Complete Guide: How to Sell Wine Online

“Either give me more wine or leave me alone – Rumi, circa 1200’s.”

This quote says it all. Who doesn’t love wine?

For more than a decade, the online wine industry has been thriving, with Europe leading in consumption and manufacturing. In fact, research done by WorldAtlas shows the top ten positions taken by European countries in the consumption and manufacturing of Wine. According to research done by Statista, consumption of wine increased approximately to 310.72 million, i.e., 9 liters cases in the United States.

Hence, it increased the manufacturing and growth of wineries. Research from Statista shows that premium wineries grew by 7.2 percent from 2002 to 2019.

Thanks to technology, today, wine shopping has become more accessible, like literally at your doorstep with platforms such as Ubereats, Postmates, Instacarts, and more! This paved the way for many to start selling wine online and reach out to more customers. If you are also wondering how to sell wine online, keep reading, as this blog will include everything you need to know.

Here’s a glimpse of things we will cover in this post:

• Four Ways to Sell Wine
• Things to Consider While Starting Online Wine Business
• Common Forms Needed for Selling Wine Online
• Steps to Start Online Wine Business
• Custom Designs: Your USP
• Examples of Personalized Wine Websites
• Things to Consider While Taking Online Wine Business Global
• Marketing

Four Ways to Sell Wine:

Selling wine comes with restrictions and procedures to follow. There are major four ways you can start selling wine:

Via Wine Companies:

This is one of the oldest and simplest ways to sell wine. You can reach out to wineries in your area and sign a deal with them, and they will help you further sell wines.

One of the major reasons for doing this is that people prefer reaching out to old and reputed wineries that know wines and sell them at a reasonable cost. In many states/cities, it is important for wine manufacturers to sell it via companies and not directly.

Direct to Consumer:

Selling wine online is a brand new way to connect with customers directly and sell. You can start your own eCommerce business of selling wine online and connect with customers directly. Having your eCommerce website will help you increase branding, reach more customers, and serve better. Additionally, it even raises the return on investment.

Sell to Hotels/Restaurants:

Many hotels and restaurants serve their customers wines. Reaching out to those hotels and restaurants and making a deal with them can help you a lot in the long term.

Start with providing a few packs for free and take feedback from customers. This will help you back up and provide correct reasons on why they should sell your wine.

In Auction:

If you are a manufacturer who has been selling wines for years, then selling them at an auction can help you a lot. You can auction your best and oldest wine in an auction. It helps you sell wine at a better price and also connect with your customers.

Get exclusive insights into selling wine online. You can reach out to our experts who can help you at every stage.

Things to Consider While Starting Online Wine Business:

When starting any business, one needs to take care of multiple things. And with wine, you need to be a little extra careful. Here are some things to consider while selling wine online.

Target Audience:

This is the first step while starting an online wine business. You can either target B2B or B2C audiences. Depending on your business model, you can decide which one to plan to go ahead with.

If you plan to go B2B, you can start reaching out to hotels or restaurants, winery shops, or some companies. But, if you plan to go B2C, you can set up connections directly with customers via website, auction, wine enthusiasts, blue-chip investors, and more.

You can either go with both of them or choose any one first. In my opinion, you can start selling to your customers online directly via websites and then slowly make a shift in B2B business. Till then you will gain the needed experience too. I can understand getting into the B2B market can help you increase your ROI due to bulk orders. But, starting small is the first step.

Plan Budget:

Planning a budget while selling wine online is the first and the most crucial step. You need to define which part of your business needs more attention and investment. This will help you manage your funds, decrease unnecessary expenses, and grow your business efficiently.

Another reason to plan your budget is to give your investors proper guidelines and insights into your business. This will even help in attracting more investors and strategically planning investments for next quarter/year. All these things will help your business in the long run and provide more clarity.

States/Countries Permits to Sell Wine Online:

Every state or country has its own rules and regulations to be followed while starting an online wine business. Being a business owner, it is important to learn these rules and regulations.

Let’s see some of the states in the US and their rules to sell wine:

Each of these states has its own rules and regulations when it comes to selling wine. As you can see, in some states, it is prohibited to sell wine directly to customers whereas, some states allow DtC sales.

As a wine business owner, your first step is to understand these rules, get the needed licenses and then start selling them.

Another question is whether to ship them internationally. Each country has its rules and regulations to be followed. So, when you are planning to go global, make sure to follow the rules.

You can also reach out to our technical team to know more about how to start a wine business.

Common Forms Needed for Selling Wine Online:

As we discussed above, each of the states has its own rules and regulations to be followed. This means having multiple licenses if planning to move ahead with your online wine business. One of the standard permits is getting a winery, brewery, or distillery license from your state.

Below are some of the standard licenses which you need to start your online wine business:

Alcohol Dealer:

This is the first step license needed to start selling wine online. Without getting this license, you cannot move ahead with your dream wine business. Reach out to your state government bodies and apply for this license.

