Wine on the web

Wines & Vines, March, 1998 by Larry Walker

Christel Milcan at Sutter Home said the winery would like to use its web site as a sales tool. "That is our objective, but the whole issue is complicated by the direct shipping laws. We have to be sure what we are doing is legal and we have to find a way to be sure we aren't selling to underage drinkers," she said.

Milcan said Sutter Home frequently gets e-mail from people who would like to buy a particular wine but can't find it in their area. "I'm certain that if we can get a legal sales system in place, it would be successful," she said. "We just need to learn more about it. We are in a learning stage." She said that sales of tasting room supplies were "not very good at this point. I think that online, people are looking for wine, not t-shirts."

At Goosecross, Topper said, electronic sales were a very small percentage of total sales, but were growing. He has also opened a virtual tasting room, with sales of food items like pasta sauces, oils and vinegars, t-shirts and other typical tasting room items. "It's another way to increase revenues," he said.

Topper put up the Goosecross web site in July, 1995, and added wine sales capability in the summer of 1996. "I think it is important to keep down the number of variables on the site, so you can be clear about measuring success. If you have too many things going all from the start, it's hard to tell what is really working."

There are several areas that are being neglected in wine industry web sites, according to Topper. "I feel that one area that has not been tapped is business-to-business communications. Industry suppliers, the guys who sell barrels or bulk wine, for example, should be taking advantage of the web." Topper said that business to business communication outside the wine industry is growing twice as fast as any other.

There is also a need for more information on the legal issues of electronic commerce, or e-commerce, Topper said.

Another overlooked area is an in-house intranet for winery agents, brokers and distributors. "An intranet would let people gain instant information about products, goals, plans and people. It would vastly increase the efficiency of moving information. For example, a distributor in New York could access winemaker notes, e-mail questions to the winemaker and have the answer very quickly." Topper said winery inventory could be part of the database for an intranet so distributors could check daily on wine availability.

"That was one of the things I intended to do right away. It would have taken me a little time to enter the inventory, but after that I could update it in five or 10 minutes a day. I also wanted to have links to restaurants and retailers from the Goosecross site, so consumers could check them out. I soon learned that distributors, retailers and restaurants are not computerized in this form. It's the same with suppliers. We are hindered by the lack of willingness of the business as a whole to computerize and take advantage of the technology," Topper said.

One problem that comes up anytime one starts surfing the net is simply that there is too much information. It's hard to find what you are looking for out there on the information superhighway because there aren't enough directional signs.