Item Management

Overview:

At Bottlenose, 100% Item Management is standard on all e-commerce websites. No other website provider in the wine & spirit industry offers 100% Item Management. In 2004, Bottlenose developed a systematic approach to posting and classifying all retailer online items, whether they be wines, spirits, beers, gourmet foods, tobacco, gifts, or accessories. The process begins with the retailer sending an inventory file. Upon receipt, the Bottlenose Item Specialist staff takes over, applying formalized standards and procedures to each and every item.

Posting items: All items from each retailer inventory list are posted for sale by Bottlenose. Included are an image, full description, and tasting notes found at producer / importer / manufacturer websites. Wine items also receive critic reviews and ratings from Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate, and Wine Enthusiast. In the event that an item from an inventory file is unclear, Bottlenose will issue an item alert message through the Admin Control Panel requesting clarification.

Note: Retailers have the ability to insert their own image, description, and tasting notes for any item. Perhaps the producer / importer website is lacking information, or the item is Private Label, or the retailer simply prefers his own content over what is available from the producer / importer. Any retailer provided content remains the property of the retailer and will not be reproduced by Bottlenose for use on any other website.

Classifying items: Bottlenose classifies each retailer’s items by category, region, and producer. For wine items, classification by category, country, region, appellation, varietal, and vintage is provided. This guarantees thorough, accurate search results when using a Bottlenose website. It also supplies the valuable content necessary to achieve superior results on major search engines such as Google.

Updating items: Only items presented in the most recently received inventory file are displayed online, available for sale. Previous items and the navigation to find them disappear until back in stock. There is no restriction on how often or how many inventory files may be sent daily. Files with changes to existing for sale items are reflected almost immediately as the Bottlenose computer reads and updates. The Bottlenose Item Specialist staff processes new items, making them available for sale by close of business the next day, if not sooner. More complete information such as adding critic reviews may take 3 to 5 days. Bottlenose is very responsive to any expedited needs.

Inventory file: In no particular order, the below grid lists key fields of information Bottlenose prefers to find in a customer’s inventory file. Not all fields are required. Bottlenose is able to break out vintage and pack size from a description field. Acceptable file formats, uploaded through the Admin Control Panel, include spreadsheets saved as a CSV file or Tab Delimited. If a customer has Atlantic System’s Spirits 2000 or ICS’s Vision POS system with web polling, then inventory files are automatically formatted and sent to Bottlenose.

Virtual Inventory: With Bottlenose, you can sell online items not currently in your brick & mortar store and/or sell more quantity online than you have in your brick & mortar store. The Threshold field controls if an item is for sale. Standard is to set it to zero (0). However, you can insert your own negative or positive numbers for each item. The computer compares the Threshold number to your On Hand Quantity. If the On Hand Quantity is greater than the Threshold number for that item, then the item is available for sale.

Features

• Dedicated, trained, and supervised staff of Item Specialists located East Coast and West Coast working on file sizes with less than 500 items to more than 8,000 items
• Manage items from the Admin Control Panel - upload files, review items online, add images / descriptions, find Item Alerts
• Various sizes displayed online such as 375 ml, 750 ml, 1.5L of the same item are counted as one (1) item
• Website does not display on hand quantity. Does advise how much can be ordered if requested quantity exceeds on hand
• Some of the category and publication icons added to items include:
• The below standard rules apply to when critic review scores appear:

When price $0- $12, show all scores = and > 85
When price $12-$25, show all scores = and > 87                  Note: Customer can request revised price points and/or rating numbers rules
When price $25-$40, show all scores = and > 89
When price $40-$65, show all scores = and > 90
When price > $65, show all scores = and > 91

• Retailer inventory files can be submitted any time (morning / afternoon / evening) and as often as you wish
• Changes (pricing, quantity, deletions) to existing items are reflected virtually immediately upon receipt of new inventory file
• Consumers only see, search for, and navigate to items that have an On Hand Quantity which is greater than the Threshold number. Items that sell out disappear until a new inventory file is received with a positive On Hand Quantity.

Benefits

• Your site is visible to consumers and search engines, such as Google and Yahoo
• Your site ranks higher on results pages because it contains key word rich content
• You save time and money - the average person does 4 items per hour. 500 items equates to 125 man hours of time needed to properly display information. Over the course of a year, figure an extra 250 items will be added to replace sold out items
• Frees up valuable time to focus on increasing sales and finding new customers
• The content (image / description / notes / reviews) added on each item instills consumer confidence to continue shopping

Price

• Performing Item Management on up to 500 items included in site development and base monthly service fee of $275 for Pre-Designed HomePage websites and $325 for Custom HomePage websites
• For websites with more than 500 items, a one time fee of $75 and an ongoing fee of $75 is added to the base monthly for each additional 250 item increment above the base 500 items Note: there are no other fees such as for sales volume, bandwidth consumption, or number of transactions. (see charts)
• Can add up to 5% new items each month to base online inventory amount, no extra charge. Can make unlimited price changes, inventory changes, and deletions, no extra charge. If the number of new items submitted exceeds the 5% and the basis has not changed, then a one-time charge of $2.00 per item will occur for each new item that exceeds the 5%.