Published Sale Prices Options

[henrychinaski]

It would be nice to see actual sales that were made? I have put in 20+ plus bids - some well below retail, some at retail and some above and have had no accepted bids so it would be nice to see market clearing prices. Particulary to keep my interest level high.

[Bethfolio]

It would be nice to see actual sales that were made? I have put in 20+ plus bids - some well below retail, some at retail and some above and have had no accepted bids so it would be nice to see market clearing prices. Particularly to keep my interest level high.

It's great to see that you are so active in terms of the number of bids you've placed. If I'm reading your posting correctly, you are interested in seeing sales that have been made on a particular wine through Marketplace. Keeping in mind the fact that Marketplace launched just last Tuesday (July 7), you can find this information by searching the Vinfolio website for a particular wine and (after clicking on the wine name) looking at the "Marketplace Details" section on the page. If you are looking for general market price data, please check out www.wineprices.com.

Regarding your comment about having not yet received any responses to your bids; it is possible there will be a 5+ day delay on any bid you place. Each seller has the option to set the frequency with which they receive bid alert emails (the default is one day) and the bid acceptance process is passive. By that, we mean, a bid is rejected if you receive no response within the time frame your bid is active (the default for bids is 30 days unless otherwise specified by the bidder).

Thanks for posting your question to the Marketplace forum!

[henrychinaski]

To be more clear. In most online auctions you see active bidding and then the auction closes and you have either the exact sale prices or good estimates. I would like to see accepted bids on all sales. Right now this just feels like a blackhole where I keep submitting bids and frankly it is already getting boring. I think increased data would help to establish a market an increase traffic and ultimately bids.

[Steve Bachmann]

To be more clear. In most online auctions you see active bidding and then the auction closes and you have either the exact sale prices or good estimates. I would like to see accepted bids on all sales. Right now this just feels like a blackhole where I keep submitting bids and frankly it is already getting boring. I think increased data would help to establish a market an increase traffic and ultimately bids.

Marketplace auctions are open-ended. They are over as soon as someone accepts your bid (by design). Actual transaction prices are reported on the Marketplace detail page for each wine under Marketplace History (click the wine name to see it). However, given the very short operating history of the Marketplace, this will be blank if no transactions for that wine have completed.

In terms of your bids, we are working on several enhancements to bid alerts and other informational alerts to increase activity and response rates. These will be rolled out in the next few days. I'd also suggest you review the Marketplace FAQ under buying. Especially:

1. Why don't I receive any responses to my bid?
2. How can I increase the odds of my bid being accepted?
3. May I have multiple bids outstanding on the same wine at the same time?

As we cannot identify you by your forum username, it is impossible for us to assess whether whether you bids are for larger quantities of bottles or not. Remember, as bids are only sent to parties who can fulfill the entire bid on their own, if you bid on 12 bottles and no individual seller has 12 bottles, nobody will be notified of your bid (you can see how many bottles each seller has in the Sellers table on each wine's detail page). This is another element which will be modified in the coming weeks so that people can leave an "open to buy" for a given quantity and enable anyone to partially fill it. we're also working on improved messaging in the bidding pop-up and elsewhere to make people more aware of this.

Each wine detail page also has both auction and U.S. retail pricing data when available. The retail data is only a U.S. average price for now but this will be changed to enable details to be seen as well from within the Marketplace Detail page of a wine. Meanwhile, you can visit www.wineprices.com (another site of ours), to look up comprehensive retail and auction pricing detail.

We're working hard to ensure everything runs more smoothly and appreciate all of your feedback as it shapes our decisionmaking.

[Steve Bachmann]

OK, someone pointed out to me that we can identify your bids by your forum username with our internal systems so I just took a look.

My first comment would be that you're not too likely to get any reaction to bids at $10-$20 a bottle when the minimum Marketplace selling fee is $8 bottle (or $6 bottle if from a trade seller). Plus, if the wine is remotely located, it needs to be shipped by the seller at his expense. The Marketplace is not really targeted at wines at lower price points. Those represent 8 of your 17 bids. We've discussed messaging this point more clearly to bidders but it has not been rolled out yet.

Of your other 9 bids, 4 of them have nobody that is offering the wine for sale. There are people that own them but they're not marked for sale. We're working on some new methods to draw more owners in to respond to bids for implementation shortly.

