European Wine Cellars

Wine site seeks suppliers

2011-01-24T16:43:00.000-08:00

If you visit http://europeanwine.com.au right now you'll see that it's been decommissioned. I made mistakes, namely not making a contractual agreement with my business partner because they were family. Businesses get sold, and the new owners might not necessarily have the same vision for an online presence...

I don't know how much I can say here without it being seen as libel, so I'll summarise events as follows:

The company was owned by family

I developed an online presence free of charge in return for an ongoing sales commission

The company was sold to a 3rd party

The merchant bank account my payment gateway was hooked up to was cancelled by the new owner

There are no signs of any interest in reconnecting it to the new owner's merchant account

This leaves the site dead in the water, which is a terrible shame considering how much time and effort went into developing the site, building up good SEO, and finally getting on top of AdWords with a bonus $1,000 of credit!

Just to clarify, the company EUROVIN (AUSTRALIA) PTY LTD, ABN 44 002 123 739, trading as European Wine Cellars, is a separate entity to myself, an individual software developer with a verbal agreement between myself and that company to act effectively as an online sales channel on a commission basis. I'm making this clear now because I do understand that as far as Google is concerned there is no distinction, so I was getting email enquiries from customers about orders they had placed with the company's face-to-face sales reps that didn't actually have anything to do with me.

Where to go from here?

I'd be interested in re-branding the site and re-launching with a new supplier. I need an ABN & liquor license, but I own the domain name europeanwine.com.au and the actual site itself. Preferably, the supplier would have a warehouse in Australia, and would be able to "drop ship" directly to the customer. I don't have warehouse facilities, and aren't interested in purchasing inventory, but if you have european wines you'd like to shift online to Australian customers through an online cash register that's open 24/7, drop me a line!

Alternatively, if you're an Australian wine producer looking for a web presence, I have built back-end inventory management into the site you may be interested in. Again, the wine would have to ship directly from your warehouse, but I could provide the means of taking the orders, depositing the funds directly into your account, and tracking inventory and delivery status with the possibility for Australia Post eParcel integration (which I had started, but not completed). It wouldn't be through the current site, but rather your own branded site under your name.

So if any of this interests you, or you know anyone who may be interested, please contact me, Mark Beattie, at: beattie dot mark at gmail dot com. (beattie . mark @ gmail . com - Gmail's SPAM filters are pretty good, but no sense in tempting fate))

cheers!

Choose your favourite summer mix

2009-10-26T02:43:00.000-07:00

Summer is just around the corner and we'd really like to put together some special mix packs for you to enjoy. Below is a poll where you can choose which wines you'd like in a summer mix. Click on the links to go to each wine page and find out more about it.

This is purely to get some feedback from you before we start pre-packing some mixed cartons, get your votes in now! If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.

Buy European wine online ☞

Some new additions to the catalogue

2009-09-09T01:00:00.000-07:00

We've just received our September shipment, and are pleased to announce the addition of three new wines to our online catalogue:

Oppenheimer Kroetenbrunnen Kabinett

A typical Rhein style wine, from the heart of the Rhein valley in Germany, the Rheinhessen. Spicy & fruity, this wine is always very popular and suits most people’s palates. Keeps well in the fridge after opening, upto 3 weeks. Take this to your favourite B.Y.O. Thai restaurant and enjoy the blending of flavours.

Mosel Gold Riesling

This is Germany’s classic Riesling from the Mosel valley, light, crisp and dry but the fruit of the grape is truly captured. This one is a fine example in an elegant blue bottle. Enjoy this wine with most foods, will cellar well for a few years.

Kaefer Pinot Grigio

Light and elegant, a wine of high manner. Fresh and crisp apricots, juicy white peach and delicate pears on the nose. This Dry Pinot Grigio is specially selected, the highest quality wine from the famous Venetian region in northern Italy. Serve with salad and fresh seafood or enjoy at any alfresco occasion.

Buy European wine online ☞

Payment methods

2009-08-26T23:44:00.000-07:00

We've launched with PayPal as our only payment option at the moment, but going forward we'd like to offer as many options as people need.

Please take a moment to let us know which payment option you'd prefer to use:

If I was to buy something online, I'd prefer to pay using:(trends)

Buy European wine online ☞

Announcing the launch of the European Wine Cellars online catalogue

2009-08-24T04:56:00.000-07:00

European Wine Cellars are proud to announce that as of Monday the 24th of August 2009 our online catalogue is open for business.

Specialising in offering imported wines to the Australian public, the new website is designed to make it easy to try a single bottle of anything in our catalogue. These are wines you probably won't find locally, so we want to make it as simple as possible to order a bottle, try it with friends, and if you really love it come back and order a carton of 12 direct from our warehouse in Sydney.

As a special introductory offer, delivery on all single bottle samples is free to anywhere in Australia!

Click here to see a preview video of how to try single bottles.

Click here to go to our online catalogue now.

Buy European wine online ☞

Getting more Google love

2009-08-19T17:02:00.001-07:00

At the risk of attracting hordes of SEO marketing types, I'm going to flaunt a little story of a small SEO success story. At this moment, Googling "european wines sydney" shows a nice titled link to our website with the postal address and phone number. Screenshot:

How's that done then?

