Tag: Exchange
The Industry Standard for Pricing Fine Wine
At Liv-ex we’ve dramatically reduced the time it takes for wine businesses to value wine, by bringing a wealth of data points into one place.
Do you remember the days when buying and selling wine was done over the phone? And the market lacked transparency without readily available data on the value and price of wine. Our founders, James Miles and Justin Gibbs, certainly do, because that’s exactly why they started Liv-ex back in 2000. With a mission to make the fine wine industry more transparent, efficient and safe.
The internet brought with it the ability to buy and sell wine with businesses further afield, opening new opportunities and expanding the possibility of growth. But the internet age also brought an added burden, with information more available than ever, pricing wine became more complex than ever. With numerous sources across the web, diligent wine businesses could spend hours searching, scrolling, and documenting price points in a spreadsheet, ready for analysis.
At Liv-ex we’ve dramatically reduced the time it takes for wine businesses to value wine, by bringing a wealth of data points into one place, and creating tools to support rapid price matching for even the longest lists of wine. We’ve brought transparency to the market by showing a wealth of data points, enabling businesses to make informed and therefore accurate decisions.
Liv-ex Transactional Data
Many online merchants showcase advertised or ‘desired’ prices. This is the price a seller hopes to get for the wine, but it isn’t possible to see the price the wine actually sold for. Liv-ex is different.
Liv-ex Transactional Data shows the price at which a wine has sold, providing the most accurate view of a wines value in the market. Historic Transactional Data can be seen for the past 25 years, allowing members to see the changes and trends in a wines value over time. We supplement Transactional Exchange Data, the sale price of wine on Liv-ex, with Transactional Auction Data, to show the sale price of wine from major auction houses as well.
Transactional Exchange Data is unique to Liv-ex and cannot be found anywhere else, and the combination of Exchange Data and Auction Data provides members with the genuine value of a wine at any given movement in time.
List Data
List data shows advertised prices of wine, although not as accurate as transactional data, list data adds a depth of insight, beyond the sales made on the Liv-ex Exchange and at Auction Houses. We obtain, clean and categorised list data at scale, showcasing perceived value across the secondary market.
Long gone are the days of website-hopping, complex spreadsheets, and countless hours spent compiling data. We save our members time by bringing a vast array of data sources into one place, and not only this, we standardise, categorise and dissect the data, and turn it into several meaningful data points for our members. These data points include the average list price, the lowest list price and the availability of stock across the market.
Relying on limited data from a small number of sources can lead to inaccurate pricing, stock not moving or selling your wines at too low of price point. At Liv-ex we analyse 200 million data points daily.
How do we gather so much information? Liv-ex has members and industry connections that provide their list data to us. They trust us because we are totally independent in the market, we do not hold stock and we do not compete with our members for business. We work with merchants that do not list their data anywhere online, and this breadth of data cannot be found anywhere else.
Product Data
Liv-ex pulls essential product data into the exchange so that you can build a view of a wines value, including critics scores, drinking windows and ABVs. Find all of this information alongside Transactional Data and List data to save you time when it comes to client consultancy, as well as import and tax documentation that may come next.
List Valuations with Liv-ex
Not only does the Liv-ex Exchange house an extensive dataset to support accurate valuations, we have tools to help you value an entire list of wines in minutes. By simply uploading a spreadsheet of wines, we can return the last Transactional price of each wine, as well as the lowest and average List prices, and details of the same wines currently for sale on the Liv-ex Exchange.
Tag: Exchange
25 Years of Fine Wine – How Buying and Selling Has Matured with Time
Justin Gibbs, Exchange Director at Liv-ex talks to us about the fine wine landscape pre Liv-ex.
What did fine wine trading look like before Liv-ex ?
Pre 2000, before Liv-ex, there was little in the way of technology – something we now all take for granted, and perhaps feel has been with us forever. Mobile phones did not become mainstream until the middle of the 1990s, emails in the late 1990s and websites only at the turn of the Millenium. When Liv-ex launched in 2000 most merchants were still on dial-up modems which meant even the most efficiently coded sites, ran painfully slowly. So many merchants were still operating as they had done in the 1980s and 1990s with hard copy catalogues being sent by post and offers being shared via fax. Pen and ink were mainstays.
The market was therefore very opaque, dominated by a handful of large merchants in each country who saw most of the offers, and subsequently were best positioned to price wine. There were fewer merchants overall and gross margins were higher. Collectors were totally reliant on their merchants for information.
En Primeur campaigns were launched only after the majority of the wines had been released and catalogues printed and posted.
In short, it was an analogue world that operated at a leisurely pace, with price information scarce and far from comprehensive.
What was your vision for the fine wine trade when you started Liv-ex?
We have the same vision today as we had in 2000 – to make the market more transparent, efficient and safe. By doing this we felt we could help grow the market for the benefit of all – growers, merchants and collectors alike. We still believe that today.
Did you run into any hurdles along the way?
Plenty. But to name just three………..
First, the idea of transparency was anathema to the trade. It meant margins would come under pressure, which to a degree they did. But transparency was on its way, thanks to the internet, and they needed to adapt. It took many meetings with prospective members to explain what James and I had learnt in financial markets – that transparency brings greater trust in a market and greater trust leads to greater confidence, broadening participation and thus growing the market. Smaller margins perhaps, but a far bigger market for all.
