Amazon

Amazon Shuts Down Wine, Beer and Spirit Merchants

By Tinuiti Team

Jun 13 2013

If you are an online merchant who sells wine, beer or other alcoholic beverages on Amazon Product Ads, you likely got a rude awakening on Amazon this month.

Or you’re likely to get one soon.

Beer, wine, and spirits no longer eligible for Amazon Product Ads

Without any official announcement, or even an email to eligible sellers on Amazon, beer, wine and spirits are no longer eligible for Product Ads. However, wineries and vineyards are still able to sell directly on the Marketplace.

Wine, Beer And Spirits Disallowed For Amazon Product Ads: What It Means For Online Merchants

If you only sell beer, spirits and wine, consider listing on alternate shopping channels. Check out our comparison shopping rankings to see which shopping channels generate the largest traffic, revenue, and which ones have the lowest cost of sale.

Tobacco sellers have had similar issues with Google Shopping and instead list on Bing, and other shopping channels such as Shopzilla. Amazon is a large source of traffic, but shoppers looking for items which aren’t on Amazon are still likely to purchase online

If you have a combination of products including some which are in the beer, wine and spirit category, be sure to check your data feed, and remove those items from Amazon to prevent your feed from getting flagged.

Amazon Restricts Wine, Beer and Spirits: Why?

For our wine merchants on Amazon, this policy update came out of left field, and was even more surprising with the lack of an announcement. However, in Amazon’s defense, the legal restrictions surrounding the sale of alcohol are complicated, and vary significantly by state.

Back in 2012, when Amazon began selling wine, the lack of a national standard for beverages presented a major problem, one which comeptitors like Wine.com have been dealing for more than 10 years.

WineShopper, an Amazon online wine start-up, went belly up in 1999, followed by New Vine Logistics in 2009. Amazon’s third attempt at selling beverages seems to have quietly followed this same trend.