"Eye-level is buy level". But where is eye-level?

Some things never change. Even as everything changes. We're now onto the last module (for now) of the Wine Marketing Masterclass

Bill Laverick was the manager of the York branch of Wine Rack in the 1990’s. He was old school. In many ways. He never forgave me for having appendicitis the week before Christmas (“could you maybe come in after the operation and work on the till?”) But he was a retailer through and through.

Bill’s rules were simple. And hackneyed. “Eye-level is buy level” was his favourite. If you wanted something to sell, place it roughly five feet above the ground. People buy what’s literally in front of their nose.

The rule has not changed. What has changed is where people’s noses are. I suspect yours is near a phone or a computer. That’s where wine needs to be in order to sell.

Today’s masterclass is about The Digital Shelf.

It’s the last part of this course. The first session was this one - it’s a video and free. It’s about how you’re probably a weirdo. The second got stuck into market orientation. There’s market research, segmentation, positioning… indeed everything else you need for an MBA in Wine Marketing across more than 50 sessions.

You could spend €30,000 and live in France for a year. Or you could spend $100 and have more fun learning about wine marketing with me at home. Best of all, you don’t actually have to have me IN your home. Just on the screen.

Since the 1990’s it’s become possible to buy wine online. In the aughts and tens it became moderately popular to do it. And then with Covid it became almost obligatory.

Wine e-com­merce grew as much in three months at the start of the Covid pan­dem­ic as it had in the pre­vi­ous ten years. And trans­formed many peoples’ ap­proach to wine on­line.

At the time people pre­dicted the these changes would be sticky... that they would last forever. But nothing lasts forever. Really.

What happened was they accelerated a trend. Sales fell back, but to a growing trend line.

However you cut it, wine makers, shippers, and merchants all make money from becoming more digital. Mostly. I do know wine merchants who have no e-commerce and one barely has a website. But for most of us, it’s vi­tal we un­der­stand them all. And how you can make money from them. That’s what we’ll look today and over the next couple of weeks.