to us because it was voted for by the public.

In terms of production, Eight Bells sources all its grapes from two acclaimed vineyards in Yakima Valley: Red Willow Vineyard and Boushey Vineyard. The winery specializes in multi-clonal, single block wines with an emphasis on showcasing the purity of the fruit. The team’s philosophy is to create food friendly pairings with low intervention to ensure every wine is true to the varietal.

We make 2,000 cases a year and sell the majority of it direct to consumer. We are very membership focused and spend a lot of time and energy in keeping our members engaged with different events and wine education experiences.

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

I am a firm believer in providing top notch customer service. Maybe it comes from my background at Nordstrom or my own experience as a consumer, either way, I will go out of my way to make sure a customer knows they are important and that we value their support. In retail, customers are everything. If no one comes to buy your product then there’s no business. Also, the wine industry is incredibly competitive so you need to give customers a reason to buy your product, your story.

Eight Bells is very membership centric; we are a small winery and concentrate most our efforts on direct to consumer business out of our tasting room. To keep in touch with customers, we try our best to keep them engaged with different member exclusive events and perks. We try to greet every person as they walk through the door and provide a tasting experience they won’t forget. Our team is small, so every person working the tasting room also works harvest season, works the bottling line, visits the vineyard, etc. We can speak to every facet of our business which comes through as we share our story with our customers.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Our most effective strategy for growing our clientele is word of mouth. This goes hand in hand with my answer to the above question about creating brand loyalty. The best thing we can do as a small business in a competitive industry is provide a memorable experience for customers to then go tell their friends and family about. We try very hard to share our story and our product in a way that resonates with people so we can make a lasting impression. It also helps that our product is delicious!

With each bottle that leaves our facility, we hope it is opened and shared with friends and family and that the Eight Bells story gets passed along.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.8bellswinery.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eightbellswinery/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EightBellsWinery/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/eight-bells-winery-seattle?osq=eight+bells+winery
• Other: Google reviews: https://g.co/kgs/ezSYexc

Image Credits

Images all provided by Eight Bells Winery