Executive Summary

A never-before-seen 360-degree view of the DTC wine industry has been made possible by coupling a massively relevant data set, ground-breaking analytical tools and industry expertise and insight. One hundred and sixty-two million ecommerce order records since 2017, plus more than 25 million customer records across three different countries. Anonymized and aggregated, these are the starting data points for the ground-breaking partnership announced today between WineDirect and Enolytics. Supplemental reports will be delivered for granular slices of the industry, such as sales channels, regions, states, AVAs and frame-of-reference benchmark studies according to winery size and location.

Key Points Include:

• WineDirect’s data, unique industry perspective and insights, combined with Enolytics’ powerful technology and analytics, along with 162 million ecommerce orders and over 25 million customer records that are anonymized and aggregated, add up to a never-before-seen powerful Annual Report.

• Through November 2021, DTC growth increased by 18 percent versus 2020 yet, interestingly, the number of cases sold increased by only 3 percent. Why? And what can we learn from the data that will empower wineries to respond? Analysis in the Annual Report will address these questions and more.

• With data going back to 2017, the analysis addresses trends pre-pandemic and during, and also applies predictive analytics to forecast sales and behavior.

  • The report utilizes anonymized, aggregated data collected from about 1300 wineries in three different countries. Wineries in the study are of all sizes, and sell wine at all price points.

NAPA, California and ATLANTA, Georgia - December 17, 2021 - WineDirect, industry-leading provider of end-to-end DTC solutions for wineries of every size, today announced its partnership with technology disruptor Enolytics LLC to deliver multiple ground-breaking reports. Beginning with a powerful Annual Report that will be released in January 2022, WineDirect and Enolytics will co-develop powerful insights that track historical trends of the ecommerce landscape dating back to 2017. In addition, fed by WineDirect’s data and unique industry perspective and powered by Enolytics’ predictive analytical technology, the Annual Report will also anticipate the evolution of trends and developments across all DTC channels.

“We are so excited to partner with the Enolytics team to bring this important information to the wine industry,” noted Andrea Smalling, WineDirect’s Chief Marketing Officer. “With over 2000 winery brands on our platform, we have the most robust and accurate data available and see this as an important next step in our mission to provide all of the tools necessary to support the long-term growth of our winery clients.”

The ecommerce landscape for the wine industry has experienced unprecedented growth in the previous three years, spurred by pandemic-influenced shifts in consumer behavior around online purchases and virtual experiences. This growth has added significantly to WineDirect’s already-robust warehouse of ecommerce data.

“Enolytics’ ground-breaking analytics technology has been integrated with WineDirect since early 2021, and is designed to accelerate wineries’ growth through better visibility into customer behavior and sales trends. “Deepening the partnership with WineDirect was a natural next step,” said Cathy Huyghe, co-founder of Enolytics.

“There has always been an abundance of data in the wine industry, and COVID has only added to that abundance in the ecommerce space,” Huyghe said. “It’s precisely the right moment to analyze that data and learn from it, so that the entire wine industry can benefit from sophisticated tools of machine learning. Our collaboration with WineDirect enables us to do exactly that, beginning with the Annual Report and followed by supplemental reports that are ‘sliced’ according to geography, size, channel and demand.”

Here is a preview of some notable takeaways from the Annual Report. This preview applies to wineries producing 50,000 cases or less.

• Through November 2021, Online Sales are down about 24% compared to 2020, but are still double of what they were in 2019 proving that consumers’ appetite for buying direct from wineries wasn’t wholly pandemic related..

• Wineries with an average bottle price below $20 show an overwhelmingly female clientele, while wineries with an average bottle price of $40 or more have an overwhelmingly male clientele.

• Cyber Monday online revenues in 2021 were on average 6.8 times higher than the average day in 2021, which is in line with 2020.

An advantage of Enolytics’ machine learning technology is its readiness to “slice and dice” millions of pieces of data. This means that insights are immediately available and dynamically responsive, for WineDirect clients and this report specifically. WineDirect and Enolytics are working together to develop additional, supplementary reports such as:

• Benchmarking Studies by region, size and bottle price

• Detailed reports specific to Tasting Room, Wine Club and online sales

• Individual winery “slices” of the larger pie in comparison to competitors

• West Coast vs East Coast vs Non-Coastal Wine Regions

• Black Friday, Cyber Monday and other holiday trends and forecasts, segmented by region and/or price point

• COVID-influenced trends and forecasts

• Ecommerce channel development and predictions

Click here to register to receive the free version of the enhanced Annual Report upon release in January.