Case study · Producers and importers
The pricing engine and diagnostic PDFs
Working out where a wine lands on a US shelf takes a day of spreadsheets per market, and it has to be done again for every state, every vintage and every importer conversation.
Before
A price walk was a spreadsheet per state: the exchange rate typed in by hand, margins from memory, and a separate check of whether volume discounts are even legal there. A written diagnostic for one producer took most of a day.
With the tool
A form on this site goes in, and a three-page branded PDF comes out: the walk from cellar to shelf with a low, expected and high band, the states where discounts are illegal, the competitive set and the questions worth settling. The exchange rate refreshes every Monday on its own.
The rules behind each line of the walk: the three-tier system, with the money left in.
Velamare 2024, €10.00 ex-cellar
New York · Off-premise · Per bottle
- Ex-cellar
- $11.30
- Landed (freight, duty, excise)
- $13.19
- Importer sells at
- $19.39
- Distributor sells at
- $28.51
- Shelf price, before sales tax
- $43.99
| State | Shelf | Volume discounts |
|---|---|---|
| NY | $43.99 | Posted only |
| CA | $43.92 | Allowed |
| TX | $43.92 | Restricted |
EUR/USD 1.13 · rate as of Oct 16, 2026
How it works
- 01A producer fills in the form on this site, with or without their prices.
- 02A research pass reads the producer’s public material and the competitive set.
- 03The price walk runs as plain code: exchange rate, freight, duty and excise, then each tier’s margin, state by state.
- 04The PDF renders in the house style, with no network needed.
- 05I read it, edit it and approve the covering email before anything goes to the producer.
Where a person checks
Nothing reaches the producer until I’ve read the diagnostic and approved the covering email myself.
Measured, with dates
- 297 s
- from a new inquiry to the finished PDF, on a verified live run
- September 2026
- Live
- on this site, with two workers so an inquiry never stalls
- Since July 2026
- Weekly
- exchange-rate refresh, every Monday, unattended
- October 2026
Where the data lives
Inquiries sit in a private database that only the site can read. The PDFs are stored there too and are reachable only through a signed link that expires.
The panel shows Velamare, a wine from the fictional Tenuta Fondaluce. No producer’s real prices appear on this page.
A version for your business
Your whole range, every state you sell in, your importer’s real margins and the options you’re weighing before a price talk, as a branded PDF your team can send. That’s the shelf-price build.
Builds: a fixed price, quoted in writing after the Review or the Starter build.