Liv-ex The Fine Exchange

Posted: 17 06 10 by David Stump

Recently we have been asked if Vision Commerce links in any way with Liv-ex, the Fine Wine Exchange.

A new wines & spirits trader that we are speaking to asked if we linked with them - we don’t currently so we looked at it...

Initially we assumed the trader in question would want to be able to take their products in Vision Commerce and export/sync them with Liv-ex. In principle this is a very easy thing to do - we knew that Liv-ex didn’t have the facility to allow this but we assumed it could be done...

The Main Issue - Double Selling

We soon came to the understanding that whilst this is an easy thing to do Liv-ex didn’t really allow it or like the idea as once a product is made available on the exchange it is assumed to be available; if this product was then sold via another channel there would be the chance that it would be on Liv-ex when it was not actually available.

Clarification

So now we think we have an answer - not an ideal answer as it is basically ‘no’ but we go back to the prospect none the less.

Now it becomes clear that whilst we assumed the prospect meant they wanted to sell on Liv-ex what they actually meant was they wanted to be able to pull Liv-ex data and show it against their client reserves.

The idea being that they wanted their private clients to be able to login to a customer information system (probably online) and see their purchases and the current Liv-ex valuation for each.

The Penny Drops

Right, so now we know exactly what they want to do; again very simple - we have customer information systems for Vision Warehousing and have looked at the idea of them for Vision Commerce in the past.

In truth we thought this was a great idea and could work well for many existing clients as well.

So again we speak with Liv-ex and are unfortunately disappointed.

The way that Liv-ex works is to allow the trader or buyer to search for a product that they are looking for, as they search the options are filtered and filtered until they are left with either the wine they are looking for or a simple list that they can choose from... here is where the problem is for us.

As there is no actual Liv-ex product code there is virtually no way to synchronise a clients product codes against those from Liv-ex.

The Future

Liv-ex know that there are people wanting to integrate with them and make better use of their data and we hope to have meetings with them to see how we could move forward.

The Liv-ex platform and system is a great tool and an essential offering used by many traders. We look forward to the time when we can say ‘yes’ Vision Commerce does link with Liv-ex.