Wine app Vivino celebrates 100 millionth scan

By Gemma McKenna

Published: 23 December, 2014

Wine app Vivino is celebrating its 100 millionth wine bottle scan from one of its 7 million subscribers.

Vivino Wine app Vivino has scored 100 million scans

The app, conceived by Danish pair Heini Zachariassen and Theis Soendergaard, was initially designed to be a wine database similar to movie site IMDB, but is now a tool to help wine drinkers track, discover and share wines by scanning them via their smartphones, searching and posting reviews. It also allows users to scan wine lists, and find information about best value or most favourably reviewed wines, in seconds.

Stephen Favrot, the company's vice president of marketing, told Harpers.co.uk that the main difference between it and competitor apps, such as Wine-Searcher or Plonk, was that it has the "largest online community of users" meaning the data it produces is already "far cleaner and whiter" than elsewhere, given its 7 million users.

Its wine list scanner is also unique to the company, Favrot says, allowing diners to make "smarter decisions about what to drink at dinner". In order to avoid "ruining the social aspect" Vivino returns its results within two to three seconds, although, how long a diner takes to interpret them obviously varies.

Its most popular market is the US, but it is growing fastest in Brazil, especially since launching its localised version, in Portuguese, earlier this year. "You would have thought traditional markets like France, Italy or Germany would be faster, but Brazil has seen massive growth," said Favrot. Its app is also available in Spanish, German, Italian and French.

The UK is one of its top 10 countries, given it was easily accessible from the outset, being an English speaking market.

Favrot expects a lot more growth in the US - "a mass of users haven't heard of us yet or don't even know a product like ours exists". He said the challenge now is spreading the word.

The user who scanned the 100 millionth bottle, on December 20, 2014, was Guillermo Mendoza. He wins an all-expenses paid trip to Argentina, courtesy of Wines of Argentina.

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