Six cases, forty requests
The domaine's letter arrives: your allocation this year is six cases of the village wine and three bottles of the grand cru. You already have forty customers who asked for it, some in writing, some in passing at a tasting, one who has bought from you for twenty years and assumes he is first in line.
The owner sits down with a printout, a pen and a vague recollection of who got it last year. Two hours later there is a list. Nobody else can see why it came out that way, and the following week a customer who missed out asks, reasonably, what he needs to do to be considered.
Why fairness keeps slipping
Most merchants do have rules. They are just not written down. 'People who buy across the range, not only the trophy wines.' 'Nobody gets the grand cru two years running.' 'Trade accounts come first for the village wine.' Applied by one person from memory, those rules drift year to year, and they vanish when that person is on holiday.
The information needed to apply them fairly is scattered: purchase history in the EPOS or the web shop, last year's allocation in an old spreadsheet, requests in an inbox.
- Past allocations are not recorded against the customer.
- Spend history sits in a separate system from requests.
- Some customers ask every year and are never lucky; nobody notices.
- Allocations to staff, trade and private customers come from the same pot without a plan.
The cost of doing it by hand
The direct cost is the owner's time, at the moment when time is shortest. The larger cost is goodwill. A loyal customer who sees a newcomer post a photo of the wine he was refused is unlikely to say anything; he just buys a little less. And because nothing is recorded, you cannot answer the question 'why not me?' with anything but an apology.
There is also a commercial cost. Allocations are one of the best reasons for a good customer to keep buying from you. Handed out without a pattern, they stop rewarding the behaviour you want.
An allocation tool that follows your rules
- Requests are gathered in one place against each allocated wine, whether they came by email, form or a note from the shop floor.
- Each request is linked to the customer's record, pulling in their purchase history from your EPOS and web shop, and any allocations they received in previous years.
- You write down your rules once, in plain terms: weight for total spend, weight for breadth of buying, a limit on consecutive years, a share reserved for trade accounts.
- The tool proposes an allocation, with the reason shown against every line: 'bought across six regions this year, missed out last year'.
- You adjust it by hand where judgement says otherwise; the change and your note are saved.
- Confirmed allocations produce offer emails with a reply deadline, and anything declined rolls to the next person on the proposed list.
| Rule you might set | What it looks at | Why merchants use it |
|---|---|---|
| Breadth of purchases | Number of different wines or regions bought | Rewards customers who buy more than trophies |
| Recent allocation | Whether they received this wine last year | Spreads rare bottles around |
| Request date | When the request was logged | Settles ties |
| Trade share | Account type | Keeps restaurant lists supplied |
| Owner discretion | Manual override with a note | Judgement still has the last word |
The rules are yours. We do not decide who deserves the wine; we make sure the rules you already use are applied the same way every time, and that the reasons are written down.
What changes when allocations are recorded
The owner spends minutes reviewing a proposal instead of hours building one. When a customer asks why they missed out, staff can see the reasons and give a straight answer, and you can tell them what would help next year. Over time, the record of who received what becomes a picture of who your best customers really are.
It also makes handing the job to someone else possible, which matters more than people admit.
Does this sound like allocation season?
- The allocation list lives in one person's head.
- You have given the same rare wine to the same customer several years running without meaning to.
- Customers who missed out get an apology rather than a reason.
- Requests for allocated wines come in through several channels.
- Last year's allocations are hard to find.