Marketing that you can't call marketing.
"Flexibilizing" an otherwise monolithic institution.
And tapping into the "long tail" of wines worth loving.
None of it is easy -- not the new words, not the new models, not the new way of connecting wineries directly with European consumers. But they are all part of the slow progression toward a changed industry that Andre Ribeirinho and the Lisbon-based Adegga Winemarket are intent on achieving.
"We're not trying just to sell wine," Ribeirinho said. "We're trying to change the way an industry works."
That would be earth-moving, for wineries and consumers alike. But it isn't going to happen in one quake. Instead, the smaller shifts are evident in a series of direct-to-consumer events that Adegga has organized around Europe, from Oporto and the Algarve earlier this year, to Stockholm and Berlin in September and October, to Lisbon in December.
The goal is to provide an avenue for European consumers to directly access wines from producers who otherwise wouldn't have the bandwidth to reach them, either because of limited supply or limited marketing outreach or both. Those are the wines that normally fall under the radar and through the cracks of the marketplace, yet they're exactly the wines with an audience willing to pay for them.
Here are five insights from Adegga Winemarket, on the shifts that are putting more "long tail" wines into the hands of European consumers.
Consumers check in last night at an Adegga Marketplace event in Berlin. Photo Credit: Andre... [+]
"Flexibilizing" the Market
The Swedish government's monopoly system of selling alcohol is perceived as one of the most rigid and monolithic in Europe. Yet, as Adegga's event in Stockhom earlier this month showed, the Swedish system is in fact slowly and quietly removing the barriers to the wine market for consumers. It's possible to sell wine in Sweden outside the monopoly, but the pathways are less known and less understood, so Adegga worked with a local partner to navigate the legalities.
Ribeirinho calls it "flexibilizing" the market. For several years already, buying from the monopoly stores wasn't the only way to buy wine: there is a small network of wine clubs and independent importers who offer a broader selection. Still, however, consumers feel that they don't have enough choice, which is why Adegga's event there was so successful.
"The Swedes are explorers," Ribeirinho said. "They crave the sun and fresh-grilled fish and for the wines from these places. It's important to consumers that they can access them freely and on a daily basis. And they have the money to pay for it."
A Model for Diverse Revenue Streams
Adeggia is a platform for ecommerce and logistics that helps producers sell wine in the Winemarket cities. Producers pay a monthly fee to access the platforms and events, and Adegga takes a commission on every bottle sold. They also maintain a subscription model for top customers, who have first-chance access to special offerings.
Adegga designs digital campaigns for individual producers, and their "common budget" is used -- to host tasting and sales events, for example -- on behalf of all of their partner producers as a group.
Marketing in Disguise
Ribeirinho, a computer scientist by trade, started ten years ago to explore how the industry works, starting with an innovative and early-generation social media platform for drinkers all over the world to share and comment on wines. He continued to experiment from both the consumer and the producer perspectives, and he developed other products and models over the years including a "smart glass" that enables users to document the wines they tried during a tasting.
Within the last year, however, something changed: marketing in the disguise of digital outreach directly to consumers. "Now we actually have a business model for producers who normally don't want to pay for anything that has the word 'marketing' in it," he said. "Now they are actually paying for me to do marketing for them. But I'm not an agency, so I had to create a model to sell marketing to them without selling marketing to them. It's complicated!"
Tap the Long Tail
The Adegga Winemarket started by working just with nearby producers in Portugal. Two years ago, they held the first international event in Brussels, and in Stockholm a few weeks ago they added Spanish and Italian producers to their portfolio. In Berlin they'll add French and Serbian wines into the mix.
The representation of these producers that's already in place varies from market to market. Sometimes they don't have an importer at all, and sometimes they have already penetrated the market where Adeggia is operating. Often, however, even when a producer is working with an importer, the importer won't carry the whole range of the producer's portfolio. That limits the consumer's access, which is something that Adegga with its online platform can help to resolve.
Wineries offer special products that are outside their primary offering -- "long tail" offerings like unusual bottle sizes, or a limited release of a historical vintage, or even a forgotten stash of cases. "If you have an importer, you have to pick up the phone and convince them to carry it," Ribeirinho said. "But in an online platform, you can list what you want."
Focus on Strengths
Logistics -- moving wine from producer to consumer efficiently -- is usually the Achilles' heel of DTC shipments. It typically isn't something that wineries themselves are equipped or enthusiastic to undertake, and the same is true for Adegga. "We want to have the same logistics capability as Amazon, but we don't want to build it," Ribeirinho said. "So we enlisted a logistics partner that's centrally located at a warehouse in Germany. It's better for consumers too, because they don't have to pay for two separate shipments if the wine comes from two different producers."
Cathy Huyghe is the author of Hungry for Wine. Find her online on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
