Vivino is the world’s largest online wine marketplace and most downloaded wine app, powered by a community of millions. It is a vertical marketplace specializing in wine commercialization, comparison, and review. Vivino was founded in 2010 by Heini Zachariassen and Theis Søndergaard. As of 2021, Vivino had a wine database containing more than 12.5 million different wines, and had 50 million users.

About Vivino – The Amazon of Wine

Vivino empowers people to enjoy wine to the fullest.

Wine is about so much more than just a great label; it’s about an experience and community and, of course, what’s in the bottle. That’s where Vivino comes in. As the world’s largest online wine marketplace and most downloaded wine app, the Vivino community is made up of millions of wine drinkers from around the world, coming together to make buying the right wine simple, straightforward, and fun. Vivino uses crowd-sourced data to personalize wine recommendations so that every community member feels confident about their wine choices. Created for everyone who likes wine—from the wine curious to the wine enthusiast—the Vivino app is available for free on both Apple and Android devices. (Source: Vivino)

Brief History of Vivino

According to Vivino’s proprietary research, 93% of people need help while purchasing wine. Heini Zachariassen, CEO and founder of Vivino-a San Francisco-based company, realized this problem in 2010. Casual wine drinkers felt overwhelmed with the options of wine available in the market and relied on the advice of seasoned wine connoisseurs to tackle this challenge to make selection easier.

Seeing the growing trend and popularity of mobile apps like Yelp and TripAdvisor, it made a lot of sense for Heini to have a similar platform for wines as well. That’s when Vivino was launched, to turn a smartphone into a perfect partner in wine. The idea was to fill the gaps in people’s knowledge and accessibility of wine. 

By simply scanning a wine label, users could get information such as the price, where they can buy the wine, and see how other wine drinkers have rated it. Soon, Vivino revolutionized how people purchased wine across the globe. However, Heini had still higher hopes to go beyond being a mere source of recommendation to evolving Vivino into a full-fledged online marketplace for wines.

Growth of Vivino

Vivino burst onto the scene with the aim of becoming the world’s largest wine community. It relied on crowd-sourced data to personalize wine recommendations so people would feel more confident as they made their wine selections. The crowdsourced ratings actually offered a competitive advantage over individual wine experts and helped to scale the company.

However, as their popularity grew, so did their competition. As other similar services began to emerge in the market, Vivino needed to stay ahead of the curve. And, this was the time in 2017 when Vivino was launched as an online wine marketplace, which Heini had in mind since its inception.

Today, it has an ever-growing community of 50 million wine enthusiasts, who turn to the platform for its personalized recommendations, transparent rating system, an expansive selection of wines from more than 700 marketplace partners worldwide. The app is available in 15 different languages to cater to a global audience

Vivino currently has 12.5 million wines listed on its database, which is constantly increasing. As a testament to Vivino’s impact on the wine industry, it was named the 2021 Retailer/Marketplace of the Year by the Wine Enthusiast Magazine. 

Vivino’s Business and Revenue Model Explained

As a wine marketplace, the business model of Vivino revolves around pairing wine enthusiasts with their choice of wine. To start a wine search, users click a photo of a wine label of their choice or enter its name in the search bar. This brings up the wine’s ratings, reviews, tasting notes, and even suggests food pairings. Not just that, the app also suggests plenty of similar wines to the users using big data and artificial intelligence. Users can then directly purchase the wine within the platform or save it in the wishlist for future purchases.

Vivino also allows its customers to discover new wines based on their previous purchases, reviews, and wish list. In addition, the annual Vivino Wine Style Awards highlight the world’s best wines to help users make better wine choices. For wineries, Vivino has a separate platform where they can set up their business profiles, sell wines, and gain personalized data insights.

The responsibility of collecting and distributing money to the wineries lies with Vivino. It has its payment process system integrated into its app and website for smooth and hassle-free online transactions. Just like Amazon, Vivino also works on the product curation business model.

The business model of Vivino also offers a lucrative Club Membership where the member gets six bottles of the world’s best-rated wine every six months for joining the club.

Revenue Streams of Vivino

  • Commission
  • Subscription
  • Advertisement
  • Selling Aggregated Data

Vivino’s Attempt to Capitalize on Customer Behaviors and Opportunities

To drive engagement, conversions, and loyalty, Vivino focused on a few key parameters discussed below:

  • Education & Discovery: Through merchandising or paid channels based on the taste profile, Vivino suggests wine to the users which they have not tried.
  • Customization Through Unique Taste Profiles: Vivino uses data to take the user tastes into account based on their ratings, likes, and dislikes, and show wines to the users that they will enjoy.
  • Match Percentage: The most-talked about match percentage feature apprises users of a customized match percentage of every wine that is unique to them.

By identifying the gaps in the market and working on these unique parameters, Vivino was successful to outpace the competitors and moving ahead acquiring more new customers.

In a Nutshell,

Wine is a $300 billion industry but considering its online share i.e. wine eCommerce, it seems like a drop in the bucket. Given the popularity of online shopping among modern consumers, entrepreneurs interested in wine eCommerce have tremendous potential to strike big. With a reliable eCommerce marketplace solution like Yo!Kart, you can ascertain quite easily how to sell wine online, and thrive in the market.

Suggested Read: How to Launch a Wine Marketplace like Vivino