Lee’s Wine Club this Saturday 11/7/09

7th Annual Lee’s Wine Experience Club this Saturday at The Las Vegas Hilton. Featuring over 1000 great wines. All net proceeds goes to Lee’s Helping Hand, Non-profit organization.

Date: Nov. 7th, 2009
Times: 3:00 P.M. – 8:00 P.M.
Location: Las Vegas Hilton

About:
Lee’s Discount Liquor was founded in 1981 with a modest store in an older neighborhood of Las Vegas. Mr. Lee, as he prefers to be called, worked day and night and with the help of his family made gross sales of $19,000 that first month. Today, Lee’s Discount Liquor is a virtual wine and spirits retailing empire in the Las Vegas valley with seven mega-stores, plus one called Strip Liquor on Las Vegas Blvd. Gross sales are now roughly $3.5 million per month in his stores and he still works incredibly long hours with his family of three children and seven grandchildren, all born in the United States.

Mr. Lee has little private time in his own office, constantly seeing suppliers, agents, business people and politicians all wanting a minute of his precious time. He enjoys golfing probably more than anything else in his “spare time”, but the cell phone is never turned off, even while teeing off on one of the many prestigious golf courses he visits regularly.

Mr. Lee has a vision that will take the Lee’s Discount Liquor stores to the next level. By 2010, he wants to have 15 stores in total with an annual turnover of $100 million. He has already begun the process by acquiring two important pieces of land; one in the affluent Anthem/Seven Hills neighborhood on S. Eastern and one in Mesquite, about 90 miles north of Las Vegas, right on the Utah border. Those two stores will open in 2005 and he will be well on his way to what would be the second highest grossing chain of liquor stores in the entire country. One of the keys to this friendly Korean man’s success has been his insistence upon always purchasing the parcel of land on which his stores sits. That enables him to be his own landlord and has turned out to be quite a savvy investment as well. He often builds other little shops in his strip malls and leases them out to other tenants, thereby getting a small return on his initial lay-out as well. With land prices in the Las Vegas valley having sky-rocketed in the past five years, the Lee’s Discount Liquor parcels are now of significant importance in the valuation of the entire company.

Such is the dedication of Mr. Lee that his peers and the influential Market Watch Magazine named him the “Retailer of the Year” in 2002 for the U.S. and bringing him yet another accolade for his hard work. Mr. Lee is very active in community affairs and politics, regularly mingling with important political figures on both the local and the national levels. He is the Chairman of the Asian-American Business Association and member of the Asians for Bush group of important business people who helped raise funds and support for the Presidents’ re-election. All of these high-profile positions and the fact that he owns one of the nations largest chains of liquor stores, would have one immediately think of a 280-pound loud-mouth maverick, but not Mr. Lee. At 62 and still going strong, he is a slender man with a very intuitive mind that always analyzes the person in front of him before speaking back in his heavily accented English. He rarely touches alcohol and does not smoke, instead enjoying exercise such as running and golfing and eating healthy food on a daily basis.

There have been numerous stories over the past decades of foreigners immigrating to America and creating great businesses, thereby living the American Dream. But few are as compelling and endearing as the story of the unemployed Korean man, simply known as Mr. Lee. His quest for greatness and a slice of the liquor business in the United States continues and as the city of Las Vegas grows, so does he, albeit with a much more modest appearance.

Lee’s Wine Club
4427 E. Sunset Rd
Henderson, Nevada 89014
Tel: (702) 450-9932
Website: leesdisliquor.com

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