Many of you on this board for us to reconsider the level of our selling fees; particularly the higher 20% fee charged to offsite sellers. We’ve heard your comments that a lower selling commission would stimulate a disproportionate increase in selling so I pleased to say we have decided to do a 3 month test with lower fees. If the results are positive, we will likely make the change permanent. Lower 15% fee and other changes
Beginning October 1 (6 am PST), here’s a summary of the changes taking effect:
15% fee for ALL sellers, regardless of storage location, until December 31, 2009 (reduced from 20% for offsite locations).
$6 minimum per bottle fee for ALL sellers until December 31, 2009 (reduced from $8)
FREE inbound shipping for first-time Marketplace sellers (i.e. those with no prior bid acceptances pre-October 1) on all bids accepted in October
Given shipping subsidies, this means the effective selling fee for bottles of $100-$200 is 13.5%, and only 13% for bottles of $200+. With cumulative volume discounts which provide up to a further 10% rebate of fees paid, that means the effective fee could go as low as 11.5%-12% at the top sales level ($150,000 annually from 2010 on and only half that, or $75,000 in 2009).
I think it is a tremendous idea, and that you will have a very positive response. I might go back and look at my bids and start accepting a few.
Note: I JUST completed my first ever Vinfolio transaction and minutes later the email announcement rolls in. I sincerely hope that I can get the new, adjusted rates…yes???
Todd, since we announced this today, “yes”, we will apply the 15% rate to all acceptances that occur today (for all customers). Inbound shipping, however, needs to stay as is for new customers after 6 am PST tomorrow (just too complicated to manage exceptions).
As an update, Vinfolio introduced a 10% seller’s commission today if the seller accepts payment in the form of a Vinfolio credit. Initially, the credit may be applied to non-Marketplace purchases only but by Q1 2010, we will have adapted our systems to support Marketplace purchases with Vinfolio credits as well. The seller may select cash (15% fee) or credit (10% fee) on a transaction by transaction basis.
In addition, we will be making the 15% cash fee level permanent (it was initially a Q4 experiment). The results have been positive.
Have you set an asking price? Or even better, a “Buy Now” firm price? Have you used the bid feedback mechanism to respond to the bid value (this is being enhanced further in the next 2 weeks)?
If there’s no indication of what someone needs to accept a bid, it’s not that big a surprise that someone will try one on to see if they can get a bargain.
I had an offer for something I was selling which I thought was low and I used the bid feedback mechanism to tell the bidder I wanted a price which was 50% more. The person raised the bid immediately and I sold it.
You might also be interested that October Marketplace sales were 2.5x September’s so transactions are ramping nicely. There is also more trade use of it beginning to happen as we start promoting it more.
My experience has been the flip side of the coin. I’ve made several legitimate – reasonable IMHO – bids based on recent sales prices from other venues (i.e., WineBid, etc.) and then nothing, nada, zip. Just the sound of crickets. If there had been feedback, I could have made a decision on how to proceed. Without it, it was a waste of my time. I’m not going to sit there and effectively bid against myself by racheting up the price indiscriminately. I gave up.
You’ve always been able to set up custom bid alerts which filter out unwanted bids (see July 17th blog post on Vinfolio Blog). Every bid alert email has a link to it called “Edit Bid Alert” (one of the links under the Accept Bid button). Or just go to the My Account page of VinCellar or Cellartracker and click on the Alerts tab. Click Add Custom Bid Alert and you can screen out unwanted bids on a number of absolute and relative bases (% or $ over cost, auction average, etc.). (There’s an error message when you click the link at the moment which I just reported but you can click OK and proceed).
We’ve also considered imposing a minimum bid threshold as a % of the Suggested Price algorithm we recently implemented. But as we’ve provided the tools to screen out unwanted bids, we have not implemented that universal restriction.
There is also more price transparency being added in our next release in a few weeks with a pricing widget which will enable
A few weeks ago, Buy Now (with public price) and Reserve (without public price) indications were added, both of which represent firm selling commitments. See Oct 14th Vinfolio blog post. This along with bid feedback is intended to increase the efficiency of interactions between buyers and sellers while helping define what it takes to succeed. You can also now check how many people are proactively notified of your bid based on your bid parameters and their filters by going to Your Active Bids. Some people have bid alerts set to daily instead of weekly so it may be up to 24 hours before those sellers are notified.
We’re also planning in a future software iteration (perhaps by end of January) of automatically unmarking wine for sale from unresponsive sellers to avoid wasted bidding efforts of buyers if the seller is not willing to engage by either setting an asking price, a reserve, or providing any bid feedback. This will cull out non-active parties’ wines.
Phil,
i would also bet (based on experiences other places not Vinfolio) that asking someone to hit a specific price will provide better results than ‘bid higher’.
not sure what is more ridiculous on marketplace, the low bids by potential buyers or the ridiculously high prices sellers are requesting when leaving feedback. Often well over retail
ex. someone is looking to buy 06 clos des pape for $75. It’s a bit low but lowest retail right now is about $95. Feedback for this bid says, please raise your price to $128. Especially when there is a seller listing at $86
I responded to your first comment on another board and will cut and paste the response below for this board to read. However, on the second point, the PA state store system is selling 06 Clos des Papes for $82.
While you may not be able to buy there, the point is that all retail prices are asking prices which reflect varying levels of cost of acquisition and margin desires by the retailer. Clearly the PA state store is not losing money at $82. There may be enough demand for Clos des Papes to support higher than normal margins for retailers but $75 in comparison to $82 doesn’t seem out of line. At least in the Marketplace, the “margin” (the selling fee of as little as 10%) is not likely to be inflating the ask as much as it would be from a retailer. Moreover, there are certainly plenty of 50% mark downs going on every day on one top end wine or another of the caliber of Clos du Papes and there are certainly trade sellers using the Marketplace to move inventory so who knows?
My response on other board
You’re free to ignore low bids or set filters which weed them out of any email notifications. There is a comprehensive pricing aid being released in the second week of December. But that doesn’t necessarily stop some people from thinking they might get lucky (they have to go through and enter a credit card etc. to make these bids so you’d think that effort would dissuade them from wasting their time).
On sellers and feedback, the options for providing feedback will be expanding in a few weeks to permit the seller to point out some reference pricing points to the bidder. Remember, the feedback you may see on a specific bid is from just one of what may be many sellers. The “instruction” is a means of communicating what that one seller needs to accept that particular bid. It doesn’t mean all sellers have the same requirement.
As you probably know, the average spread of retail prices on all items on Winesearcher is 2:1 (e.g, $50-$100 is 2:1). In many cases, it could be even more diverse. So if people in the wine business have this wide a variation in their price expectations, why is it surprising that those not in the business do?
Also, while the seller’s cost basis is not relevant to the current market value of something, some people may still insist on recovering 100% of their money to be willing to sell. If so, their ask may look high relative to the current fair market value but it doesn’t look high to them relative to what they paid. My point is what may seem irrational to some may, in fact, be very rational to others.
It seems as if I have been banned from posting further feedback to other users bids on my wine. I am guessing I have been " temporarily suspended from my ability to provide Marketplace feedback" due to the ridiculously high bids in feedback I have been giving.
This was all in response to the stupidly low bids I had been receiving from other users. If you restore my feedback privileges I promise to play nice.
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