The Whisky Exchange

The brainchild of Sukhinder & Rajbir Singh, two brothers with a passion for fine spirits and over forty years experience in the off-trade between them, Specialty Drinks Limited began online trading in 1999 with the launch of their first website, www.thewhiskyexchange.com

Over the last few years the website has gone from strength to strength and is now an internationally-recognized treasure trove for connoisseurs and collectors of fine spirits, with Single Malt whisky at the forefront. The range now stands at around 1500+ whiskies, with hundreds of cognacs, rums and other spirits also available.

The whisky exchange is a very common paradigm of a British shop that decided to go on line and join the electronic business sphere. It can described as a click-and-mortar Organization since the primary business they are doing, is in the physical word and to be more specific, at the two stores which premises are in London. After years of success they decided to go online, giving the consumer the opportunity to do faster and more convenient shopping and offer prices that can change instantaneously.

Since the primary focus of the shop is toward consumers not other businesses and it sells products from manufactures to consumers, the transactions performed by the whisky exchange can be easily characterized as Business to Consumers.

The structure of the business of such companies varies and we could argue for several business models that could be adopted by whisk exchange. What we must keep in mind is the revenue model Whisky Exchange is using, is Sales since revenue and profit is generated through selling merchandise on the Web Site. Other revenue resources could be present and the web site has potential for other revenue resources, but unfortunately it’s not adopted yet.

Among several business models that exist and can address whisky exchange, the most obvious are the following: Online Direct Marketing since whisky exchange is selling online to customers , the same way it would do to a physical person. Also Group purchasing is another adopted business model since we can see after searching the web site, that depending on the quantities or the selections of the products we can have discounts or even gifts. A well know model which can also be characterized as volume-buying model as well.

A markespace includes electronic transactions in which sellers and buyers exchange goods and services for money. More specifically, it is an electronic community that integrates the procurement systems of buyers with the fulfillment systems of suppliers, creating a single standard process for transacting business. Its benefits include, one process for multiple business relationships and web based solution instead of paper, phone or physical presence. The whisky exchange is an electronic storefront since it contains several mechanism’s for conducting a sale. Features like electronic catalogues and search engines are adopted, electronic cart so that a customer can keep all the items until check out, payment gateways where a customer can choose from a variety of methods for payments, shipment court for arranging shipments of products and customer service including product information and complaints. There are major components that describe a marketspace and we can find plenty components that can describe the whisky exchange. Customers, millions of people all around the world looking for bargains, products such as whisky, drinks or drinking accessories, that don’t have now to visit whisky exchange premises in London but the can buy on line from everywhere. Business partners that are working in conjunctions with the whisky exchange that ship the products to the consumers like TNT and parcel force. Support services that provide trust services and ensure security. The whisky exchange has partners like real ex, shop safe and it is identity assured for SSL (Secure Socket Layer) transactions. It’s a forefront since consumers interact with a marketspace via the whisky exchange’s through electronic catalogues, search engines and all the aforementioned mechanisms. Last component is the sellers. You can locate products from the whisky exchange every day and find offerings that are being shelled directly though their website.

There is absolutely no doubt that a web log for the whisky exchange would be beneficial. The whisky exchange is a business to consumer electronic marketplace which can target through a blog an entire new base of consumers and offer a valuable product as an advertisement. While having a business blog is great for whisky exchange to promote products they sell and it’s also a great place to sell the website itself. Since the website follows one theme, as should the blog. All of the posts should incorporate the theme in some way and discuss what’s going on in the world of the whisky exchange theme, what’s going on with the website, and always include reader benefits to get them to come to the website. There is nothing wrong with dropping the website home page link in a post from time to time. As mentioned above, advertising is the main reason people use web logs, especially business blog. Advertising products, other people’s products and what is to come in the future. However, selling advertising space on the blog is a great way to make additional income. If the website isn’t big enough to place more on line catalogues, and even if the whisky exchange would ever want to make more money through a blog, Google Ad Sense and Blog Ads gives the ability to make money off of clicks. The more people that click on their ads, the more money you make.

Some limitations a blog site can have are most commonly administrative limitations. To be more specific, if a web log is offered to a great community of people that can evaluate and share information, we can have bad comments or even bad advertisement of web site products in a way that can be described as bad faith. Another case is that if the web log is not widely spread and not know to the people then it would result as a bad image for the web site in case last post on the web is out of date.