Online Retailer

The internet boom of 1999/2000 is over and a whole suite of pure internet companies have come and gone. This was no where more obvious than in the online wine industry where early entrepreneurial companies such as Virtual Vineyards, wineshopper.com, eVineyard.com, AKA Gourmet, European Wine Exchange all consolidated into Wine.com, the biggest of the pure internet wine sites. However a lot of the conventional Retail Wine retailers have used the opportunity to establish another channel for sales using the internet. It is this second group who are the most interest as they tend to already  cater to the need of the Wine Investor in their shop locations.

Part of any Wine Investor’s sources of wine should be one or more online retailers. The same conditions apply as for their bricks and mortar cousins; you want to cultivate a few online retailers who get to know you, and contact you when the new wines come in. The relationship is typically harder, as there is less and face-to-face and the online retailers are supplying more clients with less sales staff.