Vinomofo is knocking off the second country on its hit list for global domination with launch celebrations to commence in Singapore next month.
After closing a $25 million investment deal with Blue Sky Venture Capital, Vinomofo jumped straight into its international expansion plans, starting with New Zealand in June this year.
The next markets Vinomofo expands to will be in the world’s biggest economies.
Vinomofo Asia Holdings has been set up in Singapore to build the company’s foothold in the Asian region.
“Singapore is a great wine market, quite mature, not huge, but a really good wine audience and great food scene over there,” Vinomofo co-founder Andre Eikmeier tells StartupSmart.
“Singapore is a really international market in terms of its wine preferences, it’s a good market for us to get used to not having an Australian or New Zealand wine bias.”
With containers of wine on their way to Asia now, Eikmeier says the buzz for Vinomofo has already started.
“It’s spread like wildfire,” he says.
Alcohol research group Candean has named Asia one of the fastest growing markets for alcohol sales with China and India driving this growth.
Before choosing Singapore, Eikmeier says the Vinomofo team also investigated China and Hong Kong.
But they decided on Singapore because of its healthy market of ex-pats, and because it has the most compatible delivery, licensing and corporate structure requirements.
“Singapore was looking like the most doable,” Eikmeier says.
Ekimeier says Vinomofo has also commenced investigations into US markets, including coastal states and Texas, with plans to launch in North America next year.
“Texas is a big wine market but it operates on a different licensing regulation; there are three licensing models across all of the [United] States,” he says.
“Fourteen states group into the same licensing model as California – we’ll definitely start in California.”
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Dinushi is a journalist at SmartCompany.
