Ep. 537 Heini Zachariassen | Wine Business Talk with Colangelo & Partners

Welcome to the Italian wine podcast's wine business talk series. Join us as we connect with our Italian wine podcast listeners all over the globe on all things wine and business. This podcast has been brought to you by Colangelo and Partners, the leading fine wine and spirits agency in the US. Visit Colangelo and partners at w w w dot calangeloPR dot com. Hello, and welcome to the first episode of wine business talk on the Italian wine podcast. I am your host, Juliana Colangelo of Calangelo and partners. In this series, we'll learn how wineries can use technology to reach their audiences, trade, and consumer alike. And we're super excited to kick off this series today. With a conversation with Hina Zecharayasen, founder and CEO of Vivino, the world's number one wine app. Hina, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today and for being our first guest. Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure. Of course. So before we get into the nitty gritty of today's conversation on technology and wine and Vivino, let let's stay dream a little. It's been about over a year now in quarantine. So describe for me your perfect vacation day in Italy. Oh, my god. That's an opening for you right there. Well, I think, well, first of all, where do I think I am in Italy? I'm probably somewhere in the north. I I've just spent more time there. I I definitely love it there. I guess you're you know, somewhere near a vineyard maybe in in Toscano or something like that. And then you have an amazing glass of wine and, look at out the field and and the sun is shining. Something and maybe there's a little bit cheese involved too, actually. That sounds pretty beautiful. Hopefully, we'll all be there someday soon. Yes. Well, thank you for for indulging us a little bit before we get into to the serious topics today of technology and wine. So first question to start off, you know, we're we're talking throughout the series about evolution of technology, how it's helping consumers learn about and purchase wines, and how wineries can more effectively use some of these technologies. So, Vivino, you know, you guys are one of the original players. You've been around now for over ten years. To start off, tell us where's Vivino today now that we're we're celebrating this ten year milestone? Yeah. I think it's quite interesting because I think the problem that we set out to solve is still the same thing that we're trying to solve today and obviously doing better and better. And it's about helping people drink better wine. It's it sounds really simple, and and it sort of is. That's really our mission. You know, all the way from going into a grocery store, scanning a bottle of wine and figuring out if it's good or maybe not so good, to today really recommending you amazing wines in the app that, you know, match for you personally. Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, that's obviously important for any winery in app like Vivino to help people discover and find new wines. So I saw some news a couple weeks ago about a series d funding rounds that closed a hundred and fifty five million. That's huge. That's so exciting. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah. It's been it's been a little bit of crazy year. Let's put it that way. I mean, when the, when the pandemic started, we really weren't sure what was gonna happen, you know, was where the sales gonna stop, or they're gonna grow, what's gonna happen, but pretty quickly, we realized that we were starting to grow really, really fast. Gave us some challenges in the beginning, but it's been a very, very strong year financially for us. We doubled our, our sales. We went from twenty nineteen from one hundred and thirty million dollars to two hundred and sixty five million dollars in twenty twenty. So more than doubled our, our, our sales. And then on top of that, we really got to the scale. You know, this is the challenge for a startup. You need to reach a certain scale to reach profitability. And this was also the first year where we, you know, two out of four quarters were also profitable. So when those things happen, a lot of people started knocking on our door to say, hey, we'd love to put some money into your business. And after, you know, spending six months talking or so, we found a great partner and, ready to accelerate the business. That's super, super exciting. Congratulations again. Thank you. How will this latest fundraising pack of Avino user, you know, around the world, but also in Italy? What can we expect next from Vivino? Yeah. I think number one is really to make the product better. Meaning, you know, whatever you see in the app on the website today, we wanna improve all that. So, our big hub of product engineering is based in Denmark and Copenhagen, And we are gonna increase that radically. So you should really be able to see that in Italy and around the world that that, you know, the, the product is gonna move faster with new features and, and so on. And, and secondly, you know, one thing that you might see in Italy too is that we're also gonna double down on certain markets. Like, we're, we're selling wine in seventeen markets now, and we're only two hundred people. Right? So we're relatively thin in each market, and that's also gonna change. And that includes, like, it's gonna be one of our, being one of our focus markets. From twenty twenty one. So we're gonna put a lot more resources on the ground in that market and other markets, around the world. And finally, Venus, you know, great, mostly an organic growth, like most of what we do is organic. Right? And we are gonna spend a little bit more money on advertising in the future too. The all exciting things. So great to hear Italy's a focused market. I'm sure all the folks listening today will be excited to hear that. So how can a winery in Italy connect with current and new consumers to reach, you know, the over fifty million users that are on Vivino? Yeah. I think, you know, first and foremost, they they should really look at whatever markets they sell their wines in to make sure that whoever their partner is there actually sells on the Veno. So we have seven hundred partners around the world, And they should really make sure that their wines are available on, Vivino. We've also launched a a relatively new sponsorship program where we sort of can improve the presence in the app, you know, show a video and so on. So when users come across your amazing Italian wine, you know, where you can show a video and give you more information and so on. That's also combined with a data package, so people can follow where people drink their wine, ratings, reviews, all those things with a special dashboard for wineries. Right. That's great. That's a lot of information that can be accessed. That's super useful for for anyone. You're in Italy or or anywhere else. So that's that's great. Fantastic. Let's step back. I'll talk a little bit more about the pandemic. Cause it changed consumer behaviors in a in a lot of ways including how we purchase wine and how we drink wine. So can you talk a little bit about some of the changes you saw in consumer usage on Vivino in twenty twenty? Yeah. Obviously, I mean, the