Sokolin is America's premier fine wine merchant, established in 1934, specializing in rare and collectible wines for a customer base that has historically consisted of affluent collectors, Wall Street professionals, and serious enthusiasts. While demand for high-end and rare wine remains strong, the company faces two interconnected strategic challenges that this project is designed to address.

The first is a generational transition: many long-time customers are aging out of the market, purchasing less frequently, or already hold extensive collections. Younger generations, Millennials and Gen Z, are engaging with alcohol and fine wine differently, creating genuine uncertainty about the long-term composition of the fine wine buyer base. Building a pipeline of next-generation collectors is a priority, but must be done in a way that preserves Sokolin's identity as a trusted advisor and relationship-driven merchant.

The second is customer retention. Sokolin's high-touch sales model means that customer relationships are often deeply tied to individual sales representatives. When those relationships are disrupted through rep departure, transition, or reduced engagement, customers can quietly attrite before the company has an opportunity to intervene. Understanding the behavioral and transactional signals that precede churn, and building systematic early-warning and re-engagement capabilities, is as strategically important as acquiring new customers.

Sokolin operates through a relationship-driven sales model in which dedicated representatives build personal, long-term relationships with collectors, guiding purchasing decisions over many years. Digital sales, while growing, represent a small portion of revenue, and most online interactions quickly transition into relationship-driven sales conversations. The company is not seeking to abandon this model. Rather, it wants to augment it with better data, smarter tools, and a more systematic understanding of who its customers are, which ones are at risk, and how to cultivate the next generation of them.

This project will address both dimensions through two interconnected workstreams: a customer segmentation and retention analysis, and a CRM architecture designed specifically for high-touch fine wine sales. The final output will position Sokolin to reduce customer attrition, grow its next generation of collectors, and give its sales team the tools to build stronger, more durable relationships.