I thought it might be useful to provide a recap on Vinfolio's progress in 2008 towards our overarching goal of providing "Fine wine, Finer service" to our customers/users and a perspective on what we expect to accomplish in 2009. If you're not a customer or user of our software/websites, hopefully this will inspire you to become one.
Vinfolio's 2008 Achievements
- 2008 revenues grew about 50% over 2007, despite the negative impact of the economic crisis. We were named the 4th fastest growing private company in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times.
- Over 75% (by value) of the wine sold by Vinfolio in 2008 was sourced from private cellars.
- Our organization reached over 50 employees plus approximately a dozen full-time development resources in India (with our outsourcing partner). Approximately a third of total employees and contractors are working in software development (maybe 4x over the end of 2007).
- A completely new (and still free) VinCellar, version 3.0, was released in July 2008 after 18 months of design and development. We continue to enhance the application with updates every 45-60 days.
- Registered users reached over 43,000 by year end. All but 2,000-2,500 of which occurred since we moved to a free usage model in September 2006 in lieu of our prior membership-based (paid) model.
- We further enhanced our already strong wine purchase-related guarantees with a new Price Match Guarantee.
- Our buying tools were expanded with a powerful wine alerts service that sends email notifications when wines matching saved search criteria hit Vinfolio's inventory. This capability complimented our pre-existing RSS feeds.
- We launched several new collector services including Personal Cellar Manager and a Wine Investment Service.
- A new free website, WinePrices.com, was launched in October 2008 to provide comprehensive retail and auciton price data for wine (see press release). A new iPhone application for this site will be launched in January 2009.
- A new Vinfolio Hong Kong operation was formed and staffed. See our new Hong Kong site (www.vinfolio.hk).
- A second U.S. warehouse was opened in November 2008 in Napa to accommodate growth and streamline operations. Accompanying this, we added a second delivery van in the Bay Area and expanded Will Call hours in San Francisco to 8 pm Monday-Friday.
- A warehouse management system was implemented to facilitate more efficient operations and smoother fulfillment of orders.
Vinfolio's 2009 Goals
I'm excited about 2009 as changing markets create opportunities. This is a representative list of some key objectives with the first and second being our top priorities.
- The Company and a majority of our software development resources are highly focused on a major new initiative that will transform how fine wine is bought and sold (for both individuals and the trade). We are targeting a July 2009 launch and are more than 50% of the way through development.
- The bulk of the remaining technical resources (which we expect to further expand in the coming months) will develop further enhancements to VinCellar. Our highest priorities are community-related and social networking features (including more blogger support, further integration with Facebook, adding Twitter integration, and potentially other social networking platforms). Want a say in our plans? Post your comments and requests in Vinfolio's Forums.
- Introduce money-making affiliate programs for bloggers and other third parties.
- Improve our site responsiveness and scalability of our server infrastructure.
- Innovate more in our wine marketing and merchandising programs such as our new 1-cent ground shipping offer.
- Overhaul our ecommerce checkout process to improve ease of use and launch a Hong Kong ecommerce site.
- Add mobile phone-based checkout capability.
- Introduce a major new co-marketing program with Napa/Sonoma wineries.
- Open our Hong Kong wine storage facility in Q1 2009 and, later in 2009, begin selling wine from inventory held in Hong Kong.
- Secure additional corporate partnerships with complementary businesses. We are in discussions on four such partnerships currently that will impact 2009, one of which has already been signed.
- Get more customer feedback! We'll be stepping up our surveying of customers but don't wait to be asked. Post any product or site suggestions in our forums and feel free to email me at steve@vinfolio.com or to send a direct message to me via Twitter (@Vinfolio).
Thanks
To customers and current software/site users, thanks for your patronage and support. We want you to be so satisfied that you can't resist telling your friends about Vinfolio (if we haven't reached that level with you, I'd love to hear why not and what else we might do).
If you're not a current customer or user, visit our sites (www.vinfolio.com, www.vincellar.com, www.wineprices.com, and www.vinfolio.hk) and register (it's free) for additional benefits. Your registered email and password will then work on all sites.
