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DIGITAL MARKETING & COMMUNICATION

has grown more personalized as I’ve provided „

input about my tastes. Logistics are a nightmare
Heini was lucky that he was not a wine in the wine business.
expert, he came from a software world. That
gave him a fresh perspective and naivety. Vi- The product they sell is heavy,
vino‘s objective was to serve users, who were made out of glass and it breaks.
like him - wine enthusiasts, but are no wine Vivino has over 700 suppliers
professionals. Building a database for every around the world today. It took
single wine in the world was considered im-
possible by wine experts. 2 years to build a global supply
If Heini knew how complex the wine chain. They are present in 19
world was, he would be overwhelmed and markets now, selling
give up.
“Stage one of the hurdles we faced, even be- wine through local partners.
fore we got commercial, was really building the Heini Zachariassen
data,” told Zachariassen. “There is no aggrega-
ted data anywhere. So we’ve basically built this believed in their future potential.
data totally from scratch. So it means taking User traction and engagement is important,
a picture of a bottle of wine, then having peo- but every company needs a solid business
ple just entering info every single day to fill it. model. Heini was very careful with Vivino‘s
We have 1.5 billion pictures of wine labels right business model. He noticed that a common
now, so building that mass of data in a good mistake startups make is to having money-
and structured way really is 10 years of work.” -making limit the potential of their product
They didn‘t want to wait with fundrai- or service. Vivino wanted to make sure this
sing until they have a perfect product. They doesn‘t happen. Their business model is fairly
needed money to build it anyway. Heini deci- simple: selling wine through the app. It helps
ded that they can raise money on user traction that it doesn’t stand in the way of the product.
and engagement. On the contrary, it improves it. Vivino needs to
They knew that there is a link between en- stay an innovative company and keep innova-
gagement and willingness to buy wine. They ting. They now look at an additional solid reve-
were lucky to find a VC company that bought nue stream: sponsorships.
into their vision. Creandum, one of the best VC They knew they were never going to have
companies in the Nordics agreed and decided a perfect, polished product. On such a frag-
to invest. They understood how powerful and mented market, there would always be wines
important Vivino‘s user engagement was and missing, etc. They made it their goal not to
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