Gary Sowder – Real Estate Director, Co-Founder and President
Gary has 17 years of extensive business experience in creating startup companies; characterized as a high energy business leader building successful, cohesive companies and teams. His personal experience lends trusted expertise and insight to entrepreneur opportunities, real estate and business investments, property development, and management. In addition to his entrepreneurial spirit, Gary has founded three and or co-founded two other companies and has evaluated or consulted for hundreds of small to mid-size companies over his career.
Gary originally started his career in 1982 by joining the United States Air Force in Electronic Intelligence. After a 12-year successful career in the Air Force, his vision and drive to create business opportunities landed him in a real estate career in the Midwest in the early 90's. Within the first six months of his career he turned his focus to golf course developments, new home sales and began to oversee new home sales for three builders in nine golf course developments. By 1994, Gary was Project Leader for a 600 acre lake development, teamed up with Blue Tee Golf, Inc., and formed Complete Development International, Inc. (CDI). Over the next six years while maintaining a successful real estate career, he evaluated over 28 projects for CDI and packaged eight of those projects totaling over 160 million dollars. He also created the business plans and structured operations for all eight projects.
By 2005, Gary began taking on new projects and two large developments in the Pacific Northwest where he joined up with a high powered timber company. He was not only tasked with overseeing the company’s current portfolio of 200,000 plus acres of in-house property, but he brought added value buys to the current real estate holdings. He did this by diversifying the holdings into the hard asset sector of the down market. He started evaluating the 2007-2008 real estate down cycle in the United States for performing and non-performing bank note buys. He packaged five projects in four different states during this period totaling over 350 million in hard asset value for a cash purchase of 60 million.
Gary is co-founder, President and CEO of Vineyard Agent and 100 Winery, Vineyard Agent is a full service Winery Vineyard Brokerage and Marketing/Advertising Agency. His company and team offer a broad spectrum of professional services to ensure the success of those pursuing their passion in the wine industry. Services include: Winery Vineyard Real Estate Services, Marketing & Creative Services, Bulk Wine Services, Vineyard Management & Development, and Winery Management & Winemaking. Vineyard Agent currently has its marketing brand on over 100 million dollars of winery vineyard properties for sale throughout the United States and is currently expanding into the Canadian market. Shortly after launch, Vineyard Agent already controls over 12% of the Winery/Vineyard market in the United States. Gary holds a Federal Winery License and Principle Broker License in Oregon and Washington.
