Amazon starts wine sales soon?
Posted
Sep 15 2008, 02:55 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Looks like Amazon is close to selling wine online. This has been in the works for a while (we wrote about the company's plans in March). Now, a wine trade group says the company could begin wine sales as early as the end of September. This won't be huge for Amazon, but the company could gain a devoted following of wine lovers.
The trade group, Napa Valley Vintners, is so excited about the possibilities that it's holding workshops to teach members how to sell wine through Amazon. Shares of the company are down less than 1% Monday to $78.02.
"The world's largest online retailer is saying that wine is important," a spokesman from the group told the Wall Street Journal. "That's very exciting for American consumers."
Selling wine online is an insanely complicated business, made more so by a criss-cross of state and national rules that can conflict with each other. The rules limit Amazon to selling wine in just 26 states.
Amazon has been interested in this idea for years, having bought a stake in wineshopper.com a decade ago and more recently partnering with Wine.com.
A wine research group in Napa, Calif., says that U.S. wine sales were about $30 billion last year, and nearly $3 billion of that was through wine clubs, mailing lists and the Internet. A big wine fan will try nine to 11 brands a year, the group told The Seattle Times.
Top Stocks commenters got into a heated debate in March about whether online wine sales give more minors access to alcohol. Wine deliveries require a signature from an adult. And while some enterprising young teen with a passion for beaujolais could find ways to break the system, I think most kids will ignore this new feature.
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Amazon to start selling wine