Winery License:

Having a winery license is important to start manufacturing, retail, and wholesale wine. You can apply for this license only after having federal laws and regulations. Having these licenses will help you to start your business, manufacture, and sell it.

State’s Retailers License:

You will need this license to sell your products. Without this, you won’t be able to sell your products and start your own business. Hence, make sure to use them.

Shipper’s License:

A shipper’s license helps your business to ship your wine and reach out to more customers. It is important to have this license as you plan to start an online wine business as this will help you deliver wine at your customers’ doorsteps.

Direct Shipping Agreement:

Some places allow this license, whereas some don’t. So make sure which state will allow DtC license, get them, and sell your wine directly to your customers. This will help your business to do business following the legal procedures.

Remember to study each state or country’s rules and regulations where you plan to sell your wine. The better the clarity, the better it will be to carry out business operations for selling wine online.

Steps to Start Online Wine Business:

Once you have got all the necessary licenses, next comes taking your business online. Let’s see some of the things you need to start selling wine online:

Creating a Website:

While starting an online wine business, one of the major things you need to have is to create an eStore. Having your own website will help you to increase your brand awareness and reach more people. Another major reason behind having your eStore is to get the needed information of your customer and give them a personalized experience.

Select Development Platform:

There are multiple platforms available to develop your website for selling wine online. Each of these platforms comes with its advantages and disadvantages. To decide which platform is better for your eStore, you can reach out to IT companies, helping you find the best development platform.

Platforms like Shopify, wooCommerce, Magento, Php, etc., helps companies to set up eStores. Each of them has its pros and cons and minor changes in them. Things like Magento are self-hosted, whereas Shopify is hosted. Another thing is Magento is a bit costly compared to Shopify solutions. These minor changes play a vital role in making a decision.

The table below shows a comparison between Shopify, wooCommerce, and Magento.

Out of all these platforms, Shopify and Magento are leading when it comes to creating eStores. Magento is widely known for its security, SEO friendly platform, and easy to integrate third-party tools. Shopify is known for its multiple themes, unique and simple UI/UX, and easy setup process. Depending on your business requirements, you can select the platform which you want.

Important Features for eStore:

When building a website, you need to have features that make your users’ life easier. Here are some of the essential features you need to have in your store.

Good UI/UX:

Your eStore is the first touchpoint for your customers. It is important to have an appealing UI/UX and easy navigation system. Having these two things on the top will help you retain customers, have them stay on the website for a longer time, and attract more traffic.

Payment Mode:

Supporting various online payment modes is essential. Today most customers prefer having cashless transactions with companies. This is when you need your website to support it. Ensure that you provide all leading payment gateways to your customers like Stripe, PayPal, debit, credit, and more.

Multi-language support:

If you plan to be global with your business, this feature will help you a lot. Not every country’s first language is English. Hence you need to provide your eStore in multiple languages. This will help you get more customers globally, stand out from the crowd, and increase your ROI.

Connect with our experts and know how to make your website easier to use and include these features and more in it.

Custom Designs: Your USP

There are businesses for years in this industry that sell various things day and night, and selling wine online is no different. In this competitive market, it is often difficult to stand out from the crowd.

This is when personalization comes to your help. You can provide personalized wine bottles to your customers. Because, well, that is personal to people and adds more value.

So if you are wondering how to sell wine online using personalization? What tools would you need? And all…

Hold your horses, and let me walk you through all the aspects of personalization.

Product personalization helps businesses increase their branding, marketing, better customer service, raise sales, increase ROI, and many more. It lets companies create emotional connections with customers and sell products.

We all know the amount of competition increased in the market, so standing out of the crowd has become necessary. This is when you can create personalization as a USP of your business. Today customers prefer personalized products. Because it allows them to connect with those products emotionally.

Of course, there are plenty of tools available in the market that help you create custom products. And I’m sure this may lead you more confused.

To solve this problem, I would recommend using the Product Designer Tool from Brush your Ideas for your online wine business.

Thinking why and how is it different from other products?

With this tool’s help, your customers can create their designs and place an order right from there. This decreases unnecessary back and forth of communication, last-minute design changes, and more. The freedom to create designs on their own helps customers come back to you time and again.

For example, you are selling wine bottles to hotels and restaurants, and one of your clients wants custom labeling of labels and packaging. Most of the time, these orders are bulk, and they require two different designs for a certain batch of bottles.

This is when product designer tools come to their rescue. They can simply visit the tool and create various designs according to their need for labels as well as the packaging on their own. They can preview the designs and make further changes if needed. Once the designs are finalized, they can place an order right from your website.

This entire process becomes very easy for you as well as customers. Decreasing all unnecessary back and forth and getting products according to their needs. Apart from this, it even helps your business serve better, stand ahead of the competition, and focus more on selling wine online.

