Should asking prices in Vinfolio’s Marketplace require the seller to sell at that price?
Yes
No
0voters
Currently, sellers in Vinfolio’s Marketplace do not have any precommitment to selling wine that they list for sale. They simply accept a bid when it meets their objectives. In our next software release in mid-October, we were planning to introduce a capability to allow a seller to mark an asking price as “Buy Now” to publicly signal that he/she is obligated to sell at that price (i.e., such bids would be accepted for them automatically).
But in an internal discussion today, we debated taking that a step further and just making every asking price carry with it an obligation to sell at that price. In essence, every asking price would become a “buy now” price (so no need to designate some as “buy now” and others not). Sellers with asking prices would still be able to respond to bids at lower prices. They would also be able to list wine “for sale” without an asking price if they were more of a “passive” seller (reviewing bid alerts and responding if they wanted to) or if they preferred to set a private reserve price which would also have a selling obligation for any bid at or above the reserve (also a new capability coming in October).
We’re going to survey our Marketplace sellers for their opinions but our inclination is to implement this as most bidders seem to assume having an asking price means there is a selling obligation.
If the “store” is going to have credibility, it needs to ensure that listed asking prices are valid. Allowing a seller to list an asking price and then back off when a buyer bites on the offer wastes the buyer’s time in making the offer and smacks of bait and switch. If this happens enough, buyers will stop bothering. So, the answer is YES. If they don’t want to be committed, they can list then wine without a price, as you mentioned.
Those are exactly the comments we have heard. I see there are a couple of “no” votes from others and would be interested to hear the opposing viewpoint as well. Why would a seller go to the trouble of setting an asking price if they didn’t intend to sell? Note that sellers without an asking price would still receive bid alerts (if the bid is not preempted by a seller with a pre-committed asking or reserve price).
This is exactly why I don’t even bother browsing through inventory in the VM. I look at Vinfolio’s own store inventory (which is one of my favorites), but the marketplace seems to reek of artificial sale prices…at least thus far.
I would vote no. What happens if
a) You drink the wine the night before someone makes you an offer on it
b) You can’t find it - missing presumed drunk
c) A critic releases a high score and you don’t have time to react to the new market
People selling wine in this way aren’t stores - they are individuals who happen to have a wine collection.
However - if someone wants to set a buy it now price that is fine - although I do think they should need to renew that every month or so.
As I’ve said before, I won’t waste my time with sellers who “may” want to sell their wine. Too many other outlets to buy wine from with serious sellers.
Remember that setting an asking price is optional so if it doesn’t appeal to you or you are a more casual, opportunistic seller, you don’t have to do it. You will still be able to have wine marked for sale and see bids when they are made, responding when you wish, just like you can today. But if you do set an asking price, you become committed at your price (and perhaps also linked to a minimum quantity) until you remove the asking price, the wine is removed from your cellar management account (you drank it, gave it away, whatever), or hopefully, you sell it. In addition, you don’t need to set an asking price for every wine in your cellar; you may only choose to in response to a bid which looks interesting to you.
As you are pre-committing to accept a bid at your asking price, presumably this means you would do the same steps in advance that you would do just before accepting a bid manually. I.e., you’d first verify you still own the wine, that it would pass our inspection guidelines, and that you’ll be around and prepared to ship it within two weeks of an acceptance (you’ll be able to suspend asking and reserve prices temporarily at any time, e.g. if you are traveling). In terms of “renewing” an asking price, there’s no real need to do so but that’s really the seller’s choice about how long to leave an asking price in place.
If you’re saying that you don’t trust yourself to set aside wines with asking prices or to remove them from your cellar management account as you drink them, you’d be taking some risk of not being able to fulfill an accepted bid by setting an asking price (including the risk of cancellation penalties and possibly losing your future ability to sell through the Marketplace). On the point about a critic raising a score unexpectedly, I agree it could happen it’s not an everyday occurrence (especially material changes). Moreover, if your asking price is reasonable, the wine will likely sell in a short time frame (limiting the “at risk” period of a score change) and if it is on the high end, you probably have a built-in premium already relative to the original score.
With over 5,000 bottles I don’t have time to research and input asking prices for the majority of my wines. I’m not looking to sell anything, but at the right price, hey. I input an asking price when I get a notice that someone is currently bidding on a wine to give the potential buyer an indication of what I’d entertain…it’s only an indication, not a firm offer. I wouldn’t have time to constantly update my “indications”, so if they would need to be firm, I would just have to delete any that I have entered.
btw, I agree with Peter H., lower your vig. and you’d sell more.
At the moment, setting an asking price as a signal to a bidder about what you (as the seller) might accept is the only mechanism available for providing feedback to bidder so your current use of asking prices makes sense. However, our next software release in mid-October includes a new “bid feedback” mechanism to do exactly what you are suggesting which enables the asking price to be used in the manner we’re now considering (see this post in our Marketplace forum titled Bid Feedback: Ideas on Getting it and Giving It.
We also understand that if we “redefine” what an asking price means in the Marketplace that existing Marketplace sellers who use it will need a smooth transition to ensure they review their existing prices before any cutover and make all appropriate modifications or deletions.
Steve, read your post 31 again and tell me that you don’t find this whole buy-sell thing setup incredibly complicated. I had dinner with Eric LeVine a couple days before this was announced and I was really excited at the concept. But it hasn’t turned out as I expected. Read Jeff’s post. Do you really want your business model built on the “I don’t want to sell any wine but if some nut wants to pay an outrageous price then I’ll sell”. Let’s get serious buyers and sellers. Sellers should put in “buy it” prices. Buyers should be able to put in bid prices they would be willing to pay for wines they are looking to purchase. Both should be firm.
Paul, I think the feedback is pretty clear that we need to make asking prices firm selling commitments (bid prices are already firm and backed by credit cards when entered). One way or the other, we are introducing a means of ensuring bidders know when a price has a firm selling obligation associated with it.
In terms of the overall Marketplace concept, one way of thinking about it is as a mechanism for cultivating owners into serious (and opportunistic) sellers by exposing them (in a low effort, convenient way) to current values on wine they own. While one can interpret “right price” to mean “outrageous price”, to many people who may have paid half or less of current market value for a wine, fair market value is enough to motivate them to sell. Moreover, I suspect even Jeff has wines he no longer wants or that his tastes may evolve to favor one area at the expense of another. Allen Meadows of Burghound once said, “I’ve never met anyone whose taste [preferences] did not change.” Finally, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from people that they are not sellers and they become “accidental” sellers. Here’s a list of Common reasons to Sell Wine from a blog post I wrote almost three years ago.
Given a yes/no choice, I’m all yes. But that’s not quite fair to the seller. I think balking sellers should be given 48 hours to read important historic threads regarding recalcitrant vendors. And then be “outed”.
But on the other hand, if these offers are required to be sold at the ask, how long until the next retail e-wizard creates a program to transcribe them all to his website @ 10% higher and hits the offer if he gets a bite? Lots of attractive bait in that database!
At 8 months, I’ll take the under.
Best / Dan
Closed my first Vinfolio sale today… probably my last as well. I agree with Jeff C. 20% vig. is too much, 10% & I’m back in the game. Or, if you want to make it more like auction introduce a BUYERS premium instead.
I like the “buy it now” concept. I can set a price that I would be happy with, then I don’t see the need to update it very often. The vig really comes into play when you just trying to find a happy home for wines that you no longer like (because your tastes have changed, or you bought a highly rated wine that you didn’t taste before purchase and don’t care for). I would sell many of these wines if the vig was lower so that I could at least recoup my costs. Psychologically, most people are not willing to sell wines below cost-- it is not rational, but it is reality. Perhaps a graded vig based upon how much profit you are making compared to the release price? 10% for wines that are selling for X% or less above release price, up to 20% for wines selling for >Y% over release price?
After debating this today, for a variety of reasons (including simplifying the transition from where we are now), our mid-October software release is going to start with our original plan of designating asking prices with “Buy Now” if they carry a seller commitment to sell at that price. It seems that there is some value in more passive sellers being able to indicate a “soft” ask to provide some sense of price guidance to bidders (before they bid; after they bid, the bid feedback feature being implemented will enable another method). Reserve prices will all carry an obligation to sell if set. Bidders will see individual seller listings on the Marketplace detail page and whether an asking price is Buy Now as well as if a given seller has set a reserve (but not the private price).
The last couple of posts started discussing Marketplace fees. I don’t want to kick off a debate in this thread on fees but as a quick response, we’re discussing fee levels internally and listening to your feedback but it’s not possible to do something related to release prices. We don’t have historical release prices and we’re selling wines back to 1970 from all over the world. On the question of having a buyer’s premium as an alternative, we’re actually not trying to fit into any traditional auction house model. I’ve done a Competitor Comparison which normalizes different fee structures (including those with buyer’s premiums). Buyer’s premiums are still “paid for” by sellers through bidders lowering their bid prices to reflect the additional out of pocket costs. They also are just less convenient to bidders and make comparison with alternative retail sources of supply harder to do for the buyer.
I agree that the buyer/seller fee distinction is not that important. BUT, as far as doing something with release prices, you could certainly limit this to wines that are less than say 5 or 10 years old. BTW, the power of the Marketplace is amazing. I just bought some Rafanelli cab (2004) vintage for $50/bottle. I have been looking for this wine for a long time to no avail after having it at a restaurant in Napa. Obviously someone wanted to unload this wine because $50 is pretty close to release price (I think around $42). This person will lose money relative to release price. Anyway, maybe you guys don’t want to process a lot of wines in that price range, because you will not make much money on it. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a competitor comes in to grab this potentially high-volume market.
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