Vinfolio Marketplace listings on Winesearcher – What do you want?

How should Vinfolio Marketplace wine be listed on Winesearcher?

  • List every “for sale” Marketplace wine (no bid/ask price needed)
  • List only “for sale” Marketplace wine with either a bid or ask price
  • No preference

0 voters

Vinfolio and Winesearcher have been engaged in a discussion about the best way to list Vinfolio Marketplace listings on their site. As ultimately Winesearcher users should have a voice in expressing their preferences, I suggested we seek feedback from the users of this board (whom I’m sure overlap heavily with Winesearcher users), to which Winesearcher agreed (actually, they agreed to Squires board but the post was deleted within minutes). Adon Kumar, the General Manager of Winesearcher, should be adding his perspective after this post.

Vinfolio’s position

  1. Any wine listed for sale in the Vinfolio Marketplace should generate a Winesearcher auction listing (note: there are currently 246,731 unique wines owned by VinCellar and CellarTracker users of which 36,737 are marked for sale by at least one user).

  2. To be consistent with other auction listings on Winesearcher, the price displayed should be:
    – Current high bid
    – If none, current lowest ask (amongst all sellers of same item),
    – If neither bid or ask present, then “NA” for “No ask” or just $0.

The Marketplace has no minimum bid amount and sellers are not required to pre-commit to a selling price or to sell at all.

To ensure Winesearcher users understand the basis of a Marketplace listing, each individual item listing would state the following text in the accompanying notes field:
“CA, San Francisco. Online bidding. No buyer’s premium. Price is high bid (if any), else low ask (if any), else “NA” [or $0]. Sellers not obligated to accept any bid. Bids may be below price shown. No minimum order. Delivery charges apply.”

Current status

  1. Neither Vinfolio nor Winesearcher wants to confuse or inadvertently mislead Winesearcher users.

  2. Vinfolio still believes every unique wine listed for sale in the Marketplace should translate into a listing (with some basis of displaying a price) on Winesearcher as it represents a buying opportunity that Winesearcher users would rather know about than not. Multiple sellers of the same wine would still mean one listing.

  3. After some internal discussion, Winesearcher has agreed to list only those Marketplace wines with a current bid price or an optional asking price (which is always set by the seller). The price displayed in a listing is the greater of the highest bid (if any) and the lowest asking price (if any). As of today, applying this rule means displaying only 3,762 listings from 36,737 unique items marked for sale (about 10%).

Your opinion?

  1. Would you rather see every listing for wine marked for sale (knowing that the seller is not obligated to sell)?
  2. If so, on what basis would you prefer to see the price displayed?

I voted #2 but would strongly recommend nothing be listed without an asking price set by the seller. Bids by potential buyers should not be part of the equation. I know for a fact some people have listed their entire cellars on Vinfolio with no asking prices, figuring that theoretically everything is for sale. But Vinfolio’s claim that every such listing “represents a buying opportunity that Winesearcher users would rather know about than not” is ridiculous under those circumstances - it is only a “buying opportunity” in the most limited, theoretical sense that it would be for sale if someone offered a million dollars for it. (By the same token, the bids they get are vastly undermarket, from people figuring “What the heck?”) There is no real buying opportunity without some further indication by the owner that the wine really is for sale - an actual asking price (such that a buyer’s acceptance of the price would consummate the terms of the sale) should be the minimum.

Any other policy will make certain functions of wine-searcher totally useless. Right now, when I get a wine-searcher alert, every bottle it alerts me to is actually for sale and able to be purchased by me for the listed price. If I start getting wine-searcher alerts on theoretical vinfolio listings, they’re not alerts anymore. They’re just a useless message that someone, somewhere in the world owns the bottle. This would also heavily dilute the regular wine-searcher listings. I guess these issues could be avoided by adding Vinfolio to one’s personal list of ignored retailers, but then that would also ignore legitimate Vinfolio listings.

I agree that listing something without an ask on it is silly.

I think Vinfolio marketplace is great, and I think that integration with CT and WS are awesome as well, but I can also tell you that I already unconciously ignore Vinfolio Marketplace results in WS results, as I have yet to see a wine that is actually for sale for less than WS-Pro low…

So, I was going to respond to the question, then I saw what Keith said…. And, ummmmmm, he kinda said what I was going to only much better. So I got nothing else to add. Keith pretty much sums it up nicely…

I completely agree with this, Keith.

In addition, and just something else to note, I’ve placed a number of bids that have equaled ask prices for bottles showing in VF or offsite storage that display as available in the requested quantites and have received zero response. Perhaps this is due to the sellers having entered incorrect prices, or sellers simply changing their minds when a bid is made, or maybe people are posting inventory they just don’t have anymore. Kinda strange.

I just did a wine-searcher search for Clos Rougeard Le Bourg. A Vinfolio listing of the 2002 came up for $55 - hey, I’d buy at that price! I clicked on it and found out that a person had bid $55 for the wine, but the “seller’s” minimum asking price was $100. This kind of thing is going to kill wine-searcher. Nothing should be listed without a BINDING asking price.

