We frequently hear about how growing advances in technology have been disrupting the music and book industries. There is one more industry that is also going through a technology transformation.
Despite having the potential of exponential growth, online alcohol marketplace is still not off the ground yet. The era of ordering food, books, clothes, and furniture online, it is still hard to find a decent bottle of Chardonnay.
Wine is a US$300 billion industry, and only a few startups have been making big waves in this niche. Vivino enables users to scan any bottle of wine and immediately retrieve user reviews, average ratings, and price for the bottle, along with other essential information to help them with choosing the right bottle.
Additionally, Vivino, a wine library app, now contains more than 8.5 million bottles of wine, and users are actively scanning 3, 00,000 bottles per day. This app also stores the world’s most extensive wine library, where one can find a rating on nearly every single wine available in the world. It could even be enough to push it to the front screen of one’s smartphone.
While staring at the long wall of wines in a supermarket, one could be forgiven for thinking that he has become disconnected with the world around. There is also a growing realisation that one has very little knowledge about where any of the products in a store come from.
Naked Wine, an online wine club, aims to change all that. This organisation gained its success around crowdfunding before it got market recognition. Customers referred to as “Angels,” put $20 a month into their virtual piggy banks to spend on exclusive wines at basic rates.
Naked Wines’ beauty is that every single bottle sold has a human story behind it. There is also a section on the site where a member can see who is maker of the bottle that one is about to sip with one’s meal on a Friday night.
Naked Wines also encourages its members or even different winemakers to chat with and follow other customers to develop human connections. With more than $100 million in sales over the past year, it would prove that this policy is helpful for business.
The total sales of alcohol beverages in the US alone were around $243.6 billion in 2018. Alcohol sales through online grocery and marketplace have increased by 115% and 60% in 2019. In the COVID-19 and stay indoor scenario, the liquor industry has observed the demand for online eCommerce market for alcohol.
These two startups have successful stories to illustrate the positive impact technology is offering. Shoppers are tired of purchasing mass-produced products from faceless corporations. Technology is helping consumers and businesses to connect across the globe.
Focusing on competition has always been a formula for mediocrity, and both Vivino and Naked Wine is avoiding wisely. These companies have made meaningful and helpful connections as well as accelerated online sales by using technology to redefine and reinvent the wine industry.
Share This Article
Do the sharing thingy
