Beyond the current sharp drop in prices, Bordeaux En primeurs need to regain their desirability. What are futures? It’s the opportunity to buy great Bordeaux wines at a lower price, two years before they go on sale. In reality, the En Primeurs offer has always been based solely on a price advantage. For previous generations, it was a privilege. Today, this is no longer the case. So we need to re-imagine the privileges of En Primeurs 3.0 to win over new buyers. Blockchain and NFTs in particular will be key to the salvation of these new En Primeurs. The problem could be defined as follows: : How to restore a sense a community that has been lost? A few decades ago, En Primeurs buyers were proud, they had made a good deal, they talked about it among themselves. Today, we need to restore this positivity and recreate it. Is lowering the price, as is the case for this new campaign, the right strategy? No. First of all, because when you start lowering the price, you’ll always find people telling you that it hasn’t been lowered enough. Secondly, communicating significant price cuts focuses the En Primeurs message on a single criterion, which is unfortunately not the one that will improve the image and, above all, restore desirability. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, price is no longer the sole criterion for decision-making among the new generations, who are attracted by other incentives.
The new generations expect something different, as they have always been accustomed to personalization and experiences. Their expectations are very different from those of their predecessors. They say to themselves: those who have bought year after year should benefit from advantages that new customers don’t have, don’t they? They have a leitmotiv: give consumers a stake in your product’s success! They no longer think about their cellars in their house because their wine cellar will be in the cloud. So the right price alone is no longer enough to recreate enthusiasm among these new customers; we have to come up with new propositions. Through blockchain, it’s about building ongoing and lasting connection – with real, tangible benefits beyond just buying the wines. And that might make people more likely to talk about the brand on social media, rebuy wines in future campaigns and, over time, build and reinforce their identity as fans. Reinforcing the value and experience of owning the NFT for holders is what En Primeurs should be all about, reinventing the price value that it was offering in the past and that buyers no longer find.
Even if major players in the Place de Bordeaux have already invested in Blockchain and NFTs, such as the Moueix family, which has invested in global pioneer WINECHAIN and CVBG in a new project, this transition to Primeurs 3.0 will take time. Let’s speculate that the prospect of moving assets into digital forms using decentralized Place could scare many negotiants and other institutions. They may be concerned that so much attention and capital will flow to a new ecosystem, considering it is improving enormously in terms of scalability and usability. Fine wine into digital assets, does that make sense? The clock is ticking for luxury wine brands to meet a new European Commission regulation called the Ecodesign for Sustainable Product Regulation, that will take effect sometime this year. The aim is to make transparency and traceability a regulatory requirement for luxury brands made and/or sold in Europe. To meet the new regulations, luxury wine brands will have to turn to digital product passports, which connect physical products to a digital identity.
Although the challenges ahead are significant, there is no doubt that negotiants and chateaux owners will overcome them with flying colors. Driven by their recognized expertise and innovative spirit, they are now ideally positioned to shape the contours of a new world, where Bordeaux En Primeurs is reinvented in the wake of technological breakthroughs.
Contact Guillaume Jourdan via LinkedIn