Of your 5 remaining bids, all only have 1 seller each for the quantity you are bidding upon (none of the sellers have set an asking price). In one case, you bid on 1 of 5 bottles owned by the single seller. I suspect some sellers will not want to deal with just selling a single bottle.

The reasonableness of your bid prices is a little hard to check as several of them don't seem to have current market pricing comps but I would say some of the Scholium wines look to be on the lower side (which doesn't help get a positive response either). Remember, if sellers don't like the bid, they can reject it by ignoring it.

Bottom line is that the lack of response is not too surprising for your particular set of bids, especially in the early days of the Marketplace. I hope this provides you with some further insights into how the Marketplace operates. We welcome your feedback.

[AndyDuncan]

Bottom line is that the lack of response is not too surprising for your particular set of bids, especially in the early days of the Marketplace. I hope this provides you with some further insights into how the Marketplace operates. We welcome your feedback.

I understand why you wouldn't want people talking to each other too much to avoid people circumventing the marketplace, but it would be nice to have a little more information passed between buyer and seller so we can figure out what exactly is causing the stalemate. For instance, is my price too low? Am I asking for too few bottles? Too many? I get that there are general ranges of what will be considered acceptable, but I imagine it's going to change from offer to offer.

I put a bid in for two bottles of a wine that wasn't listed for sale, since then someone has posted that they have three for sale, but haven't set a price. Are those three people with one bottle for sale? Someone who only wants to sell all three? etc. etc.

Not sure what the solution is.

-Andy

PS: How do I change my username?

[Kristin Vinfolio]

Thank you for posting your questions. We're working hard to respond to all of the questions and feedback we've received in the two weeks since launching Marketplace. Our highest priority is to improve the tools available for getting information into the hands of buyers and sellers. Here are some examples currently in development. Please continue to send us your feedback.

1. "Activity" alert
A proactive mechanism to alert bidders of Marketplace activity on a wine that they have bid on. This "activity" could be:

1. Change in low asking price
2. Whenever more quantity is marked for sale
3. Whenever a new bid is placed on the item (by someone else)
4. Whenever a bid is accepted for the item

2. Email notifications to sellers of existing bids when they first list wine for sale in the Marketplace

3. Open to buy option
Currently a bid must be satisfied in full by one seller. We're building out requirements so that we can support more of an "open to buy" paradigm where your bid quantity can be fulfilled from however many people are needed to supply it.


With regard to your question on your specific bid. It is one seller with 3 bottles and no asking price. Each line in the Seller tile on the Marketplace wine detail page represents one seller, one location.



You can change your username in VinCellar My Account. To get to VinCellar My Account from the main Vinfolio site:
1. Click on "VinCellar home" from the VinCellar tab.
2. Click on "My Account" in the top right of the page.
3. Click "Edit" in the "Personal Information" section

Note that you can toggle between Vinfolio and VinCellar My Account using the links on the right.

[Mike A804]

A bit of a different (but related) topic. It would be great to get a sense of overall activity thus far in marketplace. Maybe an added feature to search on most actively traded wines, wines with most bids, etc, or maybe just an occasional blog posting from Steve. Understanding how liquid the marketplace is, how volume is growing / changing, etc would be very useful. I realize this is very early in the life of marketplace but more info would be great.

[Steve Bachmann]

A bit of a different (but related) topic. It would be great to get a sense of overall activity thus far in marketplace. Maybe an added feature to search on most actively traded wines, wines with most bids, etc, or maybe just an occasional blog posting from Steve. Understanding how liquid the marketplace is, how volume is growing / changing, etc would be very useful. I realize this is very early in the life of marketplace but more info would be great.

Your thoughts on additional search options are noted and we'll add them to the list of issues to consider. In terms of reporting, I've answered this question on the Squires board already and we certainly intend to expand this. Here is what I said:

"There will be more Marketplace stats reported in the future. You can already see all items with asking prices and bids on the main search page on our site by filtering search results. Completed transactions are also reported on the individual wine detail pages already (and we're in the process of updating that to display "acceptances" prior to inspection of the wine and not just when the wine has been received and passed inspection)."

Actually, I believe the "acceptances" issue is now live. We have finite engineering resources and are applying all of them towards improving functionality which will maximize liquidity and transaction activity.