How This Entrepreneur Reworked His Business Idea in the Face of Financial Armageddon While a key aspect of his plan changed, City Winery founder Michael Dorf achieved his original goal: to build a place where people could eat, drink and enjoy an intimate concert experience.
This story appears in the March 2015 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
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The financial crisis of 2008 changed everything. Michael Dorf, who founded legendary New York City rock venue the Knitting Factory in 1986, was just three months away from opening a combined winery and music club in Manhattan that would feature visible steel fermenting tanks and a refined dining experience. Dorf anticipated bankers buying wines by the barrel.
But the subprime mortgage crisis doused those expectations. "We were not only in financial Armageddon, but there was such a reversal in big spending and ostentatious behavior," Dorf says. "It became taboo."
He had to find an alternative concept. "I came to an internal phrase, something I call being "vessel-agnostic,' which meant that I realized that it didn't matter if I sold wine by the barrel or by the glass."
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