The Good Life Show
Crowdfunding Meets Winemaking
Scroll on down to listen to the interview with Ryan O’Connell co-founder of NakedWines.com and learn about their new and creative business model and how they launched NakedWines from United Kingdom to the US.
Naked Wines is an online wine retailer founded in the UK in December 2008 by Rowan Gormley.
Their premise is unique. Naked Wines’ customers (called Angels) fund independent winemakers from around the world, and in return, get their wines at wholesale prices.
The Naked model works as on social network principles, encouraging customers to review their wines and interact with other customers online; reviewers give the wines Likert-scale style scores out of five, a Yes/No to whether they would buy the wine again and a textual description. When prospective buyers look at a wine’s page they will see the percentage of those who have said they would buy again a list of other people’s reviews.
‘Archangels’ are a smaller group of customers that Naked Wines have invited to assume the role on the basis that they engage actively on the site to help other customers and review all their wines.
Naked Wines was named the Online Business of the Year at the National Business Awards in 2011. In December 2013 it was named one of the top 1000 companies to inspire Britain by the London Stock Exchange Group, winning the ‘Top Online Retailer’ award.
On 10 April 2015, Naked Wines was acquired by Majestic Wine and Rowan Gormley was appointed CEO of the enlarged group.
Show Notes:
- Moved to France in 2005 to make wine [3:15]
- The obstacles in selling wines, not just the wine making [4:00]
- Story on how they got angel investors [9:00]
- Ordering online at www.nakedwines.com [11:00]
- Launched nakedwines in the US from UK [13:15]
- Catering to global market [15:00]
- Wine blogging conference 2017 in Sonoma [17:45]
- Local success stories & launching over the internet [19:20]
