More e-commerce and digital, but focus on logistics and prices: the wine trade post Covid19

That the Coronavirus pandemic has profoundly changed, at least temporarily, the wine trade, as well as many aspects of everyday life, is a fact. The whole supply chain has been heavily affected throughout the world: from producers, who, in many cases, have seen orders to block the horeca, to importers and distributors. Those who were in gdo have tried to strengthen this channel, and many have embarked on e-commerce, which, throughout the world, has recorded impressive growth rates. But many are the topics on which the emergency has imposed a new reflection: from logistics management to payment times, to the channels that producers, distributors, and trade in general, must use to stay in touch with the final consumer. To resist today, and imagine what will become of the post-COVID-19 wine trade. To trace a possible route, especially for fine wines, is a report by Liv-Ex, the reference platform for the collecting market.
The first advice of Liv-Ex is to accelerate e-commerce, one of the protagonists of the wine trade of these months. But we don’t have to improvise: it's essential to find the right platform for our target, for those who want to use external services already tested, while, budget permitting, you can also structure e-commerce owned by the winery, also using creation tools such as Shopify or Wix, but also turning to experts to know the “best-practices” of a channel that offers many opportunities, but also hides many pitfalls.
Another fundamental aspect is to keep the bar straight on the subject of prices. And this, if it passes first of all from the company’s strategies, also passes from greater monitoring of the market and the movements of competitors. And in this it can be useful, for example, to look at price movements on the many search engines that allow you to do so, from the same platform of Liv-Ex, with its many tools.
Again, and already beaten intensely by many wineries, is the use of digital to stay in touch with enthusiasts and professionals. Virtual and online tastings, platforms for webinars and meetings, “digital fairs”, social, these days are going crazy and will be more and more important in the future, according to Liv-Ex.
Speaking of aspects that may seem obvious, but which are not, it will be fundamental, Liv-Ex points out, to study a detailed logistics plan for shipments, both around the winery and with the world on the horizon. I expect that already in normal conditions, in a globalized wine market, it is one of the most critical, between costs, times, and storage conditions.
Even more important than before, for everyone, will be to diversify the distribution network in the markets of the world, taking into account one aspect: for fine wines in particular, in all probability, the market should start again first of all in Asia, the area of the world that, for the first time, seems to be trying to get out of the pandemic, while Europe and the USA, for example, are still struggling. Another possibility, which, however, only applies to certain types of wine, is that of relying on sales and exchange systems that use automation systems, as provided for by some functions of the Liv-Ex star.