From Bordeaux to Warhol: How Amazon goes high-brow

(CNET) - Tucked somewhere in the Amazon campus in Seattle, there is a room that has holds some very important racks of wine.

The bottles are handled carefully. With gloved hands, an Amazon photographer pulls each one off a wire rack and then photographs it so that online shoppers can see each bottle in a clean setting. An image of each bottle's label and description will be uploaded to site so shoppers can look at them in detail. This has happened thousands of times, for each type of wine Amazon sells. It is decidedly not how Amazon sells DVDs or books.

Rather, this is part of the online retail giant's push into new categories of high-brow products -- including a $700 bottle of Montrose Bordeaux and a $200,000 Andy Warhol original depicting China's Chairman Mao -- all in an effort to create a new revenue stream and meet the demands of a more elite base of clientele.

It's doing so through it's third-party marketplace. The site already dabbles in some pricey products, like $9,000 diamond rings, but its latest categories, art and wine, show a whole other level of commitment.

"Everything we do at Amazon starts with the customer and works itself backwards," said Peter Faricy, vice president of marketplace for the company. "Those are all categories customers have given us the feedback that they would love to get."

It's a far cry from Amazon's typical offerings, which began with discounted books and expanded to thousands of items -- all sold at bargain prices with free shipping. Still, it's a natural path of evolution for a company that strives to sell all things to all people. Although these products aren't the easiest to sell through the Internet -- Amazon knows that from past attempts -- it's worth the effort for the company