If a retailer did this repeatedly it would be grounds for getting banned from wine-searcher, wouldn’t it? Vinfolio listings should be held to the same standards.

I also voted for choice no. 2 and concur with the sentiment voiced by Keith and the others. However, so long as the Vinfolio Marketplace lists wines without sellers committed to selling at particular prices, I will likely include Vinfolio Marketplace as a vendor to exclude in my WineSearcher searches. I don’t have an interest in pursuing bottles that have neither been inspected nor are necessarily available for sale at a stated price. The attractiveness of the auction format disappears when the bidder doesn’t know that having the high bid will buy the wine.

Ditto

Well, you know my thoughts from previous threads on this. It’s a total waste of time if sellers aren’t serious.

well, if that’s the case, it’s a wine-searcher problem not a vinfolio problem as i’m sure you’re aware – and dan posner recently posted on the very topic – that many retailers (and it seems to be a trend) are listing entire supplier catalogs of wines without owning or even have knowledge of whether they can in fact source the wine. so that aspect already exists.

in my opinion, vinfolio marketplace and integration with cellartracker is technology that is already eons past what wine-searcher currently offers.

i’m shocked that no one else has been able to come up with a better wine-finding service. now might not be the best time to seed something like this, but it’s a huge opportunity.

Keith, Winesearcher already lists other auction listings based on high bid prices (e.g., WineCommune) so this is not precedent setting for them.

Part of the premise of the Marketplace is many willing sellers are not going to bother to set prices but will react to reasonable bids. The fact is the person listing the wine for sale will be proactively notified about a bid and have an opportunity to decide to sell it. Why would they want to opt in for that if they had no interest? I’m sure there are people testing the waters too but since when would people rather have fewer choices to buy (especially when in some cases, there many be few or no other alternatives?

Price education (for both bidders and sellers) is a key issue we have heard and steps are already being taken to address it. See this thread on our forum about coming enhancements (item 1 is already live and there’s more to come).

As my initial post said, the asking price itself does not constitute a firm obligation for the seller to sell. We’re adding “auto-accept” rules (see prior link) to create that Buy-it-now function but the seller can always decide not to sell (even if someone bids the asking price, again by design).

On your Winesearcher alerts, your statement is not correct that every bottle you get alerted on is available to be purchased at the listed price. ALL auction prices are no different from Marketplace listings. The Winesearcher auction price shown is either a bid price, a low estimate, or a reserve – none of which are necessarily related to the final purchase price. Generally speaking, any auction price is only a starting price. In the Vinfolio model, you can bid below the ask and the seller can choose to accept it (or someone who owns it that has not even opted in to sell his wine can).

Even Winesearcher admits the alerts issue is not relevant. You can either exclude all auction listings or simply set a minimum price of $10 or something on your alerts to screen out ones where clearly no bid or ask has been made. Note that I can find plenty of $2 and $5 auction prices on Winesearcher now where the final price is likely an order of magnitude higher. E.g., there was a $2 listing for 1985 Dom Perignon where the low retail listing was over $200.

The listings won’t “dilute” Winesearcher listings as there is only 1 listing per wine that is marked for sale even if there are 20 people selling it.

The listings are also all grouped into a separate Winesearcher account called Vinfolio Marketplace to ensure Winesearcher users know when the price represents a retail price from our “wine store” and when it is an auction listing (although all auction listings are marked “AUCTION:” in capital letters before it so as not to mislead Winesearcher users). So if the Vinfolio Marketplace listings annoy you but you’d still like to get Vinfolio listings, you can block one account and not the other.

That is a show-stopper for me.

The Marketplace listing you reference (1 of only 2 total listings) clearly was marked “AUCTION” so users should know that this is only ever a minimum price based on how every other auction listing on Winesearcher is handled. According to the rule Winesearcher is supposed to be applying now, when a bid and ask is present the greater of the two should dictate the price shown (which would put it at equal to the sole $100 retail price listing). So this is either a bug in the new script they rolled out or the seller might have set the asking price today and it will be updated by Winesearcher on their next update tomorrow (it’s never real time on their site).

On the question of whether only binding ask prices should be listed, this would delete ALL Winesearcher listings on Marketplace as a fundamental part of the business model is that sellers are not required to pre-commit to a price or to sell at all.

As noted already, you cannot assume with any current Winesearcher auction listing that the price means anything (because it doesn’t as the starting price is not necessarily realistic, and the final selling “price” is a moving target and unknown – unlike a retail listing).

In essence, therefore, the main benefit to Winesearcher users from auction listings is the knowledge that a wine is being offered at all for potential purchase (as you are not guaranteed to complete the purchase of any other auction either).

