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HATTIE: (In the Studio) Hi. I'm Hattie Bryant. We believe there should be at least a half hour per week on television dedicated to tell the stories about people who create wealth and work and make the world a better place.

HATTIE: Today, we visit with a legend who encourages us to create our own legend. Meet an old friend, Fess Parker. You may remember him as Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone.

Last year, over 60,000 people visited the Fess Parker Winery & Vineyard, located 32 miles north of Santa Barbara, on the Foxen Canyon wine trail.

Guest #1: Do you like that one?

Guest #2: Yeah.

HATTIE: In 1987, Fess Parker and his son, Eli, purchased 714 acres. Eli enrolled in viticultural classes, and this business was born. While Eli focused on the wine making, his dad concentrated on building the winery and visitors center. Total sales reached $5 million last year.

So he really is 6'6". You can tell; I come up to his elbow.

You probably remember Fess Parker when he looked like this when he was on television in the '50s, he was Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. And from 1964 to 1970 he played the role of Daniel Boone.

FESS PARKER : Here we go. Here you are.

HATTIE: Now Fess Parker tells us about new adventures.(Talking to Fess Parker) Well, thank you so much. The only problem is I'm going to want to drink it.

FESS: That's OK, please, do.

HATTIE: Thank you, thank you.

FESS: I'm planting about 100 acres of this right away. And it's...HATTIE: (teasing) ... for your own personal ...

FESS: (laughing) ... yeah, for my own personal consumption.

HATTIE: When you left acting and when you decided, `OK, I don't want to do that anymore,' why did you go into real estate? How did you get it started? Roll back the clock and tell us about that.

FESS: I think two factors. One, my father always--like most Texans, really put a high premium on real estate. The landed people were the successful people. The second factor was Walt Disney. I was under personal contract to him when he was preparing to open Disneyland. So I met many of the people involved in that massive project. And I understood then that they existed, and how they quietly existed, where they fit into the equation. And when I decided to leave the film business, the land seemed to be the natural place. And it also had an opportunity for a person to be creative, which I felt good about.

HATTIE: So did you save up some money to be able to buy your first piece of land? How'd you get the first piece?

FESS: Well, there's a man who's name is Al Schneider in Louisville, Kentucky (Editor's note: the developer of the Galt Houses). And I met him along the way. And I drove around Louisville with him one day -- he was a developer -- and he pointed out an office building, and he said, `I own that, but I don't have any money in it.'

And then he said, `I built this, and I own that, but I don't have any money in it.' I said, `Well, how do you do that'? And he said, `That's called leverage.' So with that understanding, and using some of my "acting ability" -- smoke and mirrors -- I persuaded some people to finance projects. And I still remember my first significant project was a partnership with three other gentlemen. And we went down to the bank and borrowed $1 million. And I thought, `It's wonderful.'

HATTIE: Wow. `They're going to give us $1 million.' In the real estate development segment of your life, how much would you say was failure, and much was success? And you could say, `Oh, that was a bad decision. I shouldn't have let it go. But I did this, this, this and this.'

FESS: The whole thing is that I came along at a time in California when almost anything that was reasonably put together was likely to be a success.

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HATTIE: Right. Talk to me about timing.

FESS: Oh, timing is everything.

HATTIE: And you learned that in acting?

FESS: Yes--oh, yes. I have survived through several recessions. I think the one advantage that I had was as an actor for 22 years, I had periods when I had nothing on my slate. I had an opportunity to look around and think about things and to not get panicky when there was really nothing happening. It also gave me the ability to kind of open up to an opportunity.

HATTIE: Right.

FESS: For example, I was one of those people in the '70s who took up tennis. I had never had an opportunity to play, nor had the time. And so that led to my wanting to build a tennis club, a clay court tennis club. I looked for a place to put that clay court, couldn't find it where I had thought I might in Santa Barbara. Went down to the waterfront and ended up with 32 1/2 acres of the waterfront. But the city wanted not a tennis court, they wanted a hotel there with facilities so that groups could come and so we developed a conference center and resort. And that was not in my mind when I...

