It seems to me that this e-commerce integration is a no-brainer, and will be really valuable for the retailers that use it. Everyone uses some kind of e-com solution in order to sell stuff online. There are good ones, and there are bad ones, as well as a range of price points. In order to be interesting to retailers, all Wine-Searcher/Flaviar has to do is be better and/or cheaper. I imagine their pitch would include some kind of benefit that retailers that use both would get (i.e. higher conversion rate, increased volume) which would be a powerful sales tool if they have data to back it up.
So to me, this seems like a totally normal and reasonable integration (wine-searcher plus e-commerce support). Some other companies that have similar offerings are Google and Amazon, not too surprising that others would want to imitate this model. Those companies have done ok.
The store with the lowest price gets to the top of the search results page - NOT the store that pays the most. Thatās why Berserkers can see bargains on sale from small independent stores rising to the top of a search!
Itās free for any store to list on Wine-Searcher. Thereās also an optional upgrade to a sponsored list.
Beserkers with Wine-Searcher PRO accounts get to search across āall stores, all the timeā.
Free or anonymous accounts see prices from stores with sponsored lists first.
How much a store pays for a sponsored list is a variable driven by how many buyers click through to the store and/or place an order.
it depends on which aspects youād want to duplicate. if you search for a specific wine on google and hit shopping, youāll get most of the same results youād get from wine-searcher for example.
if you wanted a more native experience, you could just scrape all the wine stores youād want and create a dedicated site for that.
the question is what would you be selling and to whom? would enough people pay for a search tool thatās a bit better than google?
iāve always wondered about wine-searcher and its affect on stores given it incentivizes lower / lowest pricing.
i used to work for a store that paid for W-S sponsorship. the price increased a couple times (well above what Russell is paying), but because the majority of users use free search, it was the only way to ensure youād be seen even if you had the lowest price. i believe free search was something like 97% of all traffic so you definitely want to be a sponsor if you want to get any sort of referral business except for extreme long tail searches.
what follows is only speculation on my part:
it sounds like they are (or will be) doing something similar to what vivino marketplace has been doing for quite a while - taking a large commission on sales consummated on wine-searcher (as opposed to commission-free purchases on the retailerās site). vivinoās take was very high back then (retailer margin ended up in single digits after commission). i donāt know if itās still that high. i recall vivino also tried to enforce maximum ship costs which i believe ended up being a loss for retailers as well.
Impressive restraint that Ross hasnāt responded. My own take on this is that it would be super-easy to duplicate W-S. All you have to do is have a dedicated team with a good combination of media, digital, wine industry, and consumer acquisition skills spend 20 years building the product, while earning less than they could by working with a big tech company.
And yes, this is meant to be ironic. Could Wine-Searcher actually be duplicated? Sure. But it would take significant work, and commitment over many many years.
That would be a major change to the business model, and I donāt know how they would implement it. Vivino is delivery; itās completely different (and like you said, their commission is way too high). I would be very surprised to see this happen with wine-searcher.
unless vivinoās offering is different than what i remember, they still require the retailer to transact and fulfill the orders. vivino doesnāt deliver anything that iām aware of.
Well sure, some of the underlying tech could be replicated fairly quickly. But the interfaces, tools for end users of all parts of the system, relationships with retailers, and user acquisition are much harder, not to mention reliable revenue streams. Thereās a difference between building some tech and building a business.
Thatās right, the retailer delivers. But transactions happen on Vivinoās site. Itās totally different than just directing to a retailerās site as wine-searcher does. People canāt simply go to the retailerās website and order for delivery in most cases (instead of ordering through Vivino). People can click through to a retailerās site and place an order without wine-searcher having any record of it.
Do you mean 97% of all e-commerce is a re-direct through Winesearcher? Basically no one shops by just going to the retailers website?
If they really start to charge retailers a significant % then I would think prices are going to go up. Maybe consumers would have to make an effort to use the tool, but then close it and go to the website direct.
Or the retailer could have a shadow site for pricing without the link through WS (although Iām sure WS would find a way to drop them)
I would say the biggest problem is with retailers listing wines or champagnes on winesearcher, they do not have. This is two sided, if customers click and find they were duped, this will increase the bounce rate which effects the google rating.
I think two things which are coming is going to change things a lot. Chatgpt 4 is pretty effective in finding what one wants, if one prompts correctly.
Searchs at the moment are through words, when the point comes when we talk to the computer rather than type in what we are looking for, this will change the way many people look for products.
Winesearcher as part of a marketing strategy is effective but to rely solely on winesearcher is not advisable, I think you would have to look at the click through rate and how much actually turn into transctions. I would go so far to say, with a good seo and serp strategy one will win more curtomesr through google or other search engines.
As someone fascinated in AI and see the positive results it brings in such a short space of time. i think it will be interesting to see how thing are in 3 to 5 years.
I speculate that there will be multiple offerings since this conflict is obvious.
Retailer Offer 1: Flaviar checkout for businesses that have installed the software in their POS and can accommodate real-time inventory. These listings will be prioritized in search results as they should generate the most income for wine-searcher. Because W-S is likely to command some sort of commission, these listings will probably not be the best prices as retailers will have to account for additional costs. But they will offer the convenience and certainty that some customers will prioritize. Think of it like the Buy It Now button on eBay - not the best price, certainly, but you are going to get what you want.
Retailer Offer 2: The traditional pay-for-placement model that wine-searcher already uses. Stores with pre-arrivals, ghost inventory, low margins. They wonāt be able to deliver the Wine-Searcher checkout model logistically or in terms of margin. Wine-Searcher will still get their fees the traditional way, but their placement will now be below any Flaviar checkout listings (presumably - they might be mixed together, but I would still think that Flaviar listings would be grouped towards the top).