Popular wine marketplace app Vivino is making the move down under, setting up its first commercial operations site in Sydney.
Heading up the Australian branch as General Manager is James Fildes, who believes the move to Australia will encourage more winemakers to list on Vivino’s marketplace and aim to increase their trade as they recover from a year of disaster and hardship.
He said: “It’s been a tough couple of years for winemakers and merchants in this market, but we’ve seen remarkable resilience in the domestic economy.
“This industry deserves a break, and Vivino can help Aussie winemakers by showing our users more of their wine, based on each individual’s unique taste and price preferences. Our data is unmatched.
“We have over 800,000 Australian users and over 51 million users globally. We know exactly what each user likes to drink, and that enables us to introduce new brands to them that we know they’ll love.”
Fildes is bringing experience from his recent posting at the online wine marketplace Bidvino in Hong Kong. He believes this will ultimately help him grow Vivino’s presence in Australia and to help the Australian wine industry as it recovers from a year of bushfires, floods, and most recently, a drop in international sales.
He said: “It’s tremendously exciting to be at the centre of this industry in Australia. There is so much fabulous wine here, and I can’t wait to work with local producers to sell even more of it.”
The Vivino Australia branch will be based in Sydney. To celebrate the branch and to help the industry’s recovery, Vivino is implementing a 50 per cent reduction on marketplace commissions for the remainder of 2021.