Jeff Bezos has said that Amazon is a great place to fail. They learn from problems and take those lessons on and use them to fail better in future. Anyone involved with Amazon Wine should hold that close as the news comes that it’s closing down.
Come the end of the year, Amazon Wine will cease to operate as a marketplace On 31st December although that doesn’t mean Amazon will stop selling wine.
As an email to sellers says:
“Dear valued Seller, as Amazon continues to offer customers additional retail options for buying wine, we will no longer offer a marketplace for wine at this time, and Amazon Wine will close on December 31st, 2017.
Wine will continue to be offered through Amazon Fresh, Prime Now and Whole Foods Markets. Please see our FAQ for further details.
Thank you, Amazon Wine.”
It’s fair to assume that Amazon Wine didn’t perform all that well since its initial launch in 2012. But it’s also clear that Amazon intends to keep on selling wine via other channels and may well yet revisit a wine ,marketplace and reinvents its approach.
The wine business is a difficult and complex market with established providers and regulation. It seems that perhaps the marketplace approach wasn’t right for Amazon. A subscription model, familiar in the UK from the likes of Laithwaites, Virgin Wines and Naked Wines could perhaps have reaped rewards. Perhaps that’s the next step?
