The dot-com phenomenon has made its way into the beverage alcohol industry, and there's no telling what the future will hold.
It was only a matter of time. First came the wave of dot-cam start-ups that attracted millions of dollars in venture capital, strange ads on television and a fair amount of interest from consumers, if only far the novelty of ordering a product from a virtual store. Then, just as many of those ventures were finding themselves squeezed by competition, along came the next wave of dot-cams, this time aimed at helping businesses source products more efficiently, streamline order processing and in some cases cut out middlemen.
So, it was no surprise when e-commerce came to the beverage alcohol industry In the past year, about a half dozen business-to-business (B2B) sites serving the wine and spirits industry have gone on-line on the Internet. And there may well be more soon.
What the sites purport to do is save retailers time and money, and expand distributor and supplier customer bases. In practice, all of the sites have a long way to go before they are universally available to retailers, but they are beginning to prove themselves, customer by customer.
How They Work
Each site promotes its point of difference -- technology, industry knowledge or neutrality, for example -- but they are more alike than different. In essence, these sites are extensive product catalogs that retailers can access at their leisure from their back-office or home computers. They can use these catalogs to obtain information about specific products and place orders through wholesalers. Right off the bat, that saves retailers the time of having to comb through several printed price books or catalogs to find products. But it's the bells and whistles on these sites that will likely make e-commerce attractive not only to retailers, but to wholesalers and suppliers as well.
"This is a relatively new …
