Why 23% of Online Wine & Spirits Merchants Failed (And Why Europe Didn’t)
In April 2021, the online wine and spirits industry was experiencing a digital renaissance. Global lockdowns had forced consumers online, and thousands of new online retailers sprang up to meet the demand.
Fast forward to October 2025, and the picture is drastically different.
At sommelier.bot, we tracked 13,578 online wine and spirits retailers worldwide that were active during the height of the pandemic. Our goal was simple: find out who survived the transition to the “new normal” and, more importantly, why some failed while others thrived.
The results are a wake-up call for the entire online wine & spirits industry.
The 23% Collapse
As the data shows, the post-pandemic market wasn’t a soft landing; it was a shakeout. Of the 13,000+ companies we tracked, 23.3% had ceased operations by late 2025. That is nearly one in four online businesses wiped off the map.
This wasn’t just a market correction; it was a stress test that exposed the fragility of “digital-only” models that lacked fundamental business moats.
A Tale of Two Models: Resilience vs. Dependence
However, this failure wasn’t evenly distributed. When we peeled back the layers of the global average, we found that geography played a massive role, yet not for the reasons you might think. It wasn’t just about GDP; it was about Market Structure.
Europe emerged as the most resilient region for online retail, maintaining a survival rate well above the global average (79%). Markets like Germany, Switzerland, and Poland didn’t just hold the line; they stabilized.
Why? Because these markets are characterized by a “federated” landscape. Online merchants there tend to own their infrastructure and maintain direct relationships with their local customers.
In contrast, highly centralized markets, those where online retailers rely on third-party aggregators for traffic, suffered the most. When you “rent” your customers from a platform, you have no leverage when the economy tightens.
The Way Forward: Federation
The lesson of 2026 is clear: Renting your future is fatal. To survive the next decade, retailers cannot afford to be anonymous warehouses for a third-party app. But they also can’t fight the tech giants alone.
This is the thesis behind app.sommelier.bot. We are building the alternative to the aggregator trap: a Cooperative AI Platform owned by the retail category itself.
By federating inventory and automating the “sommelier experience,” we allow independent merchants to scale their expertise without losing their identity.
Join the Federation
The data is clear: independence without isolation is the path forward. If you’re an online wine & spirits merchant ready to stop renting your future, we want to hear from you.
→ Contact us at sommelier.bot to discover how our Cooperative AI Platform can help you scale your expertise, federate your inventory, and deliver a true sommelier experience, without sacrificing your identity to the aggregators.
The merchants who thrive in 2030 won’t be the ones who fought alone, they’ll be the ones who federated together.
