wotwine?
The UK has 30 million wine drinkers of which some 6 million buy wine every week in supermarkets. Our experience has found that there is a great deal of consumer confusion about quality and price and thus value, consumers expect that the more they spend the better the wine, that a £10 bottle on offer for £5 must be really good value, but are generally disappointed.
Wotwine? addresses this issue and allows the consumer using a free app on their smartphone to scan the bar code of any wine they select, getting a short user friendly review and a wotwine? value. There is a search facility, food pairing, and there is also a wotwine? website with lots more information.
Wotwine? has a strong tasting team network, with eight Masters of Wine, the most rigorous and difficult international wine qualification with only 340 worldwide, Sommeliers, wine makers, retailers and wine educators, who have reviewed and continue to review the majority of wine in the UK’s supermarkets. Their knowledge and expertise, tasting comparatively across all categories and all supermarkets, evaluates what they believe to be the true value of each wine, regardless of marketing and promotion.
Wotwine? gives completely impartial professional but down to earth knowledge and insight to the mass market supermarket wine shopper. Our experience has found that wine shoppers enjoy buying wine, but their lack of knowledge and confidence means they revert to buying what they know, or what is on promotion. A significant volume of supermarket wine is sold on promotion, and we believe that supermarkets cynically manipulate pricing in this complex sector to try to make the shopper think they are getting a good deal.
Our team’s knowledge of cost of production, source prices, shipping, tax and margins enables them to evaluate fairly every wine they taste. Wotwine? aims to empower the consumer to always find quality and value quickly and easily with one scan of a barcode. Our experience has found that many wine journalists and magazines only review a handful of the wines on shelf, and very rarely if at all provide guidance on best value for money. Other wine apps (like US based Vivino with 11 million users) have been very successful, do not provide independent reviews, and are dependent upon user generated reviews like trip advisor and do not explicitly rate value for money.
The authority, independence and integrity of the wotwine review panel is powerful; we buy all the wine off the shelves, we review all the wines blind without knowing producer, retailer or price, and we review as a team, it is not just one person’s/journalists view. The data we are assembling is extremely insightful on wine shopping habits and trends, wine faults, wine pricing and individual consumer preferences. We believe that we are starting to impact on what our users buy, (wines that we have recommended in our weekly newsletter have sold out in certain stores), supermarkets wish to work with us for our data, and buying teams have attended our tastings. We believe that our simple information app is becoming the “Money Saving Expert” for wine shoppers, with all the professionalism and independent integrity which that brand has successfully built upon.
We have created iPhone and Android apps and have around 20,000 downloads. Our Website usage is not as yet search engine optimised but has over 25,000 users. The app has strong repeat usage, with 48% of users using the app more than 2 times per month. Average scans are nearly 500 per day, with predictable peaks at weekends.
Good press coverage has been gained without needing to use a PR consultant. Wines that we have recommended in our weekly newsletter have sold out in certain stores. Approved with a number of affiliate schemes for click thru revenue trials, running at a few hundred pounds revenue per month.
Built a strong management team and team of tasters, who will be incentivised through a share option scheme.
20% for digital marketing; pay per click and social media.
30% for product/IT development; to create the premium app, improve speed, functionality and the user experience.
17.5% for content, tasting wines, to include and add further major retailers; Majestic, Laithwaites, Virgin, Oddbins, Lea and Sandeman etc. required for the premium user.
15% to employ a CEO, and a second data clerk.
17.5% for PR and marketing, to increase the download rate dramatically by more media coverage.
wotwine? are delighted to welcome investors and want them to be as involved as possible with the business. We therefor will give all investors a free invitation (£25 to premium app users) to our annual Christmas review of the best value wines we have tasted during the year. This is a perfect opportunity for us to meet you, for you to taste alongside our professionals and for you to pick up extra tips about the best deals for the festive season.
A large part of your investment will be going towards the development of the Premium App, which will cost £25 on an annual basis, or £3 per month if paid monthly, and give users a heads up on the latest great deals, geo positioning to help locate the nearest good selection against a wine style search, and reviews of other specialist retailers beyond the supermarkets.
Investors who invest over £25 will be offered this premium version free for the first six months.