Thirty years ago Wine Enthusiast started out as a catalog company, selling wine accessories by mail. While the company has an e-commerce Web site, Glenn Edelman, the vice president of marketing for Wine Enthusiast Companies, says that the catalog business is still the driving force behind the business.
“The catalog business is not dead,” he said, “We see our e-commerce site as another order channel, and we try not to compete between the catalog and Web site. Still, our catalog drives more people to our Web site than any other means, including Google.”
While Google is effective at acquiring new customers, you have to wait for a customer to search for you or the type of wine products you sell. With a catalog, people browse and learn of new products and accessories, and then go on to your Web site or call for details and information.
The Essentials: Catalog, Web Site and Phone Support
The company strongly invests in its catalog, even though sixty percent of the orders are made online. With the catalog, Wine Enthusiast Companies is able to get more exposure for its products.
A big part of the business focuses on custom wine cellars and installation, and Edelman says those larger-value sales just aren’t as well-suited to the Web. When you’re looking at purchasing a $5,000 to $50,000 wine cellar, customers want to interact with a human customer-service-and-storage expert before placing an order. Customers typically place these orders over the phone.
With phone sales, Edelman says the value of the order is higher, and there is a benefit in up selling. Overall, phone sales result in fewer returns because the customers get expert advice and will order exactly what they need.
The smaller and less-expensive wine accessories, however, do better in online sales, especially during the holiday season when wine enthusiasts shop for gifts and don’t need to speak with an expert to place an order.
Using Video to Sell Fine Wine
Even though Wine Enthusiasts relies heavily on its catalog to fuel sales, they do invest in e-commerce products. On the Wine Express site — the company’s e-commerce site for purchasing fine wines — they use video to drive sales. On the site consumers can watch professionally produced video of their expert, in-house wine taster tasting the product.
Unless a consumer is familiar with a brand, it can be difficult to sell a wine online. Wine is one item where a picture does not do the product justice. Using video to show a live wine tasting has been successful; the company uses the videos they produce it on the Wine Express site and also sends the video links out to YouTube and their Facebook Fan page.
 Wine Enthusiast used negative customer reviews to launch its NFINITY line of wine cellars with features customers found lacking in other products.
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“Some wine sells itself, and you don’t need a video”, said Edelman, “but for lesser-known brands we use video to really highlight the product.”
The Positive Side to Negative Customer Reviews
Another e-commerce trend that the company has found success with is online customer reviews. Wine Enthusiast Companies uses PowerReviews on wineenthusiast.com and encourages customers to leave a review after making a purchase.
Customer reviews has had a big impact on the business. Edelman said that it doesn’t matter how authentic your product descriptions are, customers are more confident in making a purchase when they can read how others feel about the product.
Edelman also credits customer reviews, particularly negative ones, to the most successful product launch in Wine Enthusiast history.
Over a period of time, the company realized that the same customer concerns kept coming up in product reviews for wine cellars. The negative reviews focused on the challenge of storing wine bottles of varying sizes and the different temperature requirements for different wines.
Using those negative product reviews, the company launched the NFINITY line of wine cellars with a sleek design for home or business use, two-temperature control, and shelving that can be adjusted to hold bottles in varying diameters.
Edelman says that for Wine Enthusiast Companies, customer reviews have been crucial. No company likes negative reviews, but it is important to understand what your customers don’t like in addition to what they do like. The negative reviews helped the company launch a better product, and negative reviews can help a business quickly spot manufacturing defects that need to be addressed with a vendor.
“Negative reviews can really be a huge positive if you use them as a customer service tool,” said Edleman.
Edelman says that Wine Enthusiast Companies plans to use reviews more. Upcoming editions of the company’s catalog will include text from product reviews that customers have submitted online. The company also plans to invest more in social media tools.
Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG
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