Who are Wiine.me? Winners Vinofunds Lausanne EHL (22 March 2014)
Vinofunds of the Vinocamp Lausanne focused on eight startups (find the list here) with wiine.me Franco-Swiss company that won- handily with the jury and the public vote. It originated with Timothy and Frédéric Bardet Chenevard, who created a box of three wines selected by sommeliers. Along with this, they are also launching a platform, with the right bottles of wine to learn across six months, with an original pedagogy of “mind-mapping” and interactive videos on the selection that you have received. Social, fun and suitable to mobile, this method has already proven at two previous events. Wiine.me will be in Bordeaux in June with the 33entrepreneurs accelerator for an intense week of meetings.
It is born of mediocre wines, brought by our friends at some diners. Their excuse: lack of time for selecting or purchasing and lack of motivation for learning, so often quick purchases in supermarkets. Wiine.me is a wine selection idea, made by sommeliers, now six that work with us. We also needed a good team of entrepreneurs, and that’s how I found Frédéric, who has worked in wine before and works in importing wine, financiers Seedstars, e-commerce specialists. So we have good skills in all areas, with a great team.
Sommeliers are selected through meetings, and we always have our ears pricked. Everyone has their favourite region and dusts off the wine world a little with a dynamic image.
- Wiine.me was officially born in July 2013. First we created the MVP (Minimum Viable Project): the wiine.me platform with only three bottles of wine in the box. We quickly realised that people wanted two bottles; it lacked an educational part and selection of themes (Burgundy, Austria, Switzerland etc). From September 2013 we created the company in Germany to internationalise the concept. We have a logistics hub in Frankfurt (office in Berlin), capable of serving six countries in Europe.
- Since then, the team has grown and we are close to 8 people and 10 sommeliers (Switzerland and Germany)- developing tasting and cooking classes and the Wine Parties.
- The Wine Tasting Parties are 90 minutes, in each different club or restaurant with the selection of the month offered. Guests are Wiine.me community, combined with an exclusive partner for the evening (food or fashion blog with readers, a foreign community etc). For example, April 30 is the Urban Wine Urban Accent blog, who will invite its readers. A success since its inception in January 2014, wiine.me pleases the customers and readers of our partners.
- Since March 2014, the Wine Academy allows you to learn the wine in six months. It became the pivot of the startup with interactive videos, graphics, mind mapping structure to help consumers understand and a personal guide to teach a blind tasting. After six months the taster will be able to recognise 18 varieties, flavours and regions. This is a web-based educational tool of high quality and free for members.
Of course! When you run a startup it’s 24/7, so we don’t mind the extra hard work! Also the concept of Box is a great way to bring people to wine, but that’s not enough, it is primarily a business model. So through 33entrepreneurs, our goal is to test, refine and develop a complete web platform to young and old, men or women, about wine! Really, on the basis of their experience.
Wiine.Me has the desire to be a major European player in online wine for all beginners. In three years we have produced a new generation of content. The video was the 2000s, computer graphics in 2010, and we are trying to invent a new way to pass on information (blog posts), internationally, on a big scale (500,000 different wines around the world) with a pedagogy converse to WSET, for those who enjoy the occasional wine. We are trying to expand our customer base to seven countries, and then why not 27? In 3 years Wiine.Me count many sommeliers and probably a continent more … Cheers!
The public vote has also highlighted The Sommeliers with Magali Rème: a recommendation site and sale of wine selected by women for women. Magali seeks 10,000 euros to finance a communication campaign with the intended female audience, along with PR and online advertising game. What if she tries a crowdfunding campaign supported by Reservoir Funds?
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