[jmaskell]

We tried this. The middle men simply weren't willing to pay for software (or at least enough to build a viable business).

It's a very antiquated market - with a lot of independent traders. Their view on software (particularly web based) is often that it's something you can get a teenager to build on the cheap and isn't worth spending real, hard cash on.

[aeden]

I would have enjoyed being a fly on the wall to hear your sales pitch. I don't know the market well enough to know whether they truly would sieze the opportunity to make more profits or not. Anyhow, sorry it didn't work out for you and good luck in your next venture, whatever that may be.

[moron4hire]

well then, it should be a simple matter to WalMart them out of business.

[duiker101]

You are missing the point. Being Italian I know exactly what problems OP is facing because are problems that almost any Italian sector has. People do not want to move on.

Coming to the specific problem OP has. The wanted to work on fine wines, not WalMart wines. If the best wine in the world, would be sold at WalMart(or any other super market) even at the same price and in the same conditions it would lose immediately value because all the research, experimentation, and everything is lost, and that is a huge part of the experience that you taste with the wine.

A practical example: you know how to make the best cake in the world, but it takes a lot of time and it's hard so you can do it only once a year, but you love it, it's your favourite cake so when you make and eat it you love it and you wish you could do more. If WalMart started to sell the same cake you would buy it once or twice but it would not be the same and you probably would end doing once a year as you always did. This is the same problem of OP, people wanted the service, used once or twice and then went back to the old habits.

[lubujackson]

I think it's an important insight that certain inefficiencies can be tied to livelihood of the customer (wine sellers) and even the end user (wine buyers). There are strong emotional attachments to the PROCESS of making wine, promoting wine and selling wine. If you go to wineries throughout Sonoma county, you can clearly see that small, independent wineries often take pride in doing everything by hand and controlling their own selling to restaurants etc.

It is very similar to bookstores and record stores. Yes, there are big players that are handling there own optimizations but if you are a small winery (or bookstore/record store) you are doing it at this point in part as a preservation of an artisanal experience. There are countless ways they can do things better but there is a genuine fear that "optimizations" can be a slippery slope to Walmart-ville, both in how they think and how they are perceived.

[SkyAtWork]

I'm sure there's an audience for which that's true, but it would seem like that's an edge case of people who prefer to overpay for nostalgia purposes if they could get the same product cheaper and more conveniently. Wine is often a luxury good though, so I'm probably underestimating the people who are willing to be snooty about it :)

[jmaskell]

That would have taken a lot of money (to buy stock), and expose us to a lot more risk. Investors were backing us for the disintermediation.

I quite strongly believe that someone with an understanding of tech, the ability to build something, and take a position on stock, could make a lot of money in this market.

[jcampbell1]

You need a hedge-fund billionaire that is obsessed with wine to back you. He would own, (or have a perfect lean) on all the inventory allowing him to buy $10M in wine as a business investment. He would get the satisfaction knowing that he was arbing the wine market as a side project, and if it failed, he would be "stuck" with a bunch of inventory that he liked.

[kriro]

I think this is actually a decent idea worth testing. Not as the typical startup but more as a one customer at a time but big customers sustainable business.

The warehouse situation seems like it needs solving. I don't quite get why someone that buys 5k of wine wouldn't pay for a good warehouse. High tech new age warehousing for wine seems to be the in.

With some big customer that loves wine you'd basically switch to building and running his warehouse and then see how you can scale that to warehouses that store wine for multiple people.

Premium wine is pretty much comparable to art imo. Show effect and "because I can" are big drivers for buying. If you successfully run the warehouse for one rich guy you can leverage that as marketing.

Either way: Very fascinating article. Thanks for posting it.

[jmaskell]

Exactly. There's a wine trading company called Wine Networks - a branch of SK Group (huge South Korean conglomerate).

They're relatively successful, but are hugely inefficient (no tech).

[brador]

How much would you need?