Online wine retailing to emphasise talent

"The future is going to be talent," said Naked Wines founder Rowan Gormley, as he announced the launch of the world¹s first free trade marketplace for wine at the LIWF conference on Monday.

Explaining his belief, he said: "Before, the success of a brand was down to the power of your distribution and the size of your marketing budget, but the future will be about talent of winemakers.

"Retailing online will tilt the balance away from those with money and power towards talent."

Referring to the success of a deal-a-day website such as Groupon – the fastest growing company in history – ­ he said of wine consumers: "They relied on experts, then crowds and now they are relying on friends."

Continuing, he pointed out that these web-connected "crowds" can "buy better than on their own", and that "friends were very accessible because of mobile phones", before reminding: "With a mobile, you have a computer at the point of purchase.

"You know what it used to be like, you had a lovely wine, tried to peel off the label, or remember what it was, but now you just click and take a picture. With a phone you can rate, remember, share ­ what¹s in your hand will transform the way consumers consume wine and sellers sell wine."

Returning to the topic of talent, he explained his own company¹s new initiative and how it rewards winemakers. "We are launching the world¹s first free trade wine marketplace called the Naked Marketplace where anyone can pitch their wine and in 10 minutes they can be in front of 150,000 customers."

The idea is that, he added, "Consumers name the price they think is fair and the winemaker has a choice: do I want a high price per bottle for low sales or a big cheque for a discount? They are negotiating with the people drinking the wine."

As for Naked Wines, the online retailer receives a 10% fixed commission and, as Gormley stressed: "It is the most transparent way to connect winemakers and drinkers."

How Naked MarketPlace works:

– Any winemaker, from anyway in the world, can pitch a wine to Naked Wine¹s 150,000 customers

– Customers can also suggest what wines they want to see in the MarketPlace 

– The winemaker does it all: They go to http://www.nakedwines.com/pitch to create their pitch, they enter details and selling points about the wine, they set a minimum and maximum volume and a price

– Once the pitch is live, Naked Wines its customers to inform them of the new product

– Customers can either accept the price the winemaker suggests and bid for a case, or suggest a lower price

– If enough customers accept the winemaker¹s price and the minimum number of cases are sold, the deal is done.

– If there aren¹t enough customers, the winemaker can choose to lower their price € Once the deal is done, Naked Wines issues a purchase order, tells the winemaker where to deliver the wine ­ and pays the winemaker, minus their 10% fee. N.B. If the pitch isn¹t successful, there¹s no fee. 

– Once the wine arrives in the UK, Naked Wines distributes it to its customers

Patrick Schmitt, 18.05.11