Couldn't say for sure, could be by following sensible web development practices such as using valid, semantic XHTML, using the keywords "european" & "wine" in the page title, H1 tag, and domain name, and I guess also including the postal address on the page in easily machine readable format. Other than that, I couldn't tell you. Perhaps this blog and our accompanying Twitter account (http://twitter.com/europeanwineaus) are also contributing to our search ranking.

I'll tell you what we didn't do: pay anyone with "SEO Expert", or "Internet Marketer", or in fact anyone at all, any sums of money. We haven't worried about things like "keyword density" or "meta tags", that's all a load of bollocks. Just build a site that's focussed clearly on a niche topic, fill it with relevant content, follow sensible web development practices, and install Google Analytics from day one. Could be that by the time you read this we've since been supplanted by someone else, but it seems to be working for us so far.

Buy European wine online ☞

Video tour of the European Wine Cellars online catalogue

2009-08-19T06:44:00.000-07:00

Also available in HQ on Youtube

Buy European wine online ☞

Gary Vaynerchuk on Late Night with Conan O'Brian

2009-08-11T00:51:00.000-07:00

These videos crack me up, I love the way Conan is skeptical of GV's attempts to train his palate using techniques such as eating cherries with dirt and cigar crumbs, but very enthusiastic about drinking wine!

GV: "Don't be scared!"

CB: "Yeah, this really scares me - I just ate a cigar!"

To be honest, on a scale of Conan to GV my palate training is closer to Conan's - I love wine but don't have any training on the finer points of how to appreciate it. I do have a good nose though, so maybe it just needs some more experience. Will draw the line at sucking asparagus sticks through a sweaty sock however...

GV: "I might be on the thunder show and say, this smells like Conan O'Brian's arm pit, I just did that"

CB: "You didn't really get the armpit, that's the armpit right there"

Buy European wine online ☞

Mixed feelings on mixed cartons

2009-07-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

From some of the feedback we've been getting, it's seems the default perception amongst people who are in the market to buy wine online is that most wine sites are some kind of monthly wine club that sell random mixed dozens. In all fairness, a lot of the wine sites out there do seem to fit that description. It's also quite common for wine clubs to sell extremely cheap cartons of clean skin wines, for as little as $50 each.

So from the outset we're trying to differentiate ourselves from that particular market sector as it is already amply serviced. If we're not a wine club, and we don't sell mixed dozens, what are we?

To dozen, or not two dozen

As mentioned previously, we're going to launch with a small selection of imported wines (and one local preservative free...) which we will be selling in cartons of 12. This has worked well for us in the past, but we're yet to find out how well it carries across to our soon to be released online catalogue.

Initial reactions from people are that you might prefer to be able to order wines in quantities of 6 bottles at a time, either 6 of the same wine, or a mix of 6 different wines of your choice. Logistically it's all the same to us, so we'd really love to hear your feedback on which you'd prefer. Please feel free to leave a comment, or vote on the poll below.

Thanks!

When ordering wine online, how would prefer it to be packaged?(survey)

Buy European wine online ☞

Welcome to the interwebs

2009-07-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

Nearly ready to go live...

We're very close to launching the European Wine Cellars online store. The site itself is ready to flick the switch, we're just sorting out logistics like getting nice boxes made to deliver our fine wines in, and setting aside inventory.

Quite some time in the making

The idea has been brewing for a couple of years actually. My uncle has been running a small, successful business for 30 years importing wines, ports, liqueurs and even some beers into Australia and selling them direct to the public from his warehouse, but until now with zero web presence. I've been building web applications for years, and my brother who works as the warehouse manager is also quite a geek, so we got talking about the idea of us all putting something together.

Until recently it had been a side project I'd put a few hours into here and there in my spare time, but recently I've had a good solid month or two to put into it, so we've made some real progress. Hired a designer to make it look really professional, invited some people into a closed beta version to get some feedback, and have managed to come up with something I think people are going to really enjoy using.

It's about how it tastes to you

Our uncle is very passionate about quality, and about taste. In the past, most of their success has come from taking a booth to various events, such as the royal easter show, and giving out taste samples. People are so impressed that they will often order an entire carton of 12 bottles right there on the spot! The challenge in building this website has been in finding a way to replicate that experience online.

What we've done to try and make the wines more accessible to a first time visitor, is to make it really easy to order a single bottle of anything in the catalogue and have it delivered for free. We want you to try the wines for yourself, see what you think, and if you fall in love then it's easy to order some more. If it doesn't suit you then you're only out of pocket for the one bottle of wine.

Just flick the switch already!

Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, is quoted as having said:

"If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."

What we have ready now is really just the simplest thing that works - an attractive site that makes it easy to sample and buy imported wines. We really want to get it out there already so we can start working on some of the other exciting ideas we have to build more of a community around it and take it to the next level!

So in the meantime, please email any questions/comments/criticism (constructive or otherwise) to info at europeanwine dot com dot au, and follow us up on Twitter at http://twitter.com/europeanwineaus.

Buy European wine online ☞