With consumers searching for wine at eBay, the online auction site knew people wanted to buy wine at the site. But cautious about restrictions on wine sales, eBay spent a year negotiating a deal with two wine sellers.
Now the wine sellers are hoping that EBay’s deal this week to auction wine through Winetasting.com and New Vine Logistics will give the wineries a stronger link to online buyers. "We’re doing this to facilitate direct-to-consumer programs for wineries," Lesley Berglund, president and CEO of Winetasting.com, a web site that connects wine connoisseurs with high-end products and several California wineries, tells Internetretailer.com.
Only Winestasting and New Vine will have access to the site to auction wines. Berglund says eBay was eager to move into this category because so many visitors were looking for wine on the site’s search engine.
EBay sees wine as a growth category, especially in the high-end market, which led to year-long negotiations with Winetasting.com and New Vine Logistics. Ebay’s main concern was that wine is a restricted category by age and by where it can be delivered. "We are testing products and pricing right now to see how wine will be received by eBay’s 37 million active users," she says. "The most important thing is to be clear and upfront about the restrictions."
Auction testing includes trying out traditional auction, Dutch auction and even fixed prices to see what works best, Berglund says. Product testing includes auctioning hard-to-find wines, surplus wines and other subcategories. "By the end of the year we will have a really good handle on what works and doesn't work," she says, adding that the testing will precede the rollout of a big wine program at eBay.
Winetasting hopes the testing will lead to giving its winery clients access to auction directly through eBay, with Winetasting acting as the aggregator.
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