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James’ annual letter to members – November 2022

By November 30, 2022Member updates
  • We are increasing the price of Liv-ex membership in 2023.
  • While demand has proved resilient, costs have come under considerable pressure.
  • We continue to invest in our supply chain, data offerings and customer service.

The fine wine market has proven resilient compared to other assets in what has been a turbulent year. Look out for our full report on the Fine Wine Market in 2022, to be published shortly.

Against a backdrop of continued cost pressures and disruption in global supply chains, we have been focussed on providing the most efficient logistics service possible. We are now paying sellers 2 days faster than we were in early 2021, and wines traded SIB are typically arriving 2 days earlier when compared to the start of the year.

We’re also working hard to make Liv-ex a smarter place to price, buy and sell wine. Our new List Comparison feature allows you to compare prices with a chosen peer group of named merchants to save you time checking other sources.

We continue to invest in LWIN, our database of standardised wine descriptions and unique ID numbers. Almost 60,000 new LWINs have been added to our free database this year and adoption is snowballing across key stakeholders in the industry from wine merchants, to warehouses, to critics and complementary sources of price data. Notable amongst these in 2022 are Wine Searcher and Jane Anson.

The Membership is now at an all-time high of 621, which is good for everyone, and our recent in-app survey suggests that member satisfaction has improved markedly in the last year, but we want to do more;

  • In Q1, we’ll be launching List Studio (in beta); a new tool for members on all packages, that allows you to easily manage lists of wines and match them to LWIN and other Liv-ex and partner data, such as prices (bid, offer, last trade, market price etc), ABVs, commodity codes, critics scores, that previously required technical integration via API. It’s a tool with multiple use cases from tracking the market, to evaluating offers, to benchmarking price lists to market, to valuing private reserves and preparing shipments. We will enhance the new product throughout next year.
  • We’ll be investing to improve the Liv-ex Market Price, and seek to provide regional benchmark prices and “confidence” ratings for every value to acknowledge that some wines are more difficult to value than others
  • We’ll continue to improve the user experience in-app by, for example, providing more clarity for visitors to the Your Accounts screen
  • Finally, we are investing to improve our customer service more generally by allocating an Account Manager to every customer to help you make the most of your Liv-ex membership. The Account Management team will be supported by the broking, logistics and Automation teams as your needs require

The price of Liv-ex membership next year is rising for all members. The rises reflect both increasing costs and the relative value being redistributed across the different packages. These changes will include Silver, which rises for the first time in 5 years, and will benefit from a significantly higher data allowance. Don’t hesitate to seek further clarification from your Account Manager.

On behalf of everyone at Liv-ex, may I thank you again for your support and, if it is not too early, wish you a very Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. 

Best wishes, 

James Miles