What’s the story of Vivino ?
With the Vivino app, users take a photo of any wine label or restaurant wine list with their mobile device and our proprietary image recognition technology delivers ratings, reviews and average pricing for every bottle instantly. Now, in several markets including Italy, users can also purchase wines from our marketplace.
Before Vivino, there was a clear void in the industry. Consumers have always been thirsty for wine knowledge, but before, there wasn’t a way for them to easily access information to help them make a decision about their next wine to try or buy. And with more than nine million wines out there, the process can get overwhelming and intimidating. Wine should be about discovery and having fun. And that’s where Vivino and the Vivino Rating comes into play.
The Vivino Rating is the first crowd-sourced rating system for wines. There are of course critic ratings like those from Robert Parker, but they aren’t easy to understand for wine drinkers at all levels. And, critics can’t possibly review every wine out there but wine drinkers can. So when consumers started to use crowd-sourced reviews and the five star rating in other industries like music, movies, books and restaurants, I knew the model could and should be applied to the wine industry.
I created Vivino eight years ago, just two years after the Apple app store was invented and we have been focusing on product improvements, and user growth and adoption ever since.
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Vivino by the Numbers
We are the world’s largest online wine marketplace and most downloaded wine app, powered by a community of 29 million wine drinkers who use our app to engage with more than two million wines every single day. You can see other numbers here:www.vivino.com/about.
What is your Business Model?
Vivino is quickly becoming the largest wine marketplace in the world, enabling users to discover and buy practically any wine in an easy, seamless way through the Vivino app and Vivino.com. In partnership with retailers and wine merchants around the world, we’re helping drive traffic and sales for them. There’s no sign-up fee to become a Vivino Market partner or any cost to gain exposure to Vivino’s 29 million member community of engaged users. The fee structure is simple: merchants pay a flat percentage marketing fee only on orders shipped.
Will Vivino be a Unicorn?
I think we have a chance to become a unicorn. The wine industry is so massive and we don’t underestimate the opportunity – it’s a $300 billion industry, which makes us very hopeful we can get there. Our 2020 goal is to sell $1 billion worth of wine.
What’s Next?
Growth in two fashions. First, we continue to be hyper-focused on growing our community, as it delivers exponential value for our current users and industry partners. Second, the expansion of our e-commerce platform and the ability for users to use Vivino to shop for wine is also a huge opportunity. We’ve built a new tool, Vivino Checkout, which provides a seamless wine shopping experience for users to buy any wine they want in just a few clicks, without leaving the app, with Vivino integrating with retailers on the back-end.
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Heini Zachariassen, Founder & CEOHeini is the Founder and CEO of Vivino, the world’s largest wine community. Heini’s drive to solve problems and never-get-too-comfortable attitude have propelled Vivino’s exponential growth. With more than $57 million in funding, Heini continues to drive global expansion. Having co-founded several startups, including global internet and mobile security company BullGuard, Heini has a storied background in software development and mobile innovation and a track record for building successful global businesses. Heini leads the team from Vivino’s headquarters in San Francisco, where he resides with his wife and three children
