Wine in the Netherlands, Red Ocean Strategy!

Just had dinner with my good friend Peter, a wine-importer/distributor in the Netherlands. He explained me the sales process, the competition, consumption habits and all the more. Then we focused a bit on the role of the buyer from e.g. a retail store, grocery chains and restaurants and he explained how the representative from the winery and or his/her distributor is still treated by the "Dutch buyer" with so called V.O.C. mentality and what that meant in this context: buy as cheap as you can and negotiate the best possible terms & conditions. Thus pure transactional and rarely constructive value-add thinking to develop further and grow the business. There is obviously nothing wrong with that if you are dealing with comparable and equal offerings, it's becoming much more complex when you are dealing with products with clear, yet subtle distinctions, and different qualities such as is the case with wines. 

Having worked in this industry for over 10 years in the 80'-90'ies I have seen similar patterns during those days, as the french saying: "Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose", or the more things change, the more it is still the same. As a result market demand hardly grows and one can only see movements in changing demand in color e.g. more rose than white wine consumption during the last 5 years and or changing market shares for countries and suppliers. This is not more than a shift because wine consumption remained flat. Doing business this way remains a zero-sum game, or a red-ocean strategy in the end nobody wins! Is this a lack of compelling sales strategies on the supply side, lack of product differentiation, ineffective marketing from wine associations leading to market development? One can argue that there is a role for the local influencers such as press and event developers and lastly the ultimate wine retailers, grocery stores, restaurateurs and wine-clubs. 

Fortunately there are positive proof points in the Dutch market, we see tremendous supporting activities leading to significant growth in categories such as beers in particular from micro-breweries and gin! As a regular visitor to my home country I believe the strong performance in these relatively new categories is at the expense of wines, the wine industry failed to capture it's full potential and is now stuck with the leftovers! Is the destiny of wine with a price point above 11,90 Euro to remain an alcoholic beverage for the "connaisseurs", the elite, the snobs. I feel for the wine trade and I know my friend enjoys the business and it's periphery and for me ..... it remains by far my preferred beverage. A votre sante!