just-drinks analysis: E-commerce giants merge as category feels the heat of underinvestment

The merger last week of wine.com and wineshopper.com is proof that the e-commerce bubble has burst. A lack of investment and suffocating US legislation has been its undoing. But as Larry Walker reports this might be the best thing to have happened to the companies and their consumers. The merger of wine.com and wineshopper.com is the beginning of the shakeout of B2C e-tailers selling wine directly to consumers, industry observers say. The two companies were faced with two major factors that led to the merger: