Buying wine on the Internet: between high tech and uberization<

The online wine fair? It's a rat race! France has more than 400 sites that offer to buy bottles on the Web. This e-commerce would represent 10% of the market each year, i.e. a turnover of around 1.5 billion euros in 2016, according to a study by Kedge Business School, the business school of Talence (Gironde ).

Private sales, auctions, subscriptions, group purchases, sommelier advisors… The offer is exploding. Demand is still being sought, both upstream, among winegrowers, and downstream, among consumers.

Wine merchants and producers invest the Web

Wine fairs are the business of supermarkets, including online. Each brand has its site or sites, such as Casino (Cdiscount.com), Leclerc (Macave. leclerc), Carrefour (Grandsvins-prives.com and Jereservemafoireauxvins.carrefour.fr)… Most have a mixed offer: online ordering, withdrawal in their drives.

Chains of wine merchants are now well established on the Web. In June, Lavinia.fr was voted "best specialist wine sales site" by Kedge's annual barometer. Old-fashioned merchants have started to play the Internet card, such as Duclot (Chateaunet.com and Chateauprimeur.com), a pillar of the Quai des Chartrons in Bordeaux, owned by the Moueix family (Petrus). Without forgetting the producers themselves: the site of the union of independent winegrowers, Vente-directe-vigneron-independant.com, would be in second place on the market.

Rise of pure players

But the trend is towards the rise of pure players. The essential Amazon prides itself on having an offer of 23,000 references on its new “marketplace” devoted to the divine beverage.

In France, the online discounter Venteprivée.com – already the fifth largest site in the world and the leading French site for wine, according to Kedge – is trying to restore its image by taking under its wing Lepetitballon.com, the site of Jean-Michel Deluc, the former head sommelier at the Ritz. And start-ups are jostling at the gate. Emergence of a French “wine tech”? Beginning of an “uberisation” of the wine market? A bit of both maybe...

Private sales sites are aimed at "the strong demand from consumers who do not want to go to supermarkets and who do not necessarily have a wine merchant worthy of the name close to their home", explains Marie -Dominique Bradford, oenologist and creator of Troisfoisvin.com, who spends “little money on marketing”, preferring to “bet on the choice of wines” that she offers to her subscribers. “Each box among the 200,000 that we offer has known only two cellars: that of the châteaux where the wines were purchased directly, and ours”, proclaims Millesima.fr on its site.

The price, always the price

From producer to consumer, old moon of mass distribution… Can the Web do better? "On the Internet, it's very complicated to sell anything other than price," sighs Ariane Khaida, the general manager of the trader Duclot. "The price is what first triggers the purchase of a bottle", confirms Pauline Canali, the commercial director of Millesimes.com, a subsidiary of another merchant, the Bogé house, in Maussane-les-Alpilles (Bouches- du Rhône).

Web or no web, the goal of a wine merchant is to have bottles available to meet demand as quickly as possible. His client does not want to wait for his bottle any more than that of Uber, his taxi. “Uberization? But the Bordeaux trade is the precursor! spear, half fig, half grape, Ariane Khaida. Isn't the role of a merchant to pool structures and logistics to enable each winegrower, small or large, to find their customers and serve them as best and as quickly as possible? »

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Duclot, with 10,000 references (10 million bottles) kept in its 20,000 m² air-conditioned cellars at the gates of Bordeaux, makes a point of delivering "the right wine at the right time, where it is needed, when it is needed. and at the right price", summarizes its director with a line in the form of a slogan.

Innovations and old recipes

So, to convince both winegrowers to sell their wines on the Web and consumers to buy without seeing or tasting, each site innovates – or renovates a few old recipes. Vin-malin.fr plays it classic with a temperature-controlled warehouse in Meursault, Burgundy, which allows it to deliver within 48 hours throughout France.

Ditto for Sommelierparticulier.com, based in Bordeaux, which also offers the services of a “registered professional sommelier” – a kind of wine concierge, the subscribed customer officially only paying the price of the bottle.

Troisfoisvin.com has opened a boutique in Paris to allow its subscribers to come and taste its finds.

HappyCurien.fr makes group purchases of selected wines, packaged in an assortment of services and advice to "open the bottles at the right time". The winegrowers pass under the caudine forks of a tasting committee which retains "only 30% of the wines tested", and "without going through the trade", slices Etienne Cottrant, co-founder of the site, open since June. Its target: consumers "looking for unique experiences but who have neither the desire nor the means to pay for this singularity".

Winegrowers more or less convinced

Winegrowers play the game more or less. Le Grand Verdus, in Bordeaux, is part of the "welcome pack", the welcome box sent to each new subscriber to the Lepetitballon.com website: the castle of the Le Grix de la Salle family expects “a younger, more curious clientele”.

For Stéphane Tissot, an independent winemaker in the Jura, who exports 60% of his bottles abroad, online sales are necessary, but not sufficient. Its partnership with 1jour1vin.com must “not penalize” its favorite wine merchants by cutting prices.

Mobile applications for “wine geeks”

A concern that Twil does not have – acronym for “The Wine I Love”. This application, launched in 2014, allows the Internet user, from a simple photo of a bottle's label, to access its technical data sheet, its history... They can also order it directly from the producer - 2,050 references are already present in the “Twilosphere” – with free delivery to pick-up points from a purchase of six bottles. Here is the shadow of Uber, crossed with that of eBay…

Does uberization await merchants and wine merchants? The best defense is attack. Thus Duclot, which does not sell more than 5% of its wines on the Internet, was the first to invest in a very profitable niche market: that of Bordeaux primeurs, with a specialized site and app, Chateauprimeur.com. In good years, this ephemeral site, open from April to September, can generate "up to two-thirds of our en primeurs activity in certain vintages", says Ariane Khaida.

To retain those she calls her "wine geeks", in search of great wines "before they become inaccessible", a mobile application created for the purpose allows them to follow the auction of primeurs in time real: “As soon as the prices are known, our customers receive an alert and they can place an order in two clicks. »

“En Primeurs is a real business if the vintage is good,” confirms Aubert Bogé, heir to the family business and co-founder of Millesimes.com. With 1,500 to 2,000 connections per day, the site generates an average basket of 1,000 euros per Internet user, i.e. nearly a quarter of the trading house's turnover. A real growth driver.

To try is to adopt

Bogé Junior does not intend to stop there. He has just adopted the innovation of the year: the creation of samples to taste before buying. A process from the Lyon start-up Vinovae, which allows, from one bottle, to make 36 samples of 2 cl – the dose of tasting competitions. "In June, we were able to give our customers a taste of our favourites," says Aubert Bogé. Discovering, sharing, it's our DNA, and that's the magic of wine! »