James Miles (CEO of Liv-ex) recently attended the annual DB Conference in London. He sat on the panel, sharing insights into digital channels for business growth and the role of trading exchanges like Liv-ex in a multichannel strategy.
James shared a few key takeaways below.
How technology is breaking down silos and creating a networked wine ecosystem
For decades, fine wine merchants have grappled with a fundamental operational challenge: how to manage inventory across multiple sales channels without sacrificing efficiency or customer service. The complexity of coordinating stock between sales teams, e-commerce platforms, and trading exchanges (like Liv-ex) while serving diverse customer segments—from private collectors to the on-trade—has forced many businesses to choose between growth and operational simplicity.
This trade-off is now becoming obsolete.
The Multi-Channel Challenge
Historically, managing a multi-channel distribution strategy in fine wine presented significant barriers, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. Merchants needed to maintain accurate stock positions across physical locations, online storefronts, and trading platforms like Liv-ex, all while serving customers with different requirements and price expectations.
The technical infrastructure required was both expensive and complex to build. Many businesses defaulted to low-tech solutions: basic ERP systems or shared spreadsheets. While pragmatic, these approaches carried substantial opportunity costs. Stock allocated to one channel couldn’t be sold through another, resulting in missed sales opportunities. Communication breakdowns led to double-selling— an expensive and damaging error in a market built on trust and relationships.
The Technology Shift
Three converging developments have fundamentally changed this landscape:
Cloud-based ERPs – like Wine Owners – have made sophisticated inventory management accessible and affordable, eliminating the need for expensive on-premise infrastructure.
Standardization through LWIN has created a common language for the trade. The Liv-ex Wine Identification Number enables seamless communication between different systems, eliminating the ambiguity that has plagued wine data for generations.
Integrated solutions such as Actenzo now provide affordable connectors between platforms, enabling real-time synchronization across channels without custom development costs.
Implemented intelligently, multi-channel selling becomes remarkably powerful. Merchants can now market their inventory across all channels simultaneously, 24/7, with minimal risk or administrative friction.
The results speak for themselves. Customers who have integrated their stock lists with Liv-ex, as an example, haven’t seen modest improvements—they’ve experienced exponential growth. Sales increases of 2-3x are not uncommon, achieved without additional overhead or marketing investment. The inventory works harder, captured demand increases, and operational efficiency improves dramatically.
Beyond Multi-Channel: A Paradigm Shift
Yet multi-channel selling is merely one application of a much broader digital transformation. The same technologies enabling integrated sales are revolutionizing sourcing, logistics, and data management across the entire value chain.
For centuries, the wine trade has operated as a collection of independent silos. Interactions between stakeholders—suppliers, customers, logistics partners—have been expensive, slow, and friction-laden. Manual processes, re-keying data, and administrative overhead have been accepted as unavoidable costs of doing business.
This is changing. The combination of common standards like LWIN, APIs, cloud computing, and an expanding ecosystem of specialized software tools is dismantling these silos. The trade is evolving into a networked ecosystem of connected partners, each focusing on their areas of specialization and competitive advantage while sharing resources when mutually beneficial.
Liv-ex as Infrastructure
Liv-ex has positioned itself at the centre of this transformation—not as a retailer or wholesaler, but as essential infrastructure for the trade.
Our approach is deliberate. We create and maintain standards like LWIN and the Standard-In-Bond (SIB) contract. We provide real-time pricing and availability data. Crucially, we make all our services available via API, enabling seamless integration with our customers’ systems.
Our B2B focus is foundational to our role. We don’t compete for end customers—whether collectors or the on-trade. We don’t take stock positions or chase producer allocations. This positions us as a trusted partner to merchants rather than a competitor, free from the conflicts that would arise from pursuing allocations or optimising profits from our own inventory.
Merchants use Liv-ex not only as a selling channel but increasingly as a sourcing tool. Because pricing and availability updates in real-time, customers can integrate our API with their e-commerce platforms and stock systems, treating Liv-ex inventory as an extension of their own.
This dramatically expands their offering—from perhaps 1,000 wines to more than 25,000—without any working capital investment or administrative burden. Logistics, payments, and provenance verification are all managed by Liv-ex, with the exchange underwriting transactions and managing risk. Equally a plethora of marketplaces have emerged, often scaled on Liv-ex services, that allow wine merchants to provide transparency and liquidity to their customers.
Beyond trading, customers leverage Liv-ex APIs to enhance their operations: pulling pricing data for valuations, accessing critic scores and drink-by windows to inform sales strategy, or retrieving ABVs and commodity codes to streamline logistics and compliance. The fine wine world’s data is no longer locked away in a cupboard it is available to whomever you choose and in real-time.
The Competitive Landscape Ahead
This new world of transparency and automation presents both tremendous opportunities and significant challenges, particularly for legacy businesses comfortable with opacity and manual processes.
As in financial markets, wine merchants must make strategic choices about how they will compete. Will they create liquidity by deploying capital in stockholding? Will they differentiate through superior service and execution? Will they specialize in particular regions, styles, or customer segments?
The market is already signalling its preferences. In a recent Liv-ex survey of 235 collectors across more than 30 countries—with average cellar values of £300,000—the priorities were unambiguous:
Transparency: Collectors want impartial data and insights to inform their decisions.
Liquidity: They want to buy and sell confidently and quickly at the right price.
Control: They want agency over pricing and timing, preferably through online and mobile platforms.
Crucially 75% of respondents do all of their selling through one channel, making satisfying these needs particularly sticky and valuable. They also align perfectly with the capabilities that digital infrastructure enables. Merchants who embrace this transformation can meet these needs efficiently and profitably. Those who resist risk being left behind.
Conclusion
The fine wine trade stands at an inflection point. The technology to operate as a connected, efficient ecosystem now exists and is increasingly affordable. Standards are established. Tools are available. The market—both trade and collector—is ready.
The question is no longer whether this transformation will occur, but rather how quickly individual businesses will adapt to capitalize on the opportunities it presents. The paradigm is shifting from isolated silos to an integrated network. Those who recognize and act on this shift will define the next era of the fine wine trade.
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