Should Amazon make a big play into the wine space, they'll only add to the problem already plaguing many wine buyers today - an overwhelming paradox of choice. Amazon is not known for their merchandising, and its endless aisle is rather hard to shop unless you know exactly what you're looking for. Our discussion highlighted the opportunity for someone to move into the space with the angle of providing a curated selection and personalized recommendations.
Having worked at StitchFix this summer, my thought immediately jumped to the idea that there should be a StitchFix for wine, i.e. collect preferences, send personalized selections of wine, collect feedback, refine and repeat. I, for one, would love to use that service. I'm vaguely aware that many players have attempted to solve for this (I seem to be a good target for social media advertising), but to my knowledge, no one has figured out how to make it work or at least how to make it stick. My opinion is that brand counts for a lot. I strongly believe that StitchFix and Amazon can coexist in the world of fashion largely because StitchFix solved the paradox of choice that Amazon created. Before Amazon made a play towards personalized clothing recommendations, StitchFix created a strong and widely recognized brand; so now millions of consumers think StitchFix before they might think Amazon as a destination for this need. So for a player like WineDirect to be successful with their bet on curation, I as a wine buyer must think WineDirect before I think Amazon.
There are many other critical pieces of this puzzle that are important to get right in order to set-up a successful play in personalized wine recommendations. The one I'm deeply familiar with from my experience at StitchFix is figuring out how to most effectively collect data on preferences and feed those into a recommendation algorithm. While figuring out the right way to ask questions to assess wine preferences, which is likely rather tricky, my hypothesis is that the recommendations themselves are actually easier get right for wine than for clothes because I'd guess that to the rather untrained palate, 9 out of 10 wines hit the mark on enjoyable. Then the feedback loop becomes the core of the value proposition, and in relatively short time, the wines recommended could go from good enough to great or even outstanding.
I'm confident that if you put enough smart and capable people on this, they can create a really effective wine recommendation, so the discussion will always circle back to the importance of brand building. With Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods and with all the potential for what they may now do in the wine space, the window of opportunity to establish a brand as the go-to place online for a curated selection of wine is closing for these other players. Because while I cringe at the thought of scrolling through page after page of options trying to pick wine, I do love the idea of having wine shipped to me for free on Amazon Prime.
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this idea, Emily. I am very familiar with StitchFix’s model and I truly believe you could find a sizeable market interested in a similar wine subscription offering. Like you, I too belong to the camp of consumers that finds it daunting to select a wine from the three shelves of my local grocery… let alone the endless virtual aisle that is Amazon!
ReplyDeleteIn marketing they talk about goods falling under three categories: search goods, experience goods, and credence goods. When we examine wine within this framework, experience is an obvious answer. It is difficult to ascertain the true value a consumer gets from a wine from the bottle, or price alone. In order to really know if you will purchase it again you need to try it, experience it, enjoy it. However, I would also argue that for the majority of amateur wine drinkers, the product is also a credence good. We like to be told what wine is good. We like to drink what others tell us we should be enjoying. And when an expert tells us a wine is good, more often than not this reaffirms the quality. So, whether it is a backend algorithm determining our preferences and tastes (as is the case with Stitchfix), or a team of expert sommeliers working behind the scenes to dictate what wines we should drink every month, I love the idea of a subscription style service sending me a selection of “good” wines to my doorstep every month. Not only does this subscription style model help resolve the tyranny of choice but it also caters to our desire to try new varieties of wine and feel informed about what we are drinking. It also ensures we are never in short supply.
I really think this might be an idea worth exploring further!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI echo Rey above - love the idea of a personalized wine subscription service. To add onto the idea, I think another consideration is around use case; that is, the market for wine drinkers varies tremendously. It's easy to see how a personalized wine subscription service is appealing for someone in our market (i.e. comfortable with ordering products online, interested in wine enough to take a class on it, etc.) but I wonder how much bigger the market is if you could tailor the subscription offerings to meet a broader group of consumers.
ReplyDeleteI imagine you could offer a set of subscription models based not only on taste profile / preference, but price sensitivity, frequency of consumption, quantity, etc. Some examples:
Weekly dinner flights - 1 glass each of 3 different types of wine
Bottle of the month - 1 bottle per month within a designated price range
Monthly red / white - 1 bottle of red and 1 white each month
If you could sort out the logistics, it might be a great blend of the curation / customization trends for consumers to choose a set of specifications (i.e. quantity, price, frequency, type, taste preference) and then have the subscription service curate to meet this combination of needs.
Right now, I think a lot of the subscription wine clubs lack customization that would allow them to reach a larger market; there are some limited options (i.e. you choose red / white / both and taste profile) but for the ones I've seen at least, you can't choose quantity (by the glass / bottle) or price level (10-20 range, 20+ range, etc.). And, I'm not sure that you can swap out suggested product for each shipment (which is something you can do for services like Imperfect Produce).
Anyways - I'm hopeful this kind of service takes hold because I'd definitely sign up!
I think this is a great idea and has a lot of potential if done right. The main issues with the wine subscription businesses today are primarily (building on Erika's points):
ReplyDelete- Lack of flexibility. 12 bottles every 3 or 6 months seem quite arbitrary. If I still have 4 bottles left by the end of month 3, should I get another case or not?
- Poor quality. I tried out a few mass-market wine clubs (WSJ, Zagat, etc.) before, and could hardly find a bottle that I liked (and I like some of the Trader Joe's wines!). For the same price I'd rather pick out bottles at a supermarket, or for higher prices get nicer wines.
I think millennials today are really focused on the "experience" of things, and wine should definitely be both about the taste and the experience. I think the story behind the wine, as well as the ease of managing the subscription, are both really important to the StitchFix idea for wine. It'd be interesting to have an app that:
- Allow you to easily manage your subscription (edit your flavor preferences / price points / frequency, etc.), unlike the WSJ wine of the world today that require you to jump through so many hoops to change or cancel
- Provide background information on the region, estate, and wine in a friendly way (i.e., not printed on a piece of paper with size 8 fonts; not filled with jargon for wine snobs)
I'd love to see a startup like that (or if there's one out there already - please let me know!)
Big fan of this idea! Two additional thoughts:
ReplyDelete1) For wine consumers, one element that often impacts the experience of trying a new wine is actually the food paired up and consumed along with the wine. I wonder if there could be an opportunity to pair up wine and food and sell to consumers as a bundle. For instance, perhaps there could be a partnership with established meal subscription companies (e.g., blue apron, plated, hello fresh).
2) For daily products such as apparel, most customers have some baseline intuition on which dress in a apparel subscription box that I can wear in which occasion. However, many newer wine consumers could use some education which wine in a subscription box is ideally for what type of occasions (e.g., which wine is easy to drink for a casual rooftop dinner party in a summer vs. ideal for a sit-down fall season thanksgiving meal). I really like Erika's examples (e.g., weekly dinner flight) -- perhaps the company can also incorporate the type of dinner or type of event for a successful recommendation engine and loop