to witness the birth of the first ‘Denise the Wine Shop’. Today as we enter mid of 2009, we officially celebrate Denise’s 8 years of existence. Throughout the years, never have we forgotten our founding vision - placing a bottle of well kept, well travelled and great value wine on every dining table in Asia. Looking back, the road travelled by D’team has never been an easy one. Together, we have witnessed major turbulent times: 9-11, SARS, Avian Flu, Tsunami and recent global financial meltdown. Despite countless challenges from near and a far, we manage to stay true to our slogan “Don’t just stay alive ... Feel alive!” At Denise, we are still very much about serving our customers Champagne in the morning to turn their face bubbly and Sauternes in the evening to wrap up their day with a sweet finishing. As we expand Denise corner to secondary towns - Kluang, Muar, Sungai Petani, Cameron Highlands and venture into building new concept stores - Dionne within large F&B establishments and 5 star hotels such as Grand Millennium hotel in the heart of KL, Fresh Unique Seafood Restaurant in PJ, Schokolart at Solaris Mont' Kiara and Ducking across KLCC, never have we forgotten the importance of delivering high quality in-store buying experience to our customers. We constantly go a step further to ensure better in-store variety, 24-hour temperature-controlled storage and well-trained passionate staff force. Above all, we seek to deliver high quality boutique wines for our wine club members to enjoy at true retail price that represents great value. From now til 31 December 2009, some of these places are seducing our members with below retail prices or near retail prices to celebrate the season, as such - Schokolart at Solaris Mont' Kiara. How time flies, it is December 2009 and we are into the Christmas season again. This time should be much better than last year for most of us, and hopefully, we will be uncorking better wines in slightly greater quantity, and forget the times when we have to drown our sorrows during the worst of the economic crisis in December 2008 and look forward to forthcoming exciting events such as World Cup in South Africa 2010. The second half of 2009 was a very meaningful time for us in Denise Malaysia as we managed to convince various lifestyle partners to join in our mission in making wines a lot more affordable at the best dining scenes where drinking the second bottle is no more a decision but an option. We had 3 unbelievable successful wine dinner where they were overbooked twice the number of people we set up to be. Our new Italian wines melted the hearts of many and our Lebanese wine - Chateau Musar muscled the most demanding palates of our wine connoisseurs and new drinkers. We have also ventured into the wine hampers with the option of picking your own wines for prepacked hampers this season. There is also the “Shall We Wine” program and we would like to appoint you as the ambassador of living our slogan of "Don’t Just Stay Alive, But Feel Alive" with all your friends so that wine can be part of your daily living joy. All these are elaborated in our December issue’s newsletter. With this year bringing more rain than usual, we would like to take on a positive tone of “it takes a real storm and heavy shower to clear a really tough and polluted year” that we had in the year 2009. We at Denise would take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a bright and fresh 2010 ahead
David Lim
Founder & C.E.O.
