In light of the NVL case and a conversation with Gabrielle after Wednesday's class, I was thinking about the value of new wine mobile apps, and how they have or have not been able to monetize users. The two apps I'm most familiar with are Delectable and Vivino.
Delectable was co-founded by an alum of both Palantir and Goldman Sachs. It's an Instagram-like interface where a user takes pictures of a wine bottle, the app automatically (though sometimes incorrectly) picks up the wine (producer, blend/varietal, vintage, etc.), and then the user rates it on a 40 point scale of "not for me" to "love it". The app has a scrolling feed in which users can follow friends or sommeliers, and like and comment. Vivino came from a serial entrepreneur and has been around a bit longer. Its interface is a more akin to Facebook, with news stories and offers mixed in to the feed. Its rating scale is less robust with 5 stars and halves; but, it does have a cool feature where a user can scan a wine list and see users' ratings of all the wines on the list.
I'm interested to see where both of these apps go towards monetizing users. Both apps have buy options through the app - in the Delectable UX, the payment experience is through Delectable's interface while Vivino connects to an online wine store through the phone's browser. Delectable has also launched a new product, Banquet, which functions purely as a mobile wine buying app rather than a a rating/tracking app (but the interface displays wines' ratings on Delectable). I haven't purchased from Vivino but I have purchased twice from Delectable. Once, I received an email as part of a beta program where Delectable recommended three bottles of wine based on my ratings, and they paid for shipping. And I purchased from Kermit Lynch, through Banquet, again as part of a free shipping promotion. This curated content was valuable to me, but not nearly as much as if I lived in a less wine-drinking part of the country. While I've enjoyed all four bottles I've purchased, they were based on recommendations that I could have gotten at K&L or Beltramo's by my house. If I didn't have access to good wine stores, I might be more willing to pay shipping, which I viewed as the incremental price of the curated content. I'd also expect there to be a positive correlation between areas of the country where consumers would be amenable to mobile wine apps and areas of the country with good physical wine buying options. A final problem I noticed was that when Kermit Lynch fulfilled my Banquet order, the bottle came with a business card of one of the merchants, an invitation to their wine club, and an offer to curate more bottle selections if I called or visited - not exactly great for Banquet's model that the merchants can quickly convert the customer relationship.
In any case, I'll be interested to see where these apps go, and how, if at all, they manage to monetize their existing user base and database of wine ratings.
As I mentioned in vlass, Vivino closed $25MM in funding from Moet in December 2015; their current monrtization strategy includes DTC "sales" (as a third party marketing firm),
ReplyDeleteSome of these apps - like Boston-based Drizly, Minibar and Thirstie - not only provide a portal for physical stores to sell their product, but also collect and analyze data about consumer behavior. To further monetize their businesses, these platforms could package and sell these data and analytics to wine retailers.
ReplyDelete