obvious one is probably that, you know, people went home and didn't drink as much at restaurants, which meant that, hey, they had to buy more wine at home because they, you know, it didn't get it all covered at restaurant. Right? At the same time, it was a little bit harder to go out and brick and mortar and buy the wine, which mean the e commerce really grew rapidly. So that affected us and and really increased our sales. We also saw a couple of other things. I mean, as the research we see it doesn't look like people were drinking more necessarily. They were drinking more at home and a little bit different patterns. And one thing that we did see was that, you know, the weekends were usually, like, a big peak for us. Actually, the weekends went down a little bit. Whereas Monday Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday went up a little bit. So people, you know, will drink a little bit more during the week and a little bit less during the weekend, which which makes sense too. Right. Right. That's interesting. Do you think any of these trends are long lasting or do you think that things will start to go back to quote unquote normal as, you know, we move away from the pandemic. At first, I think it's I think probably yes, but it's gonna take some time. So when I when I say that, I mean, like, weekdays and weekends. I mean, that's not I think that's gonna pretty much gonna back go back to normal over time that is. When it comes to e commerce, I mean, we've seen these things like these pushes, it's really, really hard to, you know, change people's habits. But once they've changed them, they don't go back. Right? So we see this more as a push forward, like, two years or something. And it's just the same trend line that's just moved a little bit faster in twenty twenty, but I don't think it's gonna go backwards again. That does it doesn't look like that. Right. Yeah. Now that people have gotten used to buying one online and buying lots of other things online too, that they're gonna appreciate that convenience and and probably stick with those habits. Yeah. I think so too. And it'll be interesting to check back in a year and see if that's actually case. So we'll have to we'll have to do a repeat of this conversation. So you've got millions of people scanning wines and moving out every single day, including lots of people in Italy. So what are some of the most to prize and consumer demand trends out there in the US market as it relates to Italian wine. Is there, you know, anything unexpected that that you're seeing, among amino users in the Italian wine category? I must say, I think, you know, most of the things didn't change much in that way. It like, when they drank, how they drank probably changed, we we've talked about, you know, Italian wines are, you know, amongst US users are, you know, the highest rate of they're most likely to rate an Italian wine I think it was a five star than any other country in the world. So that was interesting. So we see some of these these things in the data right now. But I think that generally, we haven't seen real shifts in the sort of consumption and so on. People pretty much drink the same thing as they did before. Right. And that's encouraging in a way to know that, you know, not everything changed dramatically in the last year. Right? There's still there's still some consistency. We don't have to change how we operate a hundred percent. Well, so if I'm a, you know, winery that's never used, you know, before and never really engaged with the app, what are some tips or recommendations you might give to me as a winery owner for how to start using the app, getting familiar with it, and learning how to to use it to to my benefit as well. Yeah. I think the first thing I would do is really to, you know, scan all the wines that you have, look at what people say, and, like, look at any feedback that's in the app and all the datas if there's anything wrong, you know, they can send us emails. Hey, this is not accurate and so on. And, obviously, like I said earlier, make sure your wines are being sold on Divina, whatever market you're at, and maybe look at our sponsorship program too. I think that's super important. But, you know, start with using the app you know, look at how wines are rated. If it's if it's not as high as you want it to, what are people saying? Why do they rate it lower and so on? It's all there in the ratings and reviews. And also, you know, one of the the cool things we have now is is taste characteristics. Right? You know, you might think that the wine tastes in a specific way and say that in your description and so on. But on Vivini, you can actually see how users perceive that in a sort of quantifiable way. And You can disagree or whatever, but that's how the wine is perceived. That could be very interesting for a wine maker. Yeah. Absolutely. It can challenge what they might be thinking and and show them exactly how a consumer is engaging with the product as well. Any other new features, anything new we should be expecting from Vivino this year? I think the one thing that we are still extremely excited about is this increase in personalization. And so we built this new feature, which is rolling out as we speak, actually. It's called match for you. It means that every single wine you look at, it's gonna give you a match for you and tell you how likely you are to like that wine. And, we're just super excited about it. It's not on every single wine yet, maybe because you haven't traded enough wines yet. So the more wines you rate, the smarter the algorithm becomes, but we think it's super exciting also for people to, you know, if people are stuck with their cap and their chardonnay and wanna try something new, the algorithm, you know, tries to figure that out, hey, you might never have tried this before, but you probably like it. Right. Interesting. So if I'm someone who's constantly scanning, you know, a California chardonnay, maybe eventually it'll start recommending, you know, a Vermentino or wine for a white wine from Italy that fits some of the similar profiles. Exactly. Exactly. Very cool. That's that's super exciting. Great. Well, anything else, Hannah that you would like to share with us and and listeners today? Let's say, like, we began, I I do look forward to coming back to Italy and, and drink some nice wine down there. It's been way too long. I would at least go there every every year. And I don't know what it's been now. At least, yeah, over a year at least. That's already too much. Agreed. Yes. I can't wait as well. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Haina, And to our listeners, be sure to download Vivino. If you aren't using it already, give them a follow on Instagram at vivino, and thank you so much for tuning in. Join us next week with Dave Parker of Benchmark wine Group where we'll be talking about direct imports and selling wine online. And thank you again, Haina, for joining us. Thank you for having me. See you again next week on the Italian wine podcast for another episode of wine business talk brought to you by Colan and partners. For more information on this series, you can visit Colangelo and partners at w w w dot colangeloPR dot com. And remember to rate our show wherever you listen to our podcast.