Flaviar, Inc. has announced its acquisition of Wine-Searcher, the world’s largest database of product, price and availability information across the global beverage alcohol market.
After completing the acquisition of technology company Barcart earlier this year, this positions Flaviar firmly as the leading operating system for global bev-alc e-commerce, supporting all existing players in the space in their digital transformation, providing solutions for new entrants, and accelerating e-commerce adoption across the industry.
Founded in 2012, Flaviar has staked out a unique position in the fast-growing online alcohol category, providing value to consumers, retailers, and brands through its complementary business divisions. Meanwhile, Wine-Searcher, founded in 1999, has built a reputation for transparency and independence, providing value to consumers and the trade through unparalleled product information, high-quality content, and proprietary market data and research.
"This is a classic case where the sum is greater than the parts," explained Flaviar co-founder and CEO Jugoslav Petkovic. "We at Flaviar are experts in spirits and e-commerce in the US and Europe, while Wine-Searcher brings unparalleled global reach, depth of wine expertise and a wealth of historic pricing and availability data. At the same time our two companies share a lot of our values, especially around independence, focus on benefits to the consumer and acting as an enabler for the industry participants to operate and improve their business."
The acquisition adds significant new capabilities across Flaviar's existing business divisions. Wine-Searcher's proprietary database collects and indexes products, prices, locations, producers, and retailers into the largest and most accurate collection of drinks-related data available, boasting nearly 18 million listings from more than 33,000 vendors across 126 countries. Its database is searched nearly 300 million times per year and has earned more than 5 million monthly active users.
"After nearly 25 years of building Wine-Searcher's database, relationships and reputation I'm leaving the company in the capable hands of a wonderful team and with full confidence that with the seasoned management team and new ownership the best days are still ahead," said Wine-Searcher founder Martin Brown.
"Flaviar's acquisition will allow us to keep doing what we’re good at, while adding significant new capabilities that provide consumer value, especially in facilitating e-commerce sales, which is something we have never been able to do before," said Julian Perry, Wine-Searcher CEO. "This will create more value for the many retailers with whom we work, and further enrich our data and the power of our market insights we offer the industry. Moreover, we will have more resources at our disposal to accelerate our technological development, particularly in building AI-powered services."
In 2022 Flaviar announced a strategic partnership with RNDC, a leading beverage alcohol distributor in the US.
"Our collaboration with Flaviar aims to accelerate the pace of digital transformation within the industry," stated CEO Nicholas Mehall, "Since the inception of this partnership, we've amplified the value proposition and introduced innovative services to our brand partners. I'm excited to see Flaviar continue to expand its capabilities and market reach."
"E-commerce penetration in beverage alcohol sales is still very low compared to other product categories, especially in the US, and we believe that the main reason is due to the lack of modern, consumer-friendly services in our space. We're firm in our commitment to support partners across all three tiers of the US alcohol system, as well as internationally, to enable more of such services to launch and capitalize on this giant growth opportunity," added Mr. Petkovic.
Flaviar was advised on this deal by Akur Capital. Terms were undisclosed.