EVERYONE...This is a copy of the email Frank J. Landi, Sr. just sent to "C. Riley", I felt it should be posted here also. Enjoy!
Dear Mr. C. Riley:
My name is Frank Landi. That's my real name, and you can come see me at Araldica's offices (Suite 207, 2 Hamilton Avenue, New Rochelle, NY
10801). I am one of the founders of Araldica, in 1993, and although I
am no longer an Officer or Director of the company, I still wish to see the company prosper.
I'd like to respond to your recent barrage of vitriol against Araldica, not one word of which happens to be true (as I'm about to point out); I'm just going to respond once, because if anyone still, listens to your nonsense after this, they are as hopeless as you are.
1. My general comments:
a. I bet I have your number: You are a hired gun for the short-sellers
of AWLT shares (or one yourself); why not tell all of your listeners the truth (since no other explanation for your actions is credible).
b. You have never contacted Araldica directly with a request for
information.
c. You have no first hand information on which to base your criticisms.
d. You throw around, recklessly and at great exposure to you personally, words like "lies", "misrepresentations" and "fraud"; Araldica and its dozen employees, and its hundreds of shareholders, and its attorneys,will not allow you to continue with this unwarranted defamation.
2. My specific comments:
a. You inaccurately compared (and belittled) the company's press release on its Gold Coast acquisition, which noted the last reporting year's results (1997), to the Stocks To Watch analysis (over which we have no control), which mentioned its expectations for next year's results (1998).
b. Your comment that the Antogianni winery acquisition was for less than $1,450,000 is in error; it is precisely as stated in the company's press release.
c. Your lack of information on the company's direct sale of wines to
consumers has caused you to misinform your audience about our potential gross margins; generally speaking, we buy our wines for between $25 a case and $38 a case, landed; we sell our wines to consumers, via direct mail, for between $80 a case and $130 a case (excluding our charges for shipping, etc.). Does that sound like the "4%" to which you referred?
d. Your remarks about the winery's existing reserves of finished product were totally inaccurate.
e. Your remarks about the company's in-house expertise, relative to
persons with substantial winery/vineyard experience, were totally wrong.
f. Your remarks about the company's product sales-ongoing since
1993-were totally in error.
g. Your remarks about the validity of, and our experience with, the
purchase of externally sourced grapes, juice and finished wine product, were totally in error.
h. Your remarks about the company's potential to effect a 10 fold
increase in wine production from Antogianni are totally in error;
nowhere in our documentation does it state, ever, that all such
contemplated production will result from the currently producing
acreage.
i. If you wanted to know the details of to whom we sell our various
products, you should have asked (rather than make unwarranted and
mysterious remarks like: "Has anyone ever seen their wine?"); had you
asked, I would have gladly referred you to our importers, distributors, and the retailers that currently make purchases from the company.
j. Your remarks about the requisite aging of wines were totally in
error; Chianti and many other red and white table wines-even the highest quality "DOCG" wines that our new winery produces -- are meant to be drunk young -- within a year of their harvest and manufacture.
k. Araldica is under no restrictions-as you stated-about the sale of
its wine and other products, anywhere, other than the state regulations on wine with which all direct mail sellers of wines must comply -- as do we.
l. We have plenty of wine and other products on hand; why did you
state that you "were unable to purchase" any of them?
m. Where did you ever find a statement from the company that its $5
million in television time was going to generate $5 million in sales?
Araldica never made such a statement, and your remarks on this subject
were totally in error.
n. If you want to know about Access America (which is controlled by
one of the founders of the Cable Television Association) -- the people
from whom we purchased the time -- why not go to the library and
research them, instead of disparaging Araldica and the transaction?
o. Your comments about our market are ridiculous. There are 23
million Americans claiming Italian heritage (source: The National
Italian-American Foundation). We have researched the most common 500
Italian-American surnames, and are marketing to them in individual
direct mail promotions, one name at a time. To date, we are in a
position to do a promotion weekly for the next 10 years, before we
either add additional names or start over on the same names. Based on
our response so far, that represents a potential for 2,000 orders weekly ($200,000 +/), or $10 million annually. How big a market for
custom-labeled wines must we have, to be respectable in your eyes?
p. We have wine expert evaluations in-house, contrary to your
comments; no secret -- some like them, some don't. Will that have a
substantial negative impact on our stock?
q. Back to the winery-- Your own "juicy inside information" says that
"Antogianni can bottle 16,000 bottles a day". If we run 3 shifts, is
that 4,000 cases a day, as we have mentioned in our documents? The rest of your analysis, going into grape/acreage formulae, is nonsense, as mentioned above, because we plan- as in the past- to purchase all that we need beyond our own internal wine production, from external sources.
r. There is no mystery about why Araldica got a great deal on the
winery- it's a buyer's market. That, and the details of this
particular transaction, all worked in our favor. The Italian
government doesn't give its highest quality rating ("DOCG", which it
gave to Antogianni) to deficient winery operations we got a hell of a
deal, that can easily expand its wine production 10 fold, as we
represented.
In sum, everyone here at Araldica is working 80 to 90 hours a week,
trying to build something that we can all be proud of, and our payday
will only be the eventual price of our shares, when we are allowed to
sell them at some time in the future-just like all of our shareholders. No one has ever taken more than $40, 000 a year in salary from this company, and most of us have worked for years without any pay at all, to build this company up.
People like you-that delight in tearing things apart-are just an
occasional irritant. We'll survive you, and your best shots, primarily because you are demonstrably an ignorant fool, hiding behind the anonymity of a web site.
Have a good time. |
