It has been 8 months since the acquisition of wine.co.za (WineNet) by Southern Skies Holdings and so thought it was time for an update.
We have all been very busy; planning, workshopping, brainstorming, connecting, collaborating and scheming!
The wine industry has taken a huge knock over the last 2 years during COVID. Online sales soared during and post lockdown and then dipped at the beginning of 2022 and then a great bounce back in the last few months. We are delighted to report that the readership and sales of wine.co.za have increased steadily this year confirming the steady move towards online by consumers.
wine.co.za has always had the mission of causing more South African wine to be sold and the move to the next phase of wine.co.za with Southern Skies and Andrew Douglas means we really will take this up a notch over the next 2-3 years. It is a big ship to shift and there are massive new plans on the horizon to facilitate more sales of wine, both locally and globally, with a particular focus on Direct to Consumer and extending to Direct to Trade. This focus means the producer benefits the most by selling at cellardoor prices and engaging directly with their own consumers and trade.
Kevin and Judy remain at the helm of wine.co.za for at least the next year, but are working themselves out of the business, and putting people, structures, technology and systems in place to gear up for the next phase of wine.co.za. They certainly will not be leaving the company before they are fully confident that it is settled and has the right foundation for the next 25 years! The team is well-positioned to drive the move.
We will be expanding our team on the Sales side (ad to go out in the next few months) and new technology is a major move. Having relied on Kevin to do all the IT work thus far (with Garth doing the front end visuals) we needed robust and reliable systems to take us forward.
We are proud to be partnering with local IT company WARP Development who will be taking on all our IT requirements, including the redevelopment of CellarDirect using their e-commerce platform called Storefront™. They are a very experienced group, facilitating the sales of more than R10bn annually through their e-commerce platforms, with major clients including Amrod, Rectron, Skullcandy and Hyperli
I am extremely confident that Warp is the ideal company to take over and look after our baby going forward'. says Kevin Kidson
Comment from a not quite shy and retiring Judy: "I am constantly asked what life is like in retirement, and the truth is that it is still a few years off! We are working very hard alongside Andrew and his team to skill up and prepare for the next version of both wine.co.za and CellarDirect, and I am super proud of the wine.co.za team who are all energised and excited about the next phase of the company, but do look forward to doing some travelling during 2023 (working remotely for some of the time of course)!"
"It is very encouraging to see so much of our longer-term vision becoming a reality. Kevin and I have always had many ideas and plans which we were not always able to implement, and with Andrew's youthful energy and vision, we are seeing quite a few of them revived and blossoming. Of course big changes do take time, and we expect the first phase of the project to take up most of the next 6 - 8 months"
What lies ahead for Phase 1 of this new wine.co.za?
Phase 1 is the move of our current e-commerce solution to new tech with a focus on the Direct to Consumer side, CellarDirect. With a raft of new technologies and systems introduced in the two years since we started CellarDirect we now have an opportunity to embrace some of these and seriously improve the customer experience, and especially the communications between winery and customer which accounts for a large percentage of online sales.
For Phase 2 we will be re-building an all-new wine.co.za with WARP Development, once again focused on the reader experience. With a vastly expanded target audience post-Covid we intend to offer a more customisable view of our extensive information with different options for wineries, agents, wholesalers, trade, sommeliers and of course consumers to build exactly what they want to see. We are also partnering with a number of industry bodies and suppliers to supply even more information than we currently do.
One of the exciting additions is our new content creation service to create online material for the SA wine industry for websites, social media and even print.
Keep an eye on our comms for updates and we look forward to taking you on the journey with us to the next phase of wine.co.za
You are welcome to contact us on info@wine.co.za or judy@wine.co.za to engage about any of the above.