Wine production and commerce company Vintners.co on Monday (May 16) announced the launch of its online B2B platform for vintners, wine importers and professional wine buyers.
“As we observed the constant growth of craft wine producers and importers in the market, we were stunned by how the current tools and processes seemed unsuited to these businesses,” said said Roland Benedetti, co-founder of the Long Island City, N.Y., company. “We see there is a huge opportunity to change that and to help and support the craft wine ecosystem grow faster and better compete in the overall global wine market.”
Vintners.co says the platform will offer improved management of wine product information between winegrowers, wine importers and wine distributors, and the professional wine buyers who are their customers.
In addition, users will be able to quickly track down rare and allocated products for restaurants and retailers, and make use of an online service that facilitates and streamlines ordering.
For now, the company’s services are only available to early adopters (importers/distributors and wine producers), but Vintners.co says it wants to progressively expand its reach soon, adding services such for sales, marketing, logistics and financing. Vintners.co also says it hopes to new regions “to offer a global platform for craft wine professionals.”
Learn more: The Alcohol Industry Brews Efficiency From The Chaos Of Regulation-Influenced B2B Payments
B2B commerce in the alcoholic beverages sector is a complicated and multifaceted landscape, PYMNTS wrote last year.
Buyers range from small restaurants to big retailers and government-owned liquor stores. On the supplier side, you have wineries, distilleries, boutique breweries and more, all of them dealing with a patchwork of payment strategies dictated by varying regulations.
Navigating this terrain is crucial to succeeding in the industry, but middle market players have long relied on custom software for enterprise resource planning (ERP) or out-of-the-box, generic portals not designed for the particular challenges of the alcoholic beverages industry, said Ryan Wilson, founder and CEO of Ollie Order. The result is many businesses having to take a manual approach to B2B payments and other workflows.
“This manual work,” Wilson told PYMNTS, “takes organizational resources away from value-added activities, like being a tastemaker and coming up with the next hazy IPA.”
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