cruvee's groovy Print
Written by Nikitas Magel   

An Interview with the CEO of Social Wine Media Platform Cruvee

wine_computer_flippedThe wine industry is changing.  One area in which we see this happening most rapidly, sovaldi sale not surprisingly, find is in media.  The dynamic and interactive nature of the internet is allowing a new generation of wine consumers and trade professionals to share information in ways and to a degree that the industry has never before seen, stomach but is poised to revolutionize the buying and selling of even the most artisan-driven, limited-production wines on the market.  Yet with all its power and versatility, using the web as an effective source of wine information does has its limitations.  One of the issues holding back the real explosion of online wine media is the lack of a tool or technology to actively organize wine information from the otherwise loose collection of wine blogs and forums, winery websites, and wine-oriented social media sites, so as to render it all truly useful and immediately accessible.  Cruvee, however, is one system and service that attempts to do exactly that.  Intrigued with the implications, I reached out to its CEO, Evan Cover, to learn more.

NM: Can you say a little bit about how the idea for Cruvee started and whom else has been working on the project with you?

EC: We have a couple of partners here.  Alex Kramer is our VP of Strategy; he's knows a great deal about technology and how to implement it in the marketplace.  He had his own software company prior to this, and has a lot of experience in that world.  Our other partner is Kevin Vogt, who's a Master Sommelier at Delmonico's at the Venetian [Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas].  Now, me, I come from a hospitality background and more from the sales and marketing side, and [the other partners] developed a software product for me.  We've since stayed together.  We all sat around and started talking one day about what's going on in the world of wine and what's going on in the world of the web, and decided, "Hey, let's make something happen here, because we all have a lot of great ideas."  Of course, it takes a long time to get something like this rolling and moving forward and our business model changed twelve times over — but hey, you know what? — we feel like we've come up with a great product and something that both the consumer and trade will really enjoy.

NM: So, tell me about the product.  Can you explain what Cruvee is — especially in terms that someone unfamiliar with online social media might be able to understand — and why is it important?

EC: We bring your wine lifestