Wine Club 2018 Fevre Bougros Cote de Bouguerots $90/bottle. VinConnect price for same bottle $135.99. I don’t get the pricing. Got their offer today. Yes, I passed.
Our winery partners decide the retail pricing strategy for their mailing list releases, we just pass them along. Each of our 61 winery partners is different – some are more aggressive with their pricing relative to their traditional channels, others are more conservative. Not unlike the different approaches to pricing of domestic wineries and their mailing lists.
so your role is just the shipping? The only fingers in the pie are the domaine and you? The importer and distributor and retailer are out of the picture? I’m very interested in several of the domaines I’ve been offered and don’t understand the pricing. Most French wines reach consumer at 2-3 times ex-cellar price. If these offers are 50% over that price, somebody is taking a huge margin.
Hmmmm, who might that be?
this implies that Kevin’s company just ships, no markup. Yet the prices are so far beyond ex-cellar pricing that it’s hard to believe the domaines are charging so much. I’m still waiting for an answer to my previous post question. I’d love to support some domaines I love—Bouchard, Trimbach recently—but not at 40% or more beyond standard retail pricing.
I don’t read it that way, Alan. Vinconnect could charge either a fixed fee, fixed percentage, or combination of the two and his statement would still be accurate in the event that the domaine chooses the retail price. This would make sense if they want to avoid undercutting their other channels.
just trying to understand the business model. When one says the winery decides the pricing and “we just pass it along,” it implied to me no markup. I’m trying to assess why one would pay 50% more for the same wines you can buy elsewhere. What’s the advantage? These aren’t library wines or unobtainable wines. They are just wines priced 50% higher than standard retail.
Hi Kevin,
It sounds like you have said what you can. If you are amenable, it might be helpful for us to understand the pricing model directly from the wineries by having them post here. For example, the direct email offers have included messages from Didier Séguier at W. Fevre (a very nice guy I met in NY about a year ago) and the Trimbach offer is signed by the whole Trimbach family. It would engender goodwill to have them explain here what appears from a consumer perspective to be well-above-retail pricing. If the answer is simply that this another channel from which to buy, and pricing is set to comply with other commitments to other channels and overall pricing strategies in the US, that’s fine. At least we will understand directly from the producers. It’s certainly not going to affect whether we purchase the wines from other channels.
I note this hasn’t been an issue for all of the wineries. I was happy to participate in the von Schubert Pradikat offering and the Musar library release, as well as Dan’s Duplessis offer.
Thanks!
For some reasons the phrase “Painted in to a corner” came to mind.
Not saying there’s not a plausible rationale for the pricing, however more so…![[popcorn.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/1/1ca9f29573458cca2424a66a50d6c1261081dd3e.gif "[popcorn.gif]"){kind=small}
I am just a regular joe on the sidelines with no inside info but as I understand it, its a 2-tier mail-order only model. It would be helpful for Kevin to correct any misperceptions but the ostensible benefit for the domain is that they get a better price than they would to an importer and some targeted marketing to the VinConnect list. They have to set the price high in order to protect their importer/distributor/retail channel. The ostensible benefit for the consumer is provenance (fewer hands on the bottle), convenience (online buying/delivery), and access (not all of the selections are easily found). You (and I) may not be the target market but I’m willing to accept that VinConnect might be able to find some consumers who aren’t particularly price sensitive, don’t have time to deal with WSPro’s lousy alert system, don’t live close to big retailers, and would like the idea of cutting out middlemen and the ‘relationship’ of a domain purchase.
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One other variable that just dawned on me that could be part of the puzzle is tariffs. In certain cases traditional importers have decided to eat some or all of the tariffs with some brands. Trimbach is one example where the importer did not pass along any of the tariff in 2020. However this ended in Jan of this year making it look like Trimbach took massive price increases, but that was not really the case. If let’s say Bouchard’ importer is subsidizing some or all of the tariff affected pricing then Vinconnect’s price would seem out of whack. Just a thought
Joe has pretty much nailed it. Just like domestic wineries, our partners mailing list pricing strategies try to be mindful of both their customers and their existing channel partners.
What our 60+ partners offer is essentially the same mailing list opportunity as domestic wineries. There have been several previous threads on WB debating the various benefits and limitations of mailing list programs – there’s no need to rehash them. If you find mailing lists beneficial, sign up and enjoy them; if they aren’t for you, that’s fine too.
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Even without markup, there are things like shipping costs, tariff cost, insurance, etc., that make comparisons to ex-cellar prices inappropriate. Depending on the wine, I see how these things increase the cost of the wine by a good bit even with the wines I buy directly from Burgundy (on a percentage basis more for less expensive wines, less for more expensive wines). But, obviously there is a profit element here as well. It seems like some of their prices are pretty good (e.g., Grunhaus) but others very expensive (like Bouchard).
You raise a fair question. That kinda variance does not sound like “Just passing it along”. Being in the US, I’d assume that tariffs and various shipping fees would all kinda be in the same ballpark of overhead for a given bottle purchased, within reason. More or less a predictable layer in the cake for a given producer from a given country especially if obtainable and available from multiple domestic sources; same constraints. Begs the question, what’s the secret sauce in there it that’s not markup especially. Doesn’t sound close enough to consider it a rounding error or a reasonable variance in shipping, tax, or fee. Its a material magnitude of a difference.
Just spit-balling.
instead, compare to other retailers
—all of which pay shipping, tariffs, insurance—and explain the 40-50% increase over standard retail. I’m comparing apples to apples. I’ll keep looking at their pricing and hope someday to find a buy.
As I said, their prices on 2019 Grunhaus Kabinett and Spatlese were pretty good - $30 for Herrenberg Kabinett and $35 for Abtsberg Spatlese. Alan, I had never heard of them until you started this thread, and these are the only wines I have purchased so far. The future will be what it will be.
yes, good prices, though the Kab price is matched by several retailers and the Spät wins by $1. And I agree re the future.
The $70 more per bottle for CSH than available on w-s shocked me, especially since I’ve bought while visiting the domaine where prices are pretty good
bought Trimbach Riesling VV 2017 at WHWC for $38.95. Got a VinConnect offer also, same wine, for $49.99.
Saw that. Found the write up regarding the 2017 vintage intensely unappealing. Between that and price I passed.
Did notice the other day that Johannes Leitz has signed up with VinConnect. I wonder what that means regarding his current importer, Schatzi, run by his best friend, Kevin Pike.
VC isn’t the only outfit that offers something similar in regards to provenance, and that other business prices their wines also with a significant markup over other retailers.
Some people’s priority isn’t to save money on wine 