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Wine Stock Market – An Innovative Croatian Regional Wine Window to the World

The Wine Stock Market project represents a new window to the world for domestic and subsequently regional viticulture and winemaking. It is a digital communication and sales platform that enables winemakers and vintners transparent market communication and, of course, sales in the context of balancing and reconciling surpluses and shortages of grapes, grape juice, and wine, as well as additional unsold (overstock) wines and small batches of premium and archival wines. This will provide winemakers with a new modern way of trading adaptable to the digital era of business at all levels, aimed at both the domestic and regional as well as the broader global market,  announced Davor Zdjelarević, a prominent domestic and regional winemaker, and Edvin Jurin, a branding and communications expert, who are the conceptual initiators and co-authors.

Complex Project

This is a complex project to which, alongside the founders, a multidisciplinary team of about ten experts and specialists has contributed over the past three to four years.

The WSM is intended for grape and wine producers in the region and the world, domestic and international wholesalers, and potential buyers of grapes and wine, companies from the equipment supply and raw materials industry in the viticulture and winemaking sector, as well as international portals specializing in the trade of grapes, must, and bulk wine, media, journalists, and bloggers specializing in wine topics, as well as independent wine culture enthusiasts.

The specific process phases of WSM include data entry and processing for winemakers by regions, varieties, vintages, qualitative and price categories while respecting the anonymity institute for participants in the sales process up to the sale itself, control of the offered wine by WSM through documentation verification and tasting by an independent team, classification of price levels, and ultimately the realization of the purchase and sale and payment between buyers and sellers with the control role of the WSM system.

In the portfolio, the gradual introduction of wine tourism offerings is also planned, modeled on attractive one-day and multi-day wine tours, as well as trading in wine real estate and equipment.

Business Model

The business model is based, as with other platforms of this type, on an annual membership fee depending on the type and levels of transactions and a commission on achieved sales.

– Estimates suggest that about 40% of the total wine trade, which annually amounts to around 230 million hectoliters of wine, is made up of bulk sales. The project is developing gradually and in phases according to the interests and needs of its users. Such a developmental path has been followed by relevant platforms of this type, in whose establishment and financing participants from the wine industry, as well as investors from other industries, have entered. One of the most developed English online platforms was established in 2016, gradually after two years with the participation of nearly thirty investors,” emphasized Jurin. ”We live in dynamic and uncertain times. Production and market processes are more disruptive than linear. On one hand, new wine markets are developing in populous countries of the Far East and Asia, while on the other, we are witnessing unexpected disruptions such as climate change or pandemics, which generate frequent imbalances in the commodity flows of grapes and wine. It is up to us to literally accept the time we live in and turn to digital technologies or, better said, sales at the digital doorstep with a significantly higher level of awareness, interactivity, and profitability – concluded Zdjelarević.