This is correct but, I think, the source of the problem. My view is that the price WineSearcher brings up for an auction listing is essentially meaningless because it doesn’t reveal what the wine will sell for. The only value to me of the listing is to inform me that the wine is up for auction and can be acquired if I am the high bidder. I can then decide if I want to try to become the high bidder.

A WineSearcher listing of a wine available on the Vinfolio Marketplace is going to be similar in that the price listed has little or no meaning, and dissimilar in that it will not tell me if the wine listed is truly available for sale or at what price it may be acquired. I suppose that if there is a truly rare bottle that I really want to pursue, I can go through the effort of bidding and hoping that the “seller” in fact wants to sell and at a price that makes sense to me. But how many such bottles are there going to be? Not many I think.

I respect Vinfolio’s business and its wine-related technology, but I think the Marketplace is not going to succeed until potential buyers know that listed wine is in fact for sale and the minimum price for which such wine might be acquired.

I’ll agree with Keith and the rest. I don’t want to waste my time following a link on winesearcher.com that doesn’t lead to a reasonable possibility of buying the wine.

The whole point of winesearcher is to find the wine you want, to make sure it’s available, and to check prices based on what’s actually available. Ease and transparency are key. So adding listings that may be just theoretical bottles for sale is a waste of my time as a winesearcher user.

Bruce

Remember, the Marketplace is like a stock exchange (although a lot less liquid - no pun intended). Just because someone is trying to sell stock at an asking price doesn’t mean they won’t end up selling it for a lower price (perhaps a much lower price in less efficient, thinly traded stocks which is this more akin to).

Most Winesearcher prices displayed for Marketplace wines are going to be asking prices (given the rule at the moment) and those are really only ever the ceiling price because you can bid lower (why would anyone ever bid higher than the ask?). Every other auction listing on Winesearcher only ever goes up, not down. So you need to keep this in mind when looking at prices.

Chris, with regard to your bids. I just checked them.

Several of the asking prices on items you bid upon look very low and are likely mistakes. I’ve having Customer Service email the sellers to ask.

On another item, you bid exactly what a prior bottle sold for and there is one bottle with an ask price that matches your bid (and the prior sale value). Turns out you helped us find a bug. That one bottle is the same bottle showing in the transaction history. It got added there on bid acceptance but the available seller wine was not reduced (apparently, the seller table is currently set up to reduce available quantities after receipt and inspection when it should reduce after bid acceptance as well). So in this case, there is no current seller of that wine so nobody was notified of your bid. However, there are 17 more bottles owned by 6 others so if one of them sees that bid and likes it, he/she may decide to accept.

In general, I do not expect the Marketplace to be a clearing house for wine at a fraction of the price of alternative channels. Sellers will make mistakes in setting ask prices but most of them will probably catch themselves before hitting the final Accept Bid button. We are building tools to educate both buyers and sellers as to current pricing levels so there is complete price transparency to encourage convergence at fair market pricing for both sides. Bidders are now reminded of current market pricing in step 1 of the bidder pop-up.

Also, remember that no response can easily just mean that sellers don’t like the bid. Nothing wrong with that. Sellers are perfectly entitled to ignore bids they don’t want to accept. We may need to come up with some notion of acknowledging a price is unacceptable but setting an asking price they intend to accept at is really the desired response we want to encourage. A new bid notification template is already making that easier for sellers.

in my experience, wine-searcher does not meet these goals.

Several people have flagged the issue that the lack of an obligation to sell as a key one. A “reasonable possibility” of a purchase opportunity seems to be sufficient for Bruce and we certainly deliver that (at least as much as others with different business models).

Regardless of how the seller marks his wine for sale (item by item or by category or the entire cellar at once), a few things need to be kept in mind:

  1. The fact is the seller has demonstrated some interest in selling by having taken a proactive step.

  2. The chance of purchasing any item is a function of the bid value. Purchasing a first growth Bordeaux for 20% of current auction prices is never going to happen (either in the Marketplace or in any other auction, online or offline). If the bid price is within range of auction averages or the low end of retail pricing, the “worth the effort to bid” test will easily be met.

  3. The chance of winning a bid is also a function of the number of sellers. There are 40-50 sellers of 2000 Lynch Bages representing 465 bottles of wine. Remember, only one of them has to accept your bid (for the moment, they need to have the full quantity of your bid to accept but we’re changing that before the end of August so all sellers will be eligible to see any bid).

In summary, while we have not forced sellers to precommmit to sell, we have assumed economically rationale sellers who should realize they cannot expect to sell for premiums to auction or retailer alternatives. We’ve also aggregated sellers so a bid is not necessarily against a single seller (as in all other auctions where it is 1-to-1) but ours is a 1-to-many model where potentially multiple sellers simultaneously see the bid and compete to be first to accept. Moreover, bids are also available (not pushed to them as alerts though) to any other owner of the wine (because they could become a seller at any time).

In short, this is not an apples and apples comparison with other auction houses. Dismissing buying opportunities as “theoretical bottles” for sale is unfair and ignores the many advantages of the model in other areas.