Total Wine Pappy Offer

Scott_Butler · October 24, 2017, 7:24pm

Well last year it actually happened as well - the website crashing part I mean.

Last year you had to register at a certain time to be eligible for the BTAC offer. The registering process crashed and they had to reschedule it. But yes, then you went to the store and waited in line to pick your bottle.

Very surprised they didn’t anticipate another crash this year. Crazy.

JKim · October 24, 2017, 9:16pm

Seems so simple to me, it’s not like TW doesn’t know how many GR members there are. Count up all the GR members, anticipate that the vast majority will try for a bottle and see if the servers can handle that much traffic all at once. Oh, and test the servers BEFORE the actual release.

AdamK · October 28, 2017, 7:45pm

If anyone has access to it and does not want their allocation, please let me know and I would be happy to reimburse you.

Scott_Butler · October 30, 2017, 2:42pm

Just confirming that i did not miss any emails, the new offer did not come out yet, right?

JKim · October 30, 2017, 3:40pm

I haven’t gotten a new email yet. TW must be busy upgrading their crap servers.

BenW · October 30, 2017, 4:43pm

I haven’t received anything either.

Serious question to anyone who knows something about IT: how big of an upgrade is this likely to require? I presume they have at least a semi-decent set up given their regular website traffic and my experience with them (not the most user friendly but certainly a reliable site). And how many Grand Reserve members are there? A couple of thousand?

To my untrained eye that seems like a very surmountable problem. Am I missing something?

ERPark · October 30, 2017, 6:24pm

My perspective is as a tech hardware sales guy who’s been in the same job for 16+ years. I’m not an engineer, but I know at a high level how things work (or don’t). It depends on two things:

Do they own their infrastructure, or is it managed by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or another cloud provider?
How good is the DevOps team (either on staff, or contracted out) that writes their code?

If they own their environment, they’ll have to have sizing discussions, and then order/install additional equipment. They’ll also likely need to work with their telecom provider so their data pipes can “burst” to accommodate the relatively temporary increase in traffic. This will take several weeks, minimum.

If they have a cloud provider handling things, then they work with the provider to get the requested environment “spun up”. This can be ready in a matter of days, if not hours, once they’ve decided how much larger of an environment is needed.

The app is more often than not the stumbling block for “non-tech” organizations like Total Wine. If they had a VP or Director with relevant experience from someone like Ticketmaster or any retail org that has “Black Friday” type of online campaigns, then a staff of software developers can be molded to minimize the likelihood of this sort of debacle occurring. But my guess is that they don’t have much experience on staff for building towards situations like this online, where tens or hundreds of thousands of simultaneous requests are coming in per second.

The previous sentence is my guess of how many requests Total Wine was seeing by the time the clock struck noon Eastern time on that fateful day. TW has close to 200 stores nationwide, and their annual revenues are estimated in the $2B range. The threshold for achieving Grand Reserve is a $2500 annual spend. TW isn’t like Costco where large numbers of daily shoppers come thru their doors. I’d say a decent chunk of their revenue is from Grand Reserve and above (there’s a $25K tier from what I’ve read online) level customers. I’d assume there are at least 20K GR level customers (that’s an average of 110 or so GR customers per store, which isn’t a lot). 25K customers with an average spend of $8000/year only clocks in at $200M in annual revenue, which is 1/10th of TW’s estimated annual revenue. So there’s probably north of that many GR members…

CFu · October 30, 2017, 8:16pm

ERPark:

My perspective is as a tech hardware sales guy who’s been in the same job for 16+ years. I’m not an engineer, but I know at a high level how things work (or don’t). It depends on two things:

Do they own their infrastructure, or is it managed by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or another cloud provider?

How good is the DevOps team (either on staff, or contracted out) that writes their code?

If they own their environment, they’ll have to have sizing discussions, and then order/install additional equipment. They’ll also likely need to work with their telecom provider so their data pipes can “burst” to accommodate the relatively temporary increase in traffic. This will take several weeks, minimum.

If they have a cloud provider handling things, then they work with the provider to get the requested environment “spun up”. This can be ready in a matter of days, if not hours, once they’ve decided how much larger of an environment is needed.

The app is more often than not the stumbling block for “non-tech” organizations like Total Wine. If they had a VP or Director with relevant experience from someone like Ticketmaster or any retail org that has “Black Friday” type of online campaigns, then a staff of software developers can be molded to minimize the likelihood of this sort of debacle occurring. But my guess is that they don’t have much experience on staff for building towards situations like this online, where tens or hundreds of thousands of simultaneous requests are coming in per second.

The previous sentence is my guess of how many requests Total Wine was seeing by the time the clock struck noon Eastern time on that fateful day. TW has close to 200 stores nationwide, and their annual revenues are estimated in the $2B range. The threshold for achieving Grand Reserve is a $2500 annual spend. TW isn’t like Costco where large numbers of daily shoppers come thru their doors. I’d say a decent chunk of their revenue is from Grand Reserve and above (there’s a $25K tier from what I’ve read online) level customers. I’d assume there are at least 20K GR level customers (that’s an average of 110 or so GR customers per store, which isn’t a lot). 25K customers with an average spend of $8000/year only clocks in at $200M in annual revenue, which is 1/10th of TW’s estimated annual revenue. So there’s probably north of that many GR members…

They probably knew the numbers, just didn’t want to spend the money for the additional pipeline for a once a year event.

ERPark · October 31, 2017, 2:47am

c fu:

ERPark:

My perspective is as a tech hardware sales guy who’s been in the same job for 16+ years. I’m not an engineer, but I know at a high level how things work (or don’t). It depends on two things:

Do they own their infrastructure, or is it managed by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or another cloud provider?

How good is the DevOps team (either on staff, or contracted out) that writes their code?

If they own their environment, they’ll have to have sizing discussions, and then order/install additional equipment. They’ll also likely need to work with their telecom provider so their data pipes can “burst” to accommodate the relatively temporary increase in traffic. This will take several weeks, minimum.

If they have a cloud provider handling things, then they work with the provider to get the requested environment “spun up”. This can be ready in a matter of days, if not hours, once they’ve decided how much larger of an environment is needed.

The app is more often than not the stumbling block for “non-tech” organizations like Total Wine. If they had a VP or Director with relevant experience from someone like Ticketmaster or any retail org that has “Black Friday” type of online campaigns, then a staff of software developers can be molded to minimize the likelihood of this sort of debacle occurring. But my guess is that they don’t have much experience on staff for building towards situations like this online, where tens or hundreds of thousands of simultaneous requests are coming in per second.

The previous sentence is my guess of how many requests Total Wine was seeing by the time the clock struck noon Eastern time on that fateful day. TW has close to 200 stores nationwide, and their annual revenues are estimated in the $2B range. The threshold for achieving Grand Reserve is a $2500 annual spend. TW isn’t like Costco where large numbers of daily shoppers come thru their doors. I’d say a decent chunk of their revenue is from Grand Reserve and above (there’s a $25K tier from what I’ve read online) level customers. I’d assume there are at least 20K GR level customers (that’s an average of 110 or so GR customers per store, which isn’t a lot). 25K customers with an average spend of $8000/year only clocks in at $200M in annual revenue, which is 1/10th of TW’s estimated annual revenue. So there’s probably north of that many GR members…

They probably knew the numbers, just didn’t want to spend the money for the additional pipeline for a once a year event.

It’s likely a combo of that and poorly written code. You could have unlimited CPU, memory and I/O capabilities, but if the app is poorly written, the environment would still crash.

NED_VALOIS · October 31, 2017, 5:04am

My son had a 23 in his basket, but when he checked out he only was able to buy a 12 !

BenW · October 31, 2017, 4:04pm

I just got a new Maryland specific offer for tomorrow

Scott_Butler · October 31, 2017, 4:11pm

Me too for SC only

ERPark · October 31, 2017, 4:39pm

TW is staggering the online release to GR members on a state or regional basis. Let’s see if the reduced load can be handled by their app and infrastructure.

Brian_G_r_a_f_s_t_r_o_m · November 1, 2017, 3:25am

I am so happy whisky hasn’t gone this way … yet.

Scott_Butler · November 1, 2017, 1:07pm

Man o man, that was fast. Mildly confusing, as I already saved my location, yet I needed to put it in again, and it did not like my zip code, I just had to find my store in the drop down. By then all Pappy and the WL Weller were long gone. Grabbed a Sazerac 18 Rye since I like it quite a bit, and the reviews for the 2017 version were generally good.

I also noticed the prices were cheaper than that original offer Ben posted. BTAC’s were $109.97 each.

BenW · November 1, 2017, 1:21pm

Wow, yes it was little confusing with the store selection at the top while I was furiously hitting update at the bottom of the screen.

Anyway I managed to grab a Pappy 20 year… it was also cheaper than I had previously been told ($199.97)

BenW · November 1, 2017, 1:24pm

Updated Prices for MD, GA and SC:

Old Rip Van Winkle 10 Year - $79.97
Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year - $89.97
Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve 15 Year - $129.97
Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve 20 Year - $199.97
Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve 23 Year - $359.97
Thomas H. Handy Sazerac - $109.97
Sazerac Rye 18 Year - $109.97
George T. Stagg - $109.97
Eagle Rare 17 Year - $109.97
William Larue Weller - $109.97

Scott_Butler · November 1, 2017, 1:39pm

Great job getting a Pappy 20, you obviously figured out the store selection before me.

JKim · November 1, 2017, 2:44pm

I order tomorrow. What do you guys mean by the drop down menu? What do you see when ordering opens? Also, once you pick a store, will the choices only be what’s still available? Any tips on quick checkout?

Scott_Butler · November 1, 2017, 3:08pm

Ok, take a look, some bottles are still left in MD so I can show you. make sure your Concierge account is set up. your address and credit card are stored, and you are logged in. This all happens too fast for you to need to type in your CC#. I did a ctrl+C on my access code so I could just paste it in real quick.

Then you click the link in the email and you see the screen, see the Location popup at the top? Don’t try to put anything in there, it did not work for me, just click the down arrow and find your store, and then scroll down to the offers. you will quickly see what is sold out, then buy it!