Wines by More Than 300
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Presscontact: Fellow Publishing – Johannes Fellmann [email protected], (+49) 0 171 4273354 Despite the crisis: Danish-german wine tech startup launches with fast growth „Wines by more than 300 wine estates – directly from cellar door to frontdoor“ - Thomas Winther CEO of WineJump Key Facts Mission Vision WineJump offers an Founded: March 2019 “WineJump disrupts the wine automated system for payments, Offices: Copenhagen & Palo Alto industry by offering a new and shipping and customs clearance. Founder & CEO: Thomas Winther smarter way to sell and buy wine. This makes it possible to replace a CTO: Marco Angermeier As a marketplace, WineJump plus €10/bottle middlemen Team: 12 people connects cellar doors to front € margin with a 1/bottle sales doors, without the middlemen fee. This means great and their high margins.“ wines for less. Producer WineJump 2 = Direct-to-consumer online More than 300 wine marketplace estates in Europe (DE, FR, ES, IT) have signed up On www.winejump.com wine estates to sell their wines with present themsleves and their wines. WineJump WineJump is free to use for estates and wine buyers. When estates sell Advantages: Joining WineJump is they pay €1/bottle sold for using free; jumping middlemen replaces the payment, shipping and high middlemen margins with customs system. a small sales fee; and gives Logistics UPS transports the 1 3 wine from cellar doors directly to customer’s front Consumer doors Wine lovers from 7 European countries Status quo of the can buy quality wine via WineJump Ambitions WineJump European wine market: directly from the producer. • 3-year ambition: • 5 billion wines move Advantages 2020: Buying quality - win more than 20% of the across EU borders/ year wine for less. In 2021: An AI-based online wine market +250 mio bottles/ year are - +€50 mio revenue/ year • recommendation engine. sold online - +80% profit margin • 5-year ambition: Contact: - be the preferred place to Thomas Winther buy quality wine in Europe +45 28762121/+16508457785 - establish an US version of [email protected] WineJump Press Contact: Fellow Publishing – Johannes Fellmann [email protected], +49 (0)171 4273354 INTERVIEW "We want to become the preferred place to buy quality wine in Europe" – Thomas Winther, CEO of WineJump He came to revolutionise the way people shop wines online: The 50-year-old Dane Thomas Winther is now launching the groundbreaking Startup WineJump. While venturing to wine regions worldwide the academic economist started working for the Danish Government in the mid-nineties. Later, this job took him to the European Commission in Brussels, followed by an innovation management consulting business. Alongside his passion for great wines also led him to establish a wine import and retail business, and now he brings it all together with WineJump. Why is WineJump as you call it "the future of great wine"? What is uniquely different from other online wine shops is that we offer estates the opportunity to sell their wines directly to consumers. Also, to reach new markets and to increase their margins while at the same time offering consumers great wines for less. WineJump solves a number of old problems challenging both winemakers and wine lovers. Wine estates cannot individually sell their wine across border directly to consumer because of Euopea ad atioal estitios. It’s e siple: To sell alohol in another country you need to register your business in that country. If not, the private buyer declare the purchase must through forms and tax payments to authorities in his own country. It is too complicated for wine estates and individual persons to manage this. That is why wine trade until now always has involved middlemen. With WineJump we have built a digital marketplace where wines are shipped directly from cellar doors to wine lovers' front door. WineJump has fully automated customs declarations and tax payments. There is no hassle for the seller and none for the buyer. For the first time it is possible to shop wine without middlemen. In what way do consumers profit from WineJump? We replace the middlemen mark-ups of € o oe pe ottle ith a € sales fee fo ie estates. We a do so eause e do not ship the wines to a warehouse first. That way we can skip the costs for rent, staff and also the margins for the importers, distributors and retailers. We pass this savings on to sellers and ues, eept that € pe ottle sales fee. Additioall, osues eefit fo a lage hoie of products, the convenience of front door delivery and other important values for wine lovers like authenticity and craftsmanship. Lots of great wines produced around Europe are currently not available to consumers in other countries because importers need large volumes for their business to ok out. It’s siply too expensive to market small volumes. You may start a successful advertisement, then you run out of wine and end up with a loss. As we grow WineJump as the preferred place to buy quality wine we will provide consumers with an AI-based recommendation engine that will match "Your kind of wine" with more than 90% accuracy. 5 Press Contact: Fellow Publishing – Johannes Fellmann [email protected], +49 (0)171 4273354 You have already started a successful traditional business: how have the experiences with your wine import and retail business in Copenhagen helped you with WineJump? My previous wine business in Denmark arised because I spent four years living in South Africa. There I realized a movement away from large volume wines for supermarkets towards the production of smaller volume handcrafted quality wines. Most of these fine South African wines were not available in Denmark. So I took it upon me to import these great wines and offer them to Danish wine lovers. It became the biggest selection of premium South African wine in Denmark by far. From this experience I have learned the ins and outs of the wine trade, of the specific costs and margins and the adverse results for wine estates and consumers. What was also interesting was that I got lots of emails from wine estates – from all over the world - looking for somebody to sell their wines in Denmark. It were these two experiences that led me to founding WineJump: Firstly, high middlemen margins that incur selling wine and secondly, the many great wine estates struggling to present their handcrafted wines to wine lovers in Denmark and elsewhere. So I was asking myself: Why can't we build a smarter system, a system where wine estates present themselves and sell their great wines directly to consumers? I was so fortunate that my good friend Marco, with a background in engineering and software development immediately jumped on the idea. This way WineJump was born in spring of 2019. “WieJup ill ake ie uyig less opliated ad uh ore aessile for eeryody.“ What is the origin of your passion for wine? Firstly, my passion simply comes from enjoying wine. This started in my twenties when I lived in Brussels which is close to the wine region Champagne. I started travelling there and quickly found out that the smaller estates were much more interesting to me than the big flagships. When I got to talk to the winemakers themselves about how they bring out the unique character of their wine, that made me enjoy the wines even more. I developed an appreciation for the hard work that goes into handcrafted wine. Any handcrafted wine always comes with a great story and that story makes a wine even more enjoyable. The stories behind the wines are also important for WineJump? Yes, they are, we put a lot of effort into developing an interface on the website where wine estates present their story, their wine making philosophy and their individual wines. Estates simply create 6 Press Contact: Fellow Publishing – Johannes Fellmann [email protected], +49 (0)171 4273354 thei o pofiles ith thei fail stoies ad add pitues, food suggestios et. Ad et I hae’t talked to a fellow wine lover who does not care about the story behind a great bottle of wine. How do you handle the high shipping costs in Europe? These costs are not high – and they are included in the price that consumers see on the website. Our system calculates the price of a wine shipped from Toscana to Berlin automatically including taxes and shipping costs. UPS is a very professional partner for fast and reliable shipping in Europe – and this at attractive prices. Surely, because UPS is interested in long-term partnering with WineJump for the future of great wine. How difficult was it to persuade the European custom authorities of the idea of WineJump? Nelson Mandela said that it is not about if you fall or not, but about how you stand up when you fall. We are not even close to the kind of hero Nelson Mandela was. But we have fallen many times in the hugely complicated mix of national and European legislations and administrative procedures for trading alcohol. But we stood up every single time. That I am proud of. Based in Silicon Valley, nine hours behind German time, many days I have got up at 3 o’lok i the oig to osult representatives of tax and customs authorities in seven different countries. And also to talk to our WineJump representatives and service providers in these countries. We knew from the start what we were doing, and we found a narrow path in the jungle of laws and procedures, without making a single short cut. Everything we do is fully compliant everywhere, and for both wine estates and wine lovers.