Customer data in the wine industry isn’t straightforward. And in the world of fine wines, it’s a real problem. But we’ve managed to find ways around it—solutions that the luxury industry now envies, since it had previously viewed customer data as focused solely on the point of sale.
Let me explain. Start with distribution. For three decades, luxury houses have clawed back control of their sales. They cut wholesale, shrank department-store counters and built flagship after flagship. Part of the justification was customer data. Own the shop, own the customer. Fine wine did the opposite. Not out of desire, but out of necessity: it’s impossible to have our own stores. Its grandest names still reach the world through négociants, importers, merchants and restaurateurs.
Luxury is waking up to an uncomfortable fact: the data it prized shows only the visible tip of its clientele. A boutique database records who paid full price at the till. It cannot see the collector who bought through a reseller, the daughter who inherited a bag, or the devotee who has loved a house for thirty years without ever walking through its door. Chasing top spenders is not a strategy. It is a blind spot.
Fine wine has spent decades on the other side of that blind spot. Its community has never been defined by where its members shop. It is defined by what they know and what they love. Recognize the passion, not the point of sale. That is the discipline the luxury houses are learning, and the second-hand market is where they have to learn it also. Resale, long treated by brand managers as a threat, is where a house’s unseen followers announce themselves. Reaching them means building direct relationships with people who adore the brand but have been invisible to it.
Who would have bet that this old-fashioned, insular, and tradition-bound wine sector would eventually become a source of inspiration for an industry that prides itself on being so modern? Let’s not get carried away, though—it’s not the world of fine wines that’s going to revolutionize the luxury industry. But we have our own arguments and strengths as well. I’m writing this today because I get the impression that some people no longer see the positive aspects of this magnificent world of fine wines. And it’s a shame. In a downturn, the winners are rarely the ones defending what they already know. They are the ones still willing to learn.
Contact Guillaume Jourdan via LinkedIn
