In an article published online by the Financial Times, Jonathan Birchall reported briefly that Amazon.com, “the world’s largest online retailer, is to start selling wine in the US, entering a business fraught with regulatory complexities and littered with the wreckage of previous failures.”
My initial reaction was not, shall we say, positive. Not that I have anything against Amazon—its Web site does a decent job of selling my latest book. I immediately felt sorry for local retailers and also for the novice consumer. Let me explain.
First the retailers: while Amazon does a good job selling books, and other consumer items, the large online retailer has also helped remove local book stores from the landscape. Now that may or may not be good for America, but I am certain it isn’t good for the families of bookstore owners, as sure as closing down a wine retail shop isn’t going to be good for those families.
Yet, neither I nor anyone else can deny that online shopping is upon us and it is likely to take over the way we do business.
I may remain the last holdout, as I have a genetic need to see, touch, feel, and talk to a real person when I buy something, and that leads me to my second concern: the novice consumer.
I always remember that look on a certain young person’s face, when returning to buy another bottle of that spectacular wine that earlier in the week I had to persuade him to try. It motivated me to run the retail wine shop.
In our Manhattan wine shop, my partner and I made a premeditated effort to assure that our staff talk to every person who came into the shop, to find out level of wine knowledge and taste preference. With that information, we embarked on making recommendations, and we always tried to make recommendations for products and brands that the customer had never heard of and had no information about. (We eschewed wines that received ratings from critics.)
That way, customers were exposed to more than good advertising or jaded critic ratings. Customers were exposed to wines that had the potential of meeting their expectations, because we got to know their palates.
We also ran a weekly wine tasting not only to introduce new products but to also talk with customers about what they like or dislike about the products—that way, we got to know more about their preferences.
I simply cannot figure out how Amazon or any online wine sales effort is going to do that.
It seems to me, the consumers who benefit most from online wine sales are those who have been consuming wine for years and know what they like, plus those who go out and taste wine and decide what they like and see if it is online. (I suppose those who don't care much but just want the cheapest wine they can find benefit too.)
What about novices? How is online buying going to help develop their palates?
I suppose novices can go to tastings and then see if Amazon sells the wines that they like, but something tells me that talk and personal connection creates more interested novices than cyber signals.
I also wonder about the mundane stuff like:
Will Amazon warehouse wines the way it warehouses books? I don’t like that possibility.
Will Amazon’s operation finally break down the three-tier system? I love that possibility.
Then again, will buying wine from Amazon mean that the company will service only states where shipping direct to consumers is allowed? That would be sad and it would maintain a disgusting and, in my view, unconstitutional situation.
Will Amazon make an effort to select wine not from what’s available in large volume, but from what’s out there in all its many styles and prices? That would be great.
Can Amazon devise an online wine tasting program? If so, that would be even greater.
Finally, the article claims that, “Amazon is looking to recruit a senior wine buyer, whom it says will be responsible for ‘the acquisition of a massive new product selection’ for its site.”
I hope whomever does the interviewing knows something about the wine world so that the so-called senior wine buyer actually is a wine person and not just another critic.
I hereby apply for the Amazon job, provided the company lets me do it from home. I wonder if anyone from Amazon reads wine blogs!
Copyright Thomas Pellechia, March 2008
All rights reserved.
I'd like to think they are nuts. But then, I own a very small specialty wine shop trying to eke out a living in the land of engulf and devour . I'm starting to wonder who is really nuts.
ReplyDelete"Will Amazon’s operation finally break down the three-tier system? I love that possibility."
ReplyDeleteI concur Thomas. Such a development hopefully could open the door for others to ship boutique wines and such. Although the fate of owner-run bookstores and even corporate-run CD stores doesn't necessarily bode well for brick and mortar family run wine stores, I'm hoping that that analogy proves to be tenuous. Ideally, Amazon and its ilk could break down the anti-shipping barrier for lower-volume wines that may be unavailable in many locales. Not withstanding saving a small fraction of the cost owing to competitive pricing, why would many go to the hassle (and it currently is a real hassle) to ship wine if a local shop carries it for a nearly comparable price?
rm,
ReplyDeleteYou have to be nuts to try to run a small wine shop in this business climate, and in this wine geeky world. After five years of doing it, I realized that I was nuts and so I gave it up!
Jay,
To answer your last question with a question: why did people stop going to bookstores? One answer is that Amazon under-priced the bricks and mortar stores; that's their business model.
Let's not neglect the potential for wine bloggers: using the Amazon Associates program to get a percentage of each wine (or wine book, or kitchen gadget) sold through the site.
ReplyDeleteWould I order wine from Amazon if I lived in a state that allowed wine shipments? I tend to be a more impulsive wine shopper and pick something up the same day I plan to consume it. However, this would be great for picking up more obscure wines or those that aren't distributed locally.
Benito,
ReplyDeleteNow that we know Amazon is merely hooking up with wine.com, that outfit that tried to get its competition in trouble over wine shipping, maybe I'll need to rethink or re-do my post.
As of today, I don't deal in the Amazon Associates. I was going to try it, but when it turned out that I would have to spend time figuring out their system, I decided I haven't that much time...