More wine customers, less value: the metric wineries must fix

Executive summary

Viva Wine Group’s Q2 2026 report, published today, offers a useful warning for wineries: customer and order growth do not automatically create value. In its European wine e-commerce business, active customers rose 5.9% and orders increased 3.7% year on year, yet net sales fell 2.1%, average order value declined 3.1% and the adjusted EBITA margin dropped from 6.6% to 3.7%. The lesson is not to stop acquiring customers. It is to connect acquisition, repeat purchase, basket value and contribution margin in one operating view, then use AI to choose the next best action for each segment.

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Growth can look healthy on a marketing dashboard while becoming weaker in the profit and loss account. More visitors, more orders and a larger customer file are encouraging signals, but they do not answer the commercial question that matters: is each relationship producing more sustainable value after acquisition, fulfilment and promotional costs?

Viva Wine Group’s second-quarter report, released on 20 August, provides a rare public example from European wine e-commerce. The group reported 192,000 B2C orders during April–June 2026, up 3.7% from the same quarter of 2025. Active customers increased 5.9% to 395,000, and first-time orders rose 4.7%. Those are positive acquisition and activity indicators.

The financial picture was more demanding. B2C net sales declined 2.1% to SEK 162 million. Average order value fell 3.1% to SEK 846, while orders per active customer remained unchanged at 2.0. Adjusted B2C EBITA decreased from SEK 11 million to SEK 6 million, and the adjusted margin narrowed from 6.6% to 3.7%. The company attributed the lower result primarily to increased marketing investment to attract new customers; it also cited weaker consumer sentiment, new marketing channels and currency effects as factors behind the lower average order value.

These figures belong to one listed wine group and should not be treated as a benchmark for every winery. They do, however, expose a pattern that smaller exporters can recognise early: acquisition volume can rise faster than customer economics improve.

The wider market makes that risk more relevant. The OIV estimates that global wine consumption fell 2.7% in 2025, with nine of the ten largest wine markets recording lower volumes. In the United States, WSWA’s SipSource data show that wine and spirits declines moderated in Q2 2026, but every major measure remained below the previous year. Wine rolling twelve-month volume was down 8.2% and revenue down 4.6% through June. This is not a market in which broad, untargeted acquisition should be assumed to pay for itself.

What this means for an exporting winery

An exporting winery rarely owns the full consumer relationship in every market. It may sell through an importer, a specialist retailer, a marketplace or its own online store. The data will therefore be fragmented. That is a reason to define a small common scorecard, not an excuse to measure only shipments or campaign reach.

The essential distinction is between activity and value. A new buyer who responds to a costly promotion, purchases a low-margin case and never returns is not economically equivalent to a customer who buys a smaller first order, returns without a discount and later selects a premium reference. Counting both as “one customer” hides the decision the winery needs to make.

AI can help when the underlying records are disciplined. It can identify cohorts, predict likely repeat purchase windows, recommend the next relevant product and flag accounts whose service cost is rising faster than revenue. It cannot repair missing margins, inconsistent customer identifiers or promotional costs that were never recorded. The operating sequence is data first, decision rule second, automation third.

Three practical decisions

1. Manage four numbers together

Track active customers, orders per customer, average order value and contribution margin in the same monthly view. Add acquisition cost and repeat-purchase rate where the channel provides them. Never celebrate growth in one metric before checking the other three.

For an importer-led market, use the closest verifiable equivalents: active professional accounts, orders per account, net order value and contribution after freight, samples and market support. The purpose is not perfect attribution. It is to prevent activity from being mistaken for profitable demand.

2. Give AI a margin-aware next-best-action rule

Segment customers by recent purchase, frequency, value and product preference, then restrict automated recommendations to actions that protect a minimum contribution threshold. A high-potential repeat buyer may receive a personalised mixed case or early access to a limited release. A low-value, promotion-dependent buyer should not automatically receive another discount.

The rule must include a stop condition. If two paid interventions fail to produce a profitable repeat purchase, move the customer into a lower-cost nurture journey instead of increasing spend. AI should allocate attention more precisely, not accelerate unprofitable habits.

3. Run a 30-day value experiment before scaling acquisition

Choose one market and one customer cohort. Set a baseline for average order value, repeat rate and contribution per order. Test one change only: a premium bundle, personalised replenishment reminder, food-pairing recommendation or post-purchase education sequence. Compare the result with a similar untreated cohort.

Scale only if the experiment improves contribution, not merely clicks or order count. If average order value rises but fulfilment costs erase the gain, redesign the offer. If repeat purchase improves without a discount, document the message and timing as a reusable commercial asset.

Conclusion

The strongest warning in today’s data is not that wine e-commerce is failing. It is that customer growth, order growth and profitable growth can move in different directions. A winery that connects CRM activity to basket value and contribution can use AI to strengthen real relationships. A winery that optimises only acquisition may buy more transactions while losing margin.