Second, unknown to us, we were not the only wine exchange that was being built. We launched for trade in July 2000 and found that almost a dozen others had already launched or were in the process of doing so. Despite the fundamental difference between us and them – all of their models set out to disintermediate the trade, by connecting growers and collectors directly, while ours has always been built around the trade itself – their presence muddied the waters greatly and meant it took longer for the trade to understand and trust us.
Third, technology. We needed to adopt the latest technology, but we could not get too far ahead of our members who were moving at a more glacial pace. This meant great leaps forward were nigh impossible and tech iterations more regular and costly.
What were the quantum leaps/ game changers, in Liv-ex’s evolution that vastly improved trading ability?
Without doubt the first and most important was the SIB contract. Until then, every deal between traders was subject to availability, condition etc, etc…..ie deals could be cancelled, nothing was firm. With the introduction of the SIB contract, not only did we set minimum standards of condition, but also the number of weeks till available. And all bids and offers on Liv-ex were firm – a commitment by both parties to the transaction. This meant no need for back and forth over the phone and email with questions, saving a lot of time and effort.
The second was introducing anonymity to the contract. Initially members settled with each other at the end of the day. By introducing anonymity, and taking control of the settlement process, many more merchants joined, pleased to be able to buy and sell wine without having to explain themselves to others.
Since those early days of working with our members to create the standards around trade and settlement, we have continued to invest in technology and data, helping our members to expand their services to their clients whether it be through broadening the wines they can offer, or providing them with independent, real time valuations, and on the back of these, independent insights.
How has your role grown/ evolved over the past 25 years?
We continue to work closely with our members to improve and personalize the tech we offer them, to aggregate, clean and deliver to them comprehensive and independent data, to broaden and deepen the pool of liquidity available to them and their clients and to keep in sharp focus the most challenging area of all – the efficient settlement of transactions between 600 counterparties in 47 countries. And to do it quietly in the background while they get on and develop their client bases and the services they offer them.
How has data and technology impacted/ improved the ability to buy and sell fine wine?
Hugely. 600 counterparties can now trade through one centralised, independent, transparent, rules based platform, saving members an enormous amount of time both pre and post trade. This allows them to concentrate on their growers and their private customers, who are the ultimate winners here and have never been better served.
Tag: Exchange
25 Years of Liv-ex: Building A Global Fine Wine Exchange
An interview with our CEO, James Miles, to mark 25 years of Liv-ex.
Liv-ex, where did it all begin?
Twenty-five years ago, my friend Justin Gibbs and I left well-paid careers in the City to start something completely different: an exchange for fine wine. Liv-ex was born above a barber shop and pizza joint on Lavender Hill in Battersea (a London suburb). Our first office was freezing in winter, stifling in summer, and so noisy that early customers thought we were working in the street.
What were you trying to achieve by starting Liv-ex?
Our idea was simple, if ambitious… To create a stock market for wine merchants. We called it the London International Vintners Exchange—shortened to Liv-ex—a name that captured exactly what we were trying to build.
Back then, wine trading felt stuck in the past. Deals were made over the phone or by fax. Prices were opaque. Processes were slow, inefficient and risky. But to us, it looked a lot like the equities market—fragmented by both products and players, with similar issues around trading, settlement and price discovery. In equities, those problems had largely been solved by electronic exchanges. We believed something similar could be done for wine. Our vision was to make the wine market more transparent, efficient, and safe and, in so doing, increase activity and the size of the market for everyone’s benefit.
What did Liv-ex look like 25 years ago?
Our first platform was painfully slow, running on dial-up internet. Justin and I quickly realised that if this was going to work, we’d need to build liquidity ourselves—calling customers, collecting stock lists in Excel, and inputting orders manually. We also began building a basic database to help us understand how the market was shaped and priced.
In July 2000, we launched Liv-ex with just 12 London-based members, all of whom agreed to work with us for free! It was the middle of the dot-com crash. Capital was scarce, but we raised a seed round from friends and family in December that year, started charging in January 2001, and began slowly growing our customer base across the UK, then into Bordeaux, Europe, Asia, and the US.
How has Liv-ex evolved over the years?
One of our earliest—and most transformative—innovations was the introduction of the Standard In Bond (SIB) contract. We needed a consistent, trusted framework to help members trade confidently. The SIB contract defined that any wine traded on Liv-ex had to be in bond, in its original packaging, in good condition, and settled within 14 days. Importantly, any bid or offer on the platform had to be a firm commitment—not subject to availability or confirmation.
This changed everything. It eliminated uncertainty, introduced real-time pricing, and created liquidity. Unlike auctions, where every lot is unique, the SIB contract made fine wine trading fungible. An SIB case of Lafite 2000 is interchangeable with another SIB case of Lafite 2000—standardised, comparable, and easy to price accurately.
By 2002, we had developed the ability to act as a central counterparty, anonymising trades and taking care of settlement. That meant buyers and sellers no longer had to interact directly—we handled the risk, the paperwork, and the logistics.
The arrival of broadband, followed by China’s emergence as a major market, gave the business a real boost. From there, we introduced tools and innovations that have since become industry standards like Liv-ex indices, market intelligence, LWIN (our unique wine identifier), and our suite of APIs.
And where is Liv-ex now?
Now, 25 years on, Liv-ex is home to the world’s largest business-to-business network of fine wine buyers and sellers. Justin and I have been fortunate to work with an incredible team, and to serve a global community of members who have trusted us along the way.
We’ve loved every moment of the journey so far—and we’re more excited than ever about the opportunity that lies ahead.