Wine Owners today announces the beta release of the Wine Hub, a state-of-the-art, first of its kind, business operating platform designed specifically for the independent wine sector. The release coincides with a period when the business of wine is rapidly going digital. Sales through websites have doubled during the second quarter of 2020.
The Hub provides the basis for fine wine merchants, retailers, brokers and importers to strengthen and grow their operations with a software platform capable of improving current operations and opening up new market opportunities.
The new platform builds on 8 years of wine industry-specific software investments. It leverages that expertise in wine inventory management and packages that know-how into an exceptionally flexible workflow management system that underpins purchasing and sales order processing. This enables the Hub to deliver operational efficiencies and ensure on going operational excellence. It saves hours of time each week and unlocks the potential to significantly improve the client experience.
The Hub is the first Cloud-based ERP of its kind – a digital operating platform that realises new possibilities for independent wine businesses based around connectivity – with sources of supply and sales channels to market, as well as with best of breed services and plug-ins.
Main Hub features:
Gilles Corre, Founder and CEO of Asset Wines, a fast growing fine wine merchant and importer, was the first to adopt the Hub at the start of May 2020, and has been followed by a further 10 wine businesses in the intervening 12 weeks.
Gilles commented, “the Hub works beautifully out of the box for wine merchants. We see this as a long-term solution which meets our immediate requirements, but we’re also excited that it offers a tremendous roadmap that addresses our industry’s needs. It will allow us to grow and evolve.”
“As far as day to day operations are concerned, we appreciate being able to view our entire stock wherever it is in real time, which was incredibly challenging before we went onto the Hub. We love it.”
Ludovic Surina, Private Client Director at Mr Wheeler, the independent family-owned wine merchants, added:
“The Hub revolutionised the efficiency of our order processing; intuitive, a perfect fit with our needs and with a brilliant dashboard to manage orders from inception all the way to payment and delivery. The cherry on the cake is the ability to take orders on a tablet or a phone – perfect to stay on top of purchase or sales orders even while on the move!”
Nick Martin, CEO of Wine Owners explains why the Wine Hub has got off to such a strong start. “The idiosyncrasies of the wine market, and its need for an exceptionally flexible approach to inventory management and associated buying and selling processes, means that for too long wine businesses have had to spend fortunes to bend generic business systems into wine shape. Either that, or they’ve got stuck on Spreadsheets or resort to using accounting software for inventorying, which entails massive compromises that ultimately holds back a business.
“We’re tapping into a global need for business improvement and digital readiness without ridiculously high entrance fees, and coming at it from a software as a service (SaaS) starting point. That means no set up fees, no minimum contract periods, free data migration tools and a beautifully fit for purpose platform that’s preloaded with industry-specific product reference data. All this gives us the ability to solve industry problems, support growth and help wine businesses to capitalise on market opportunities.”
For further information: Wine Owners
Wine Owners develops software as a service (SaaS) platform solutions that are engineered from the ground up for independent wine businesses. We serve the needs of retailers, merchants, warehouses, the on-trade and other services businesses involved in fine wine.
We combine market specialism with a configurable, state of the art online SaaS platform that reduces cost of ownership, improves availability and security, and keeps you up to date with the latest version.
Nick Martin is CEO of Wine Owners, following a career in information management and technology marketing during which he worked for large brands such as Vodafone, BT, IBM, GEC and Disney to build their customer information databases and data-driven marketing capabilities.
Nick co-founded Wine Owners with ex-Shell technologist and database expert Wolter Visscher, who had previously formed his own software house operating in financial services, health services and publishing.
Contact details:
Nick Martin
Cellphone + (0)7828 170250
Clotilde Muller, Marketing Manager
Clotilde.muller@wineowners.com
Landline: + 44 (0)20 7278 4377