I came across an interesting report, which can be downloaded for free, and is cited in this article: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160125006305/en/Direct-Wine-Shipments-Consumers-Grow-4X-Faster. It discusses the growth of Direct to Consumer wine shipments in the US in 2015.
Some of the main points:
- Over 50% of shipments are sent to California (31%), Texas (9%), New York (6%), Florida (6%), and Illinois (4%)
- Shipments from Napa surpassed $1B in value, giving the region 50% market share
- Bottles $15 and under demonstrated a 28% increase in volume, to make up 23% of volume share
- Shipments from very small wineries continued to grow, with 13% increase in total value
- 4.3M cases shipped (8.5% increase), for $1.97B
Most shipments come from small wineries (44% by volume and 48% by value), followed by medium wineries, then very small wineries. Interestingly, Red blends increased 20% by volume in 2015, as compared to industry's 8.5% volume growth. On the other end, Syrah continued to suffer in direct-to-consumer sales, declining in both volume and price in 2015.
Much of the sales growth is attributed to the opening of Massachusetts in the past year. The only remaining closed state with "significant market opportunity," per the report, is Pennsylvania - which is estimated to result in an additional $100M in sales in the first 4 years after opening.
Really interesting report. I'm curious how Amazon as it gains popularity and volume could affect these statistics. Given how robust their merchandising capabilities are and the fact that the economics may not be entirely favorable (particularly for small wineries), I would expect that they would be able to strongly influence not only where the wine is coming from but what types of wines consumers become aware of.
ReplyDeleteAgreed!
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