Based on all the great offers that we’ve been seeing this year, do you think that post holiday wine sales will be more or less spectacular?
Posted exclusively on WB.
All depends on pre-holiday sales, as with most retail.
Now, there are more factors in play this year than other years, even last year. I know many retailers in all industries have reduced their inventories - not buying as much and storing as much - so while sales could be weaker, they won’t need to dump after the holidays because there isn’t as much sitting around.
My guess, however, is that there will be more sales post-holiday than last year, but that’s more a product of the market as a whole, where dumping is still happening, and still needs to happen, because of backlogs of inventory on all sides.
Agreed. With both back to back long weekends, the play will be sales to prep for the big party.
In a good year, nobody buys wine in January. I expect huge sales to clear the pipeline in January.
If you’re a distributor teetering on the edge and you have wine to clear, you sell it right NOW, when people are buying. You don’t wait until January.
If you’re a retailer who’s been getting great offers in Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec, you don’t overload yourself with high-priced stuff that you need to clear out in January.
There may be some people who are hoping to hang on, but at this point, they pretty much know and if you’re going to liquidate, why wait until the market dies down instead of getting top dollar now?
People are dropping out all the time and if you have money, the time to buy is today because there are great sales and clearances all over, at least on the wholesale level. So what you may see in Jan is the distributors that decided to throw in the towel, but some of those guys are already doing it and cashing in while money is around rather than waiting.
If I were a customer, I’d take advantage of what I could right now. In January, you’ll have the typical attempts to jump start sales, but from what I’ve seen, retailers are acting fairly conservatively in their ordering so who knows how much they’ll have to clear.
In certain segments of the market, that may differ. For example, Bordeaux may advance a year in their vintage of the century. The vintage of the century has come along every five years - 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, and on that schedule wouldn’t be due until 2010. But seems like it’s going to be off schedule and may come early. And of course the Rhone has had the best vintage since the beginning of recorded history. So I wouldn’t look for bargains there. But bargains are all over right now and depending on what your interest is, you might get some great closeout today that will be gone in Jan/Feb.
That said, in states like NY, you have to post prices a month in advance and if you miscalculated for Dec, you may post clearance prices in Jan which can then appear on retail shelves. But the wholesalers I know were offering pretty good discounts already.