Established eight years ago by Gianluca and Ana Paula Queiroli, Wine Empire is located in the suburbs of Boston, USA. What started as a traditional ‘bricks-and-mortar’ wine shop has now become a well-recognised fine wine merchant with a wide selection of wine and an online presence, serving customers locally, domestically and internationally. This case study shows how small, traditional merchants can successfully and quickly adopt and benefit from automation.
Need: Expanding their offering
Wine Empire initially had around 1,000 different products in their shop, before identifying there was a market and an opportunity for them to offer more premium wines.
Solution: Liv-ex automation
Gianluca heard about Liv-ex and was impressed by the depth (in terms of price range and vintages available) and the breadth (the selection of labels) that the Liv-ex marketplace offers. After becoming a member, he was able to access over £70 million of live offers on the largest global marketplace for fine wine.
Liv-ex is very powerful as a way to expand your offering! Starting with 1,000 wines, we now have a ‘virtual cellar’ of 23,000 wines thanks to Liv-ex
Gianluca, Wine Empire
However, he soon concluded that it would be impossible to expose their customers to 23,000 wines manually while staying on top of their evolving prices.
Seeking a more efficient and risk-free way to do this led him to Liv-ex’s automation services. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Gianluca and Ana Paula started looking into developing a website. Wine Empire worked with a third-party developer and launched their website at the end of 2020. After this, they were ready to look into connecting their website to Liv-ex data via APIs. This would allow them to offer their customers wine from Liv-ex directly onto their website, with no capital commitment.
Less than 3 months from the start of testing, they had their first automated sale.
Outcome: An increase in sales, new customers and a wider selection of wines
Gianluca recalls relaxing in front of the TV one evening when he heard the sound of transactions coming in on his computer.
“We suddenly heard a row of ‘pings’ and realised the Liv-ex trading automation had gone live. That night we received 6 -7 orders equating to $5,000 worth of sales, which is normally what we would do in an entire month in online sales”
Gianluca, Wine Empire
After implementing automation, Wine Empire has doubled its revenue and seen a 15x increase in online sales.
The wine accessed through APIs will be listed on Wine-Searcher and other search engines. This has allowed Wine Empire to bring in new customers, many of which tend to become loyal customers thereafter.
Intimate customer service is still paramount to Wine Empire’s value proposition, and automation allows Gianluca to spend more time with his clients. The business’ reputation has also benefited from having such a large selection. ‘When new customers come into their shop their comment is “WOW, you have a very large selection of wines available”’. Automation not only enables merchants to increase sales by expanding their wine selection, it delights the end clients too.
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