Some major benefits of Product Designer Tool:

• Supports multi-language websites
• Integrates easily with websites built on Magento, Php, Shopify, and API integration
• Feature-rich library with font styles, clip arts, images, object handling, and more
• Can easily customize thousands of products
• Preview products in 2D as well as 3D format

Request a personalized demo of our product designer tool, integrate it with your website, and make your upscale customers’ service experience.

Examples of Personalized Wine Websites

Let’s look at some of the popular online wine sellers and know what made them industry leaders:

Fresh Direct:

Apart from serving grocery Fresh Direct leads in serving wine and liquor. They provide their services till the East Coast. If you want products delivered early in the morning, you need to order them the previous day by 6:00 PM and for late-night, order them by 11:00 PM. Their shipping charges are $5.99, and the minimum order should be less than $30.

Drizly:

Drizly stands out of the competition because of their fast delivery, i.e., within an hour. Most of their collection includes red wine and comes at affordable prices, i.e., less than $20 and shipping charges to $5.

Macy’s Cellar:

When talking about the wine business then Marcy’s Cellar is preferred by everyone. They provide exclusive offers, i.e., providing wines in cases from 6 to 12 bottles. If you are a regular member, they offer yearly shipping charges and get your wine bottles delivered to 5 different addresses.

Bright Cellars:

Started by two MIT graduates, specially curating each of their wine collections and sending four bottles for $80. They pick them from different parts of the world like Italy, Spain, Portugal, South America, and more.

First Leaf:

When you sign up on their website, you will get six bottles of wine for up to $40. Later they charge $90. If you plan to buy some other bottles out of this box, then you can, too. They have a custom algorithm that helps you select which wine you will prefer out of their award-winning stock.

Winc:

This California based company has wine coming from different vineyards across the world as well as their own. They sell a bottle for up to $13. Apart from this, you can even cut your monthly shipment if needed.

Things to Consider While Taking Online Wine Business Global:

When we plan to take any business online, several moving parts need to be taken care of. It’s the same with selling wine online to your global customers. Not only do you need more funds but also an understanding of international licenses.

Let’s see some of the major things you need to know when going global with your online wine business.

Shipping Tasks:

This is the first thing you need to consider if planning to expand your business. How are you going to ship your products?

For this, you need to tie up with various shipping companies at the local level as well as in the global market. Do your research and reach out to reliable international shipping companies. They will help you to deliver your products timely and in a careful way. Not to mention Wine bottles are glass; therefore, they need to be handled with care. Thus make sure to reach out to experienced delivery shipping companies.

Packaging:

Packaging products effectively is very important. You need to make sure that you are using proper packaging for your wine products. The packaging which you use needs to handle glass bottles and make sure that bottles do not break. Apart from this, you also need to make sure that proper extra packaging is done for international shipping. Lastly, make sure that these packages do not break while going through customs and other logistics.

Finish Custom Documentation:

Every country has its customs and legal procedures to be followed. Hence, reading and understanding the regulations of different countries become essential. You need to make sure that you follow these customs and complete all documentation procedures.

Thus, make sure to follow all these laws and regulations while planning to take your online wine business global.

Marketing:

Marketing plays a pivotal role in making any business successful. While you start selling wine online, you need to think about the ways you market your product. Some of the most common ways to market your eCommerce business are SEO/PPC, influencer marketing, social media marketing, selling products via third-party platforms.

SEO/ PPC practices will help you to rank your website on Google search results. This will help you to get more traffic on your website and, in turn, more sales. Digital marketing your products help you stay ahead of the competition and make sure your business reaches the masses.

Today every other application you see is working to make their social media account stronger. And as long as social media exists, influencer marketing is going to stay. It is a new way in which the companies are bringing their products to the limelight. Try to reach out to influencers in your country and make your product outshine.

Social media is where the buzz is, and that is an ideal platform to market your products. Companies have started investing more in social media marketing and outcome, as shown it’s worth it. You can create a business account and market your products to targeted audiences. In turn, you can even know insightful details in your followers like their age, gender, the country they belong to, etc. All this data will help you to strategize your marketing plan and sell more. To make your wine business outshine, you can start with having a presence on Google using digital marketing. The next step will be to have a social media presence, as you will get a larger audience from there. Initially, start with these two steps and see your business expanding.

Conclusion:

Selling wine online has its difficulties from needing large amounts of investments and learning different legal norms. It includes everything. If you are thinking, how to sell wine online, try to follow these steps and set up your online business. Setting up an online store has lots of advantages and helps you to reach the global market. Tap the potential of the wine market with your eStore and personalization.

Start with our product designer and see the magic unfolding. Having been serving in the industry for decades, BrushYourIdeas has set up successful eStores and helped with customizations. This is one of the major reasons why industry leaders depend on us to power up their eStore.

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