Bottlebooks hails Bibendum’s support

The founder of Bottlebooks has hailed the support of one of the UK’s largest importers, saying it will boost the development of the digital wine data platform across the industry.

Jonathan Harclerode, co-founder and CEO of Bottlebooks said the participation of Bibendum, PLB and Walker & Wodehouse, which are owned by Conviviality plc,  marked a big step forward for the initiative.

“Bibendum is one of the UK’s leading wine businesses and understands the challenges that all wine businesses have collecting and disseminating wine information and the unnecessary costs it creates,” he said. “The insights and support of [buying director] Andrew Shaw, head of business intelligence James Scott, and their entire team is a big step forward for the initiative.”

The tool, which tracks individual wines and skus across their digital life, providing a simple, tiered way to share data throughout the supply chain, was launched in the UK at the London Wine Fair by LWF’s organisers, Brintex. It was developed by a German company in 2013 who worked with producers, importers, event organisers and other wine professionals to identifying the data requirements of the wine trade. More than 3,000 wine businesses have already shared data using its platform, it said.

James Scott, head of business intelligence at Bibendum, PLB and Walker & Wodehouse said it would simplify the process for suppliers by storing all information in one place after inputting it once, and making it accessible to all its international partners. “Having a single version of the truth around product and supplier data will also allow us to deliver greater levels of information & content to our customers, via our product sheets, websites & apps,” he said.  “Bottlebooks is the only system of its kind to offer an international service that is focussed on improving things for both suppliers and customers.”

Rolling out Bottlebooks across all its wines and suppliers in the UK will give a far richer seam of product information and allow suppliers to build their own data into a format that is compatible with distributors internationally, Scott added. “The people to benefit will be our suppliers who have all of their information in one place, fit for purpose for international trading, and customers who wish to have greater detail on our products, via our website and product sheets, which becomes more important the more esoteric the product (benefitting boutique producers and wine sellers alike).”

“Because there is no limit to the number of products and content that can be stored on Bottlebooks, the producer can have all of their information in one place. It is, in our view, both intuitive as a system and given it’s scope extraordinarily good value for money.”

Buying director Andrew Shaw added that the company was looking forward to developing the partnership. “Bottlebooks will drive data quality across all our teams, ultimately helping our customers be even more successful selling our products,” he said.

At the launch, Brintex said the tool was likely to have a “profound effect” on the wine trade, and hoped its ability to share information easily across producers, importers, suppliers, and retailers, and would “revolutionise” UK wine sharing, which has been dealt with poorly.