Naked Wines – Consumers Win(e)

If you don’t know Naked wines, please stop here and look at their website. Their story is simple. They saw an opportunity, and instead of trying to replicate an old model in a new space, they started from scratch and built a new model to deal with an old problem. They sell wine online, and they do it in a way that the producer and the consumer both win.

The model proving to be a huge success, so much so that the USA should pay attention. I’ll explain more later, but for now, I want to share a video we made at the #LIWF where Naked wines sold some wine! Actually they sold a lot of this wine in a very short time.

Before you watch the video, please take a moment to read their Press Release in order to give you both context and perspective:

Online retailer Naked Wines (http://www.nakedwines.com), which launched in December 2008, has sold £30K worth of wine in 24 hours after rolling out their airline-pricing model at this year’s London Wine Fair.

The new model, called Advance Bookings, offers unknown wineries a risk-free route to market by allowing them to pre-sell their wines before they’ve exported them.

“For those who dare to innovate, Naked Wines have proved what can be achieved at a live event such as the Wine Fair,” explained Will Broadfoot, the Fair’s marketing director. “It’s incredible to think that within a single day, a producer can go from no UK representation to selling £30K worth of wine. It’s the first time in the Fair’s history that any producer has achieved this level of sales, and seen them realised at consumer level, in such a short period of time.”

“The speed and ease at which the order was agreed, and the wines sold, is a huge step forward for the industry,” explained Michael Cox, UK Director of Wines of Chile. “What can typically take months, and cost thousands of pounds, has been turned on its head – and I’m delighted that a premium Chilean winery has helped to pioneer the scheme.”

Largar de Bezana, a boutique winery based in the Cachapoal Valley, was singled out by a team of thirty Naked Archangel customers, who tasted their way through hundreds of wines looking for UK representation.

Daniela Rojas, one of four winemakers at Largar, was “overwhelmed” by the concept. “We agreed the order on Tuesday afternoon, and the wine was live on www.nakedwines.com a few hours later. I’d barely had the chance to phone Chile to tell them the news when I heard they’d all sold out!”

Naked Wine Consumer Selection from ryan and gabriella opaz on Vimeo.

Naked wines is not currently a customer of Catavino Marketing.