wine.com is no more?
Alexander
Alexander
LIQUOR...@verizon.net
On Sat, 28 Apr 2001 00:14:03 GMT, "Alexander" <webm...@webtory.net>
wrote:
Peter Watkins
> What were your experiences with them?
> Alexander
Had the following in my mail box today
> Dear wine.com customer:
wine.com, Inc. (the corporation) is ceasing operations and the
wine.com website is being transferred to an established and
leading online wine retailer with an excellent reputation for
quality and reliability. We are confident you will enjoy their
selection and service and hope that you will continue to visit the
wine.com website once under new management.
The purchaser of wine.com has committed itself to all of the
protections established in the current wine.com privacy policy and
will continue to safeguard the information you provided to us.
Once again, thank you for your business and loyalty.
Your friends at wine.com >
jo...@maxi.net
story. Another IPO with too much overhead.
They were bought out by evineyard.com which is a very good E commerce
site. It appears that Evineyard is now in the process of integrating all
the wine .com customers. Evineyard is privately owned I found out.
I just placed an order with evineyard.com last week as a gift for a
customer and everything worked fine. The order processing, the tracking
right down to the delivery .
If you were with wine.com try going to evineyard.com and see if they
might already have you registered.
John
Syscat
detail, here is the url.
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/business/oregonian/f
n_71wine28.frame
Naoko
Portland, OR, USA
"Peter Watkins" <wat...@watkins.powernet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3aea...@news.power.net.uk...
Sol C
Didnt know AOL is in the wine industry, or aims to spread the wealth of Wine
as opposed to just viruses.
Isnt it strange though that there are several of these "WHAT DO YOU THINK
OF? " posts about Wine.com....
smells of marketing research or something to Moi!
"Peter Watkins" <wat...@watkins.powernet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3aea...@news.power.net.uk...
>
jo...@maxi.net
EVineyard rises to No. 1
after buying rival Wine.com
Analysts cheer the Portland-based online wine retailer's
strategy, which has kept it ahead in turbulent economic
times
Saturday, April 28, 2001
By Dana Tims of The Oregonian staff
Portland-based eVineyard purchased its biggest competitor
Friday, the struggling Wine.com of Napa, Calif., instantly
turning the 2-year-old company into the national leader of
online wine sales.
The acquisition gives eVineyard access to all of
Wine.com's assets, Internet sites and 400,000 customers,
while saddling it with none of its liabilities, including $15
million in debt.
Industry analysts attributed eVineyard's decisive victory
over Wine.com to a superior business model. With
eVineyard, a consumer can get a bottle of wine shipped
immediately. Wine.com orders frequently had to be routed
through a winery, wholesaler or broker and then a retailer.
"EVineyard's model, one we clearly underestimated a year
ago, emphasizes positive profitability at a modest scale,"
said Mark Swartzberg, a wine analyst with ABM Amro
investment bank in New York. "In a period when new
venture dollars for consumer e-commerce has virtually dried
up, that model has effectively won round one in an ongoing
effort to create a national, or nearly national, online retail
market for wine."
EVineyard, fueled by $20 million in start-up capital,
incorporated in May 1999. The privately held company
wants to increase its work force of 50 employees enough to
accommodate former Wine.com customers, said Brett
Lauter, the company's chief marketing officer.
The company expects to achieve profitability sometime this
year, he said. Analysts were somewhat more conservative,
predicting that eVineyard will move into the black within 18
months. Lauter declined to give specific annual sales
figures for eVineyard, but said they fell in the $5 million to
$10 million range.
Wine.com, with about 400 employees, reported sales of
$28 million last year. The company also had about $15
million in debt, according to Swartzberg.
Wine.com threw a lot of money into advertising efforts but
never positioned itself to overcome distribution hurdles, said
Rich Cartiere, publisher of Rich Cartiere's Wine Market
Report.
For example, if a customer in New York placed online
orders with Wine.com, he said, the company had to locate
a winery with that vintage, arrange to ship it to a wholesaler
who then had to persuade a retailer to ship it to a buyer. All
that effort and overhead produced profit that averaged only 5
percent to 7 percent per order.
EVineyard, by contrast, obtained licenses early on to
directly sell more than 5,000 domestic and imported
premium wines in 27 states. Wine.com never did that. The
same New York buyer, benefiting from eVineyard's New
York wholesale connections, could buy wine directly from a
local retailer where eVineyard could ship it.
"And we still realize gross margins of 30 to 50 percent,"
Lauter said.
Despite eVineyard's triumph, Cartiere sounded a cautionary
note.
"A lot of wine drinkers have extremely high Internet usage,
but they don't yet have high Internet wine usage," he said.
"Buying wine online seems like a good match, but no one's
found the perfect way of making the two appetites meet."
Even so, he added, "This certainly puts eVineyard in the
lead."