HATTIE: Has your philosophy partly been to be open to opportunity?

FESS: Absolutely. And to try to realize that, you know, you have to let everybody find their place. One of the things that I think is really nice here, we have a lot of nice young people. Some have great experience already. And what we're trying to do is to let everyone compartmentalize and do what's best--what they can contribute, and give them responsibility to do that.

HATTIE: How long did it take you from when you said, `We're going to have a winery,' to when you sold your first bottle? How many years?

FESS: It was one year.

HATTIE: Just one?

FESS: Yes. '89. We didn't have a vineyard that was producing. So we bought fruit from our neighbors, and we made 3,000 or 4,000 cases. And then we went out on the road to sell those wines. And, of course, that was a major learning experience because there we were with -- if I can say this -- sort of a household name, with a product that didn't measure up to many people's expectations.We found out that we were really -- I don't want to say this, but it felt like we were -- over our heads because we began to realize the complexity of the wine business. But you have to start somewhere, you have to learn. And what you do is you pack your suitcase and you go to the place, to the restaurants who have 800 wineries offering them a tradition in many instances.So you just start.

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HATTIE: Fess and Eli spend time traveling the country to stay in touch with customers.

ELI PARKER: We are a small producer and we make a relatively small amount of product compared to some of our neighbors to the north. And I think, really, what gives us the ability and what allows us to be successful in the marketplace is that personal interaction with the distributor, the retailer or restaurant account and, ultimately, the consumer. So I spend a considerable amount of time out on the road, shaking hands and talking about Santa Barbara County, which is a great, great place to grow the fruit and make the wine and that's what it's all about.

HATTIE: We want to know how do you make wine?

ELI: Well, you know, quite candidly, it all starts in the vineyard. I'd be lying to you if I told you that the wine maker really has 100 percent of the responsibility. What's grown in the vineyard, the quality of the fruit that's produced, is really key and first and foremost. From a wine making standpoint, there are a number of different decisions, stylistic considerations, evaluating the market and where the trends are going. And it takes a little bit of time to figure all that out. How do you become a winemaker? I think trial and error, and a lot of hands-on experience. And, it's not so bad -- you get to drink a lot of great wine and have fun.

HATTIE: In 1996, the Syrah was named by The Boston Globe one of the best five Syrahs in the world. Fess Parker world class wine comes from California 's Foxen Canyon Trail, near Santa Barbara. It is 300 miles south of California's more established Napa and Sanoma vineyards.

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FESS: I have been in business now -- other than the acting side -- for close to 40 years. And I'm local. And we have tried to do the quality that we've talked about. Now what I'm finding is that there is an acceptance of the expectation of quality but there is also a grocery store viability of Fess Parker as a name.

HATTIE: You didn't want that.

FESS: I didn't want that, but we found out along the way that that's the way the big distributor was disposing of our product. They could sell it to the grocery store. Once we sold it to them, we lost total control. So they could take a truckload right from the warehouse and go right to large grocery chains and put it out there, and we couldn't do nothing about it. Eventually we figured out that we needed to be with a distributor who concentrated on on premise, or restaurants and shops.

HATTIE: With the fine shops.

FESS: The fine shops.

HATTIE: Now you just hit on something here. If you priced your wine the way you want to price it, and that distributor sells it at a warehouse discount, as long as you're getting your margin, why do you care?FESS: This is a long-term business. I think in some businesses you could say, `This is our first year, our second year, our third year.' But I think this is a business of decades and we're about to complete our first decade. And, we're thinking not now, but 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the line because this Parker family will soon have eleven grandchildren. And we hope that some of them will find this a fascinating enterprise and will keep it going. What we really want it to be is in fine dining circumstances.

HATTIE: How long did it take you to get to that conclusion, that where we belong is the fine restaurant? I think that's a--that is such a niche. Don't you think that's a real, thin, finely carved niche, the restaurant business?

