Javier Zaragoza

Geerlings & Wade, the leading direct marketer of fine wines and wine accessories, has not been spared. It has suffered dropping sales and in April its stock, which had been selling at under $2 for most of this year, was moved to Nasdaq's small cap market.

But Canton, MA-based Geerlings & Wade has a plan to address the current challenges. It is revising last year's strategy of mailing more to both acquisition and house files--curtailing that activity while hoping for increased response rates.

"Obviously the goal is to get the same performance on less mail, " says Eric Welter, Geerlings' vice president of marketing. "That's our number one area of concern. "

Geerlings is focusing like a laser beam on turning one-time buyers into frequent buyers. That means concentrating on current customers. "We're focused on maximizing lifetime value of these customers, " says David Pearce, the company's president, CFO and CEO.

Geerlings is looking to its online channel