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Who are the top 10 online retailers of wine in the United States, as measured by top-line sales?
Hi there, and thanks for asking Wonder! I understand you'd like a list of the top 10 online retailers of wine in the US by top-line revenue. In short, a definitive list of retailers by annual revenue was not available because revenue information on competitors in this market is incomplete. I have therefore provided the information available on five companies with available revenue estimates, and have rounded out the list with likely competitors as determined by market research. The key competitors with available revenue estimates are KLWines, JJBuckley, Wine.com, Vinfolio, and Vinebox. Please note that I did not compile a bar chart because the data set was incomplete and there was no way to know where the competitors with no revenue information might fall in such a graph. Below you'll find my methodology and a complete list of the top ten confirmed and estimated key retailers.
METHODOLOGY
I began by researching for current pre-compiled lists, analyses or report of the top e-retailers of wine in the US. This search generated a market research report summary on the online wine, spirits and beer market in the US, but the summary did not include key players. Next, I researched for slightly older reports, which generated a 2013 report on the US online wine market that includes a list of key retailers. Extended search did not generate a similar, more recent report, so I used this list plus a couple of key players mentioned in a 2017 industry article as the basis for my top-by-revenue search. I then used third-party business information provider Owler to assess annual revenue; and I cross-compared the competitor lists on Owler to the list provided from the 2013 market research report in order to provide the most up-to-date list possible. However, this approach was only successful for 4 out of the 5 key players in the base list I used; revenue information was unavailable for the remainder of the list. Revenue research for Total Wine ($2B) and BevMo ($1.1B) revealed that these companies do not specialize in wine; and while one industry source claims they are "large wine retailers," it is unclear whether 'large' is more applicable to their overall retail footprint, or to wine in particular. I suspect the former; and for this reason, I did not include them in this list.
Please note that I have assumed the accuracy of market research in providing this list, and have therefore not included potential competitors who both a) were not included on the base list, and who b) sell a variety of (non-wine) products, or sell in both online and offline channels. This is due to the difficulty in assessing revenue segmentation in such cases, for two reasons: most of the retailers are private companies; and financial information for private US is exceedingly scarce, and almost never includes the kind of granularity necessary to assess revenue segmentation. The outlier is Amazon, which is a public company; however, revenue segmentation for AmazonWine.com was not available in third-party resources or in its annual report.
KEYWORDS
The most useful search string during my research was 'US online wine market.' Research for 'top' wine retailers generated a number of search results for articles on the best places to buy wine online from a cost or quality standpoint; but as this was not quantitatively relevant to my search, I did not explore these resources. Please also note that my research generated a significant number of resources on the direct-to-consumer market segment, as noted in the below overview.
OVERVIEW OF THE us ONLINE WINE MARKET
In 2013, online wine sales account for a mere 2% of the total wine market in the United States. A year later, that number hadn't changed significantly, and was quoted as recently as May 2017. My research indicates that this is due, in part, to "the complicated tangle of shipping regulations that differ state by state."
On the other hand, the Direct-to-Consumer (DtC) wine sales is the current buzzword in the US wine market; a Forbes article recently noted that, 5 years ago, "DtC sales represented 49 percent of overall revenue for wineries that took advantage of it." The 2017 DtC wine market was nearly $2.33 billion of the $60B 2016 total US wine market - slightly larger by percentage than the 2014 estimate for the online retail segment. I have not included DtC sellers in the list below, as they are different from retailers. However, I include this information in case you find it useful for your campaign.
TOP 10 US online WINE RETAILERS
As noted above, this list is based on a 2013 market research report on the US online wine market and cross-compared with competitor lists in third-party business information providers.
The companies for which there is estimated revenue available are:
This revenue figures represents total company revenue, and is not segmented by sales channels. KLWines posits itself as a wine vendor, but it also sells spirits.
This company is a pure-player online wine retailer.
This company was the leading player in the online wine market a few years ago, but appears to have been well-surpassed by JJBuckley. It is a pure-player online wine retailer.
In addition to selling wine, Vinfolio also manages and stores its customers' wine collections.
Vinebox is a wine-by-the-glass monthly subscription club which also sells full bottles to its subscription members.
The companies for which there is no estimated revenue available are listed below, in the order that they were referenced in the market research report. The two companies which are no longer in business have been omitted.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, my research indicated that revenue information for the key players in the US online wine market is incomplete; however, confirmed top players by revenue include KLWines, Wine.com and JJBuckley. Thanks so much for using Wonder! Please let us know if there is anything else we can research for you.