FESS: Well, it is. But if you can present your wine and it becomes a staple on their wine list, then while it's not a huge sale--but it is a sale that builds.

HATTIE: Continuous.

FESS: But if you find the wine and you like it at this restaurant, the customer goes to another restaurant and it's not there. `Do you have Fess Parker wine?' `Well, no, but we can get it.' So we - it is exponential.

HATTIE: OK, so you feel you have greater growth opportunity and continuity opportunity?

FESS: Exactly.

HATTIE: That's what you're after. You're after the continuity.

THE LIGHTBULB

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FESS: You have to be able to go out into the marketplace or create an organization that can go out in the marketplace and tell your story successfully. That was kind of interesting to me, having been an actor. You know you cannot do a film without a story.That's everything.

HATTIE: A script.

FESS: I never really would have believed when I started this that to sell a bottle of wine you had to have a story.

HATTIE: So tell me your story. Tell me what you would say to the five-star restaurant chef.

FESS: Well, our story was that we were in an emerging region that could produce world-class wines. And that quality was our goal. And then as we struggled along, we got to a point in about the fourth or fifth year where the stewardship, or the mentor relationship with my son culminated in a 1992 Syrah, which we brought out in '94. And it became a wine that was not uncomfortable in world-class competition.

HATTIE: So what's the secret to a good story?

FESS: I think that people -- the way you present yourself and your product. I think there's a certain part of your talking with someone that has to come from your conviction, that you're right. You're saying something that is true, and that you're trying to share this with them and open their experience.

HATTIE: Here's what I learned from Fess Parker. Just as with a great film or a great television series, you need a great story. To build a great business, you need a great story. You write the script. It must paint the picture so people can see how you do what you do. And it should be so compelling that people can't resist buying from you. And here's a tip: shorter is better than longer.

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HATTIE: Sales come through wholesaling to distributors, and retail sales come from the winery visitors center, the wine club and the catalog.

CHARLIE KEARS: We have several retail divisions. We're standing in one right now, which is our retail center. This is our guest center and retail shop. We taste wine here and we have many wine-related products. HATTIE: What would you like people to know about this place.

CHARLIE: The Fess Parker family commitment to quality. I think a lot of businesses will profess quality and customer service and customer care. And here, it's not a matter of, `We talk about it.' Here, it's expected.

HATTIE: Why did you jump on the web so early -- you've had a Web site a long time? You've been selling wine on the Web a long time. Why did you do that so fast?

CHARLIE: I found it to be probably the most exciting, cost-effective, greatest thing there ever was for marketing. We could tell the story of the family, the winery, what we did, how we did it and how proud we were to do it all in just a few minutes. And it didn't cost us anything to do that.

HATTIE: What can you teach people that are watching this who haven't done a Web page yet?

CHARLIE: Telling the story correctly, and always emphasizing the quality and not trying to elongate the tale, make it too long.

HATTIE: OK. Fewer words, then.

CHARLIE: Fewer words, more graphics. We have Fess Parker, which means we have Davy Crockett and we have Daniel Boone. But even more so, we have a wonderfully beautiful property to work with and a great product. And we had all this beautiful graphic material that we could put on the page to attract attention to it.

HATTIE: How often do you update it?

CHARLIE: Almost daily.

HATTIE: You didn't have to hire anybody?

CHARLIE: No, we didn't.

HATTIE: And you just did it yourself?

CHARLIE: I did, yes. I did it all myself. I used Home Page Creator. It was a matter of reading the tutorial, having a little bit of help from a friend and doing it myself.

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HATTIE: (Voiceover) Cindy Simpson says the visitors center and its grounds are available for special events, with the food being catered by the Fess Parker Inn. And, of course, the wine is easy to find.

Cindy, tell me about the wine club, how it got started, how you built your list and what you offer?

