Democratising Wine in China
FancyCellar is more than simply a local e-commerce platform offering value for money wines – it’s a community of wine lovers looking to go beyond the major labels and make wine a part of their everyday lives.
Launched a year ago by founding partners, Bertrand Moreau and Sophie Benchimol, both originally from France, the main idea behind FancyCellar was to create a community interested in learning about wine, buying wine and, in particular, buying mid-priced wines that aren’t easily accessible in the Chinese market. “At the beginning, our first objective was to democratise wine in China because many people want to know more and, at the same time, many people in China believe good wine means expensive wine,” Benchimol explained. “So we decided to source, import and distribute the wine ourselves with no middlemen, so you can see we can bring you good value for money wine.” In their role as “virtual sommeliers” for their customers, the FancyCellar duo has travelled to dozens of wineries and tasted hundreds of wines, to ensure everything on the website is up to standard – as well as being affordable, with an average price point of RMB 200. “On our website, we already do the selection for you, we only have good value for money products, only safe bets. We guarantee you cannot go wrong with this selection,” Moreau said.
Membership to the FancyCellar website is free and gives customers a range of educational opportunities, including regular wine tastings, as well as benefits, when they recruit new members. If a new member you have invited signs up and makes a purchase, whether they spend RMB 100 or RMB 1,000, you receive a RMB 58 credit on your account and your friend will receive RMB 28 after their first order ships.
Already boasting several thousand members, the FancyCellar combination of value, quality and information (each wine listed on the website is accompanied by reams of information about its region, varietal, producer and characteristics), seems thus far to be a winning one – though according to the company’s founders, there’s still quite a way to go in spreading the good word about wine in China.
“The biggest challenge for our business is to make people understand the value of the wine. The brand is so important in China and wine is a complex product with vintage, grape variety, producer, region, it can be really difficult to make people understand the value beyond the famous brand name,” Moreau said.
With this French duo at the helm, the mission of bringing a certain joie de vivre to Chinese consumers’ relationship with wine is at the forefront of almost everything FancyCellar does.
“[In China], buying a bottle of wine means you are sophisticated. It’s still about showing off, but that’s changing,” Benchimol told Talk. “In France, wine is part of our culture and we drink wine with almost every meal, but we don’t drink crazy expensive wines. We want to democratise wine in China by making people understand that wine isn’t just Lafite.”
Web: www.fancycellar.com
Discount Wine Time
FancyCellar has teamed up with Talk to offer readers an exclusive discount of 20 per cent on all wines. Simply enter the discount code: FANCYTALK on the checkout page and the discount will be applied automatically. FancyCellar offers next day delivery in Shanghai and accepts cash on delivery payments.
