Amazon has again announced that it will start selling US-produced wine to its American customers by the beginning of October.
But before you start getting excited about buying wine online, there’s one catch: it will only be available to people in about 26 states due to interstate regulations, but the company is working with New Vine Logistics, a firm that specializes in interstate transactions, to avoid any legal issues that may arise in the process and attempt to increase the distribution of wine as time goes on.
Amazon is jumping in on the wine craze at the right time. Annual wine consumption is on the rise and the Stonebridge Research Group said American wine sales last year were between $30 billion and $32 billion. But e-commerce sales accounted for just 7 percent of those sales and few services online can connect wine lovers with US-produced wine.
Age restrictions will obviously play a major role in Amazon’s plan to sell wine and there’s currently no indication of how it will stop the sale of the alcohol to minors. Regardless, Amazon thinks it’s on to something with selling wine on its site and wants to capitalize on the growing market.
Amazon invested $30 million into Wineshopper.com in 1999, but that site lasted one year. Now we’ll see if this venture lasts any longer.
That’s called the bottoms-up strategy.
Kind of like “Girls-Gone-Wild” tops-down strategy.
lol, I like!
It’ll be interesting to see how they control for underage purchases… or even how they avoid bottle damage during shipping. I think they can definitely develop this further for the heavy wine drinkers – i.e. some sort of monthly automatic program, if you’re someone who drinks x number of the same wine per month…
Cool they can create packages like –
Buy “123 Guide to Getting Sober” and get a 1/2 litre Chardoney Free !!!
Now there is no need to go out of my house.
LOL
This is kind of a joke but it may be brilliant…. you could pair sappy romance novels with the wine that goes best with them. Man this marketing practically writes itself!
Clayton, do you really make comments without reading others?
Just look up 2 spots up and you’ll see RahulC made a similar comment already and you didn’t even acknowledge it.
Clone websites/ services and clone comments (with minor ‘iterations’).
Well, maybe they should all stop drinking, and make their core services work.
amazon (not just S3) is Down….WTF
They definitely opened themselves up to the jokes above.
It seems like an interesting idea, I’m curious to see where it goes. There appears to be a lot of decent wine produced in small local vineyards around the US, so it will be a great way to get our hands on something we might have had trouble finding previously.
Jake
NoteScribe: Premier Notes Software
Well at least they sober up quickly!
Is it true in Holland you can order hookers and weed through amazon?
that would be hilarious wondering how the “Return Policy” would work
I worked for an association in Ontario, Canada that ran a similar program. Underage ordering of wine did not become an issue because 1. a credit card is necessary to make the purchase, something few people under 18 own, and 2. lets’ face it….what teenager is going to wait on 10 days of shipping?
This is not to say it was foolproof. Amazon might need to consider a dedicated delivery service that checks ID, but that’s a whole other can of worms….
The legal drinking age for most US States is 21, not 18. This presents a larger issue than you’d have in Canada.
There is no way they are going to stop under age people from buying wine. Only time will tell how they handle this.
In order to receive wine shipments, an adult signature is required. The delivery person checks your ID. This is the law, for states that allow offsite shipping.
Are you folks out of your freaking minds ??
Do we really need a ON-LINE Liquor ‘Store’ ???
Gee……….just think of all the DRUNKS who can have the muck delivered, right to their home……………
And, no need for ID………Hell NO……….So, lets get busy & order !!!!!!!!
Good luck with this one……….
I think you’re bitting off WAY MORE THAN YOU CAN or are PREPARED to CHEW !!!
Oh, and what about ‘Being Responsible Adults?’ that AMAZON.com is supposed to be ?
Don’t you all think Amazon has thought this out a little? Likely the market is not the homeless guy on the street looking to get a bottle of wine delivered to his cardboard box. When you travel, you often come across wines, scotches, and other liquors that you can’t get locally. That is likely the market Amazon is going for. the upper middle class user that travels, since they would likely have the disposable income.
When you are underage it was never that hard to get booze that you needed to go online to do it. There is always an older brother or a cool parent to hook you up for a pack of cigarettes.
Relax. We’re talking about quality wine here Sheila, not 30 packs of PBR. Like the comment above, its about widening access to products not available locally.
And damn, lay off the freakin CAPS!
What is the problem selling wine to person under 18? Wine is good for a person’s health especially during adolescent years. The only problem with wine is that it contains amine which gives people hangover. Getting drunk is good but having a hangover and losing your mind when drunk is bad. That’s why if you can filter amine, you have the best wine in the world. You can feel drunk and not have the side effect of getting drunk.
Who am I kidding here? I’m posting on techcrunch who’s audience has very limited college science education. *snicker*
Beer would be better…
This is interesting. I wonder how much associates would earn?
Gary Vaynerchuk has been doing this for quite a while – http://winelibrary.com/ – last I heard he was doing $60Million/year.
We have PBR’s delivered to our office every Monday from Amazon Fresh. Just need to show ID in order for them to drop it off. It’s brilliant.
amazon > ebay
http://cashtutor.blogspot.com
I think it’s a great idea. Get wines that aren’t available locally, I don’t think the teenager or people that drink too much will be a problem as this is gonna take like 2 weeks to arrive
i wonder if they will start selling it to the UK to
- ” Moommm, can i borrow your credit card, i am gonna get something from Amazon?”
Does anyone know which states are the 26 states that allow it?
With Amazon Prime you can now have your 16 year old brother answer the door with a fake mustache and everybody parties.
This is getting crazy
Totally agree with you Loran
What the hell is happening to Amazon these days.
In my eyes it´s a great service, as it will always remain in costumers hand to decide for amazon or for wall-mart e.g.
“Love of Variety” rulez!
Quality Advertising