CINDY SIMPSON: Basically, the wine club started with guests coming into the tasting room. And we would ask them if they wanted to join the wine club. They would receive two bottles of wine each quarter. Along with the wine, they would also receive our newsletter, which gives them a list of upcoming special events at the winery. And the wines that they would receive in their shipments are all prerelease wines, so the rest of the general public wouldn't have a chance to get their hands on it before the wine club members.

HATTIE: So one of the secrets to getting "a club going" is making sure that you offer something really unique?

CINDY: I think so.

HATTIE: `If you're in the club, you get this.'

CINDY: You're in the club.

HATTIE: OK. Yeah, yeah. The club. Cindy explains that four-color photography gets a much better response than do drawings.

CINDY: I mean, ask yourself if you would respond to this. It's very hard to sell a product that somebody can't see.Like the Coonskin Toppers or...

HATTIE: OK. When you say Coonskin Topper--this is a whole new thing for me, 'cause I didn't know there was such a thing until I came here today.

CINDY: Only at Fess Parker Winery, by the way.

HATTIE: Let's hope so. You guys could sue anybody else. And so this is the Coonskin Topper in sketch. And you're saying you hardly sold any of those until you put it in...

CINDY: You couldn't -- it looks like a wig. I mean, you couldn't really tell what it was. And it sort of is, but it's a wig for a bottle.

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HATTIE: I want you to talk to me about great people that you've been close to and what you learned from them.

FESS: Walt Disney would certainly be at the top of my list as a human being and as a creator. And he was interesting. Looking back on this event of 40 years ago, when I was under a personal contract to him, his dedication to the quality of whatever he was trying to do I think sort of became something that I have appropriated for myself and hopefully for the family. And that was that he always wanted to do it as well as he could. And he was open. I remember when we were filming the "Davy Crockett" episodes. They were not terribly important to him because they were fulfilling a financial obligation to a business partner. ABC was the third network, and they were not doing well. And they came to Walt Disney, who needed money to open Disneyland; said, `If you will do a television program for us, we'll loan you the money and become a partner and you can take us out later.'

HATTIE: And he needed the money, didn't he?

FESS: He needed the money.

HATTIE: Because he was always spending more than he had.

FESS: Absolutely.

HATTIE: You don't do that, though?

FESS: Absolutely, I do.

HATTIE: You do? OK.

FESS: I figure if you're going to be, you know, an entrepreneur, you can't worry about the money. I mean, this man was thinking openly. So that was a great lesson for me. And he was that way in person. As an employee, I could go up and ask his secretary if I could speak to him. Usually, I went in and if he had people there, he'd say, `Have a seat and I'll talk with you in a little bit.' And so I'd sit and listen to business that I didn't understand, but...

HATTIE: It was rubbing off.

FESS: Yeah. I really believe the way life is is that we're only guaranteed today, and yesterday we can't do anything about. And I feel like that the 40 years that I've been trying to do business has been a learning experience. I'm anxious to apply it somewhere else. I'm anxious to see another project change from less than successful to successful. It's fun.

HATTIE: But work is a good thing to you?

FESS: Absolutely. It was not my goal to work. You know, driving up here from Santa Barbara to the winery this morning, I guess I was in my thoughts and my wife said, `Well, why don't you lighten up'? I said, `Well, I'm doing what I like to do. I'm thinking about things that I want to do.'I'm not working. I'm just having a good time.

HATTIE: Do you think that's what keeps you younger, happier, more fulfilled, having something to go do?

FESS: Yes, absolutely. And, you know, it's the quality of the people. You know, I work with a lot of young people. Now I find that fun, you know. And I can see kind of where they are at their time of life and can go back and kind of relate a little bit to that. But at the same time, I think most of the time, I forget that I may be two or three times older than they are because we're both working on a project together.

HATTIE: So you feel as young as they are?

FESS: I do.

HATTIE: Don't forget Fess Parker's advice: Every great business has a great story. Find your story and tell it. We'll be back next week.

The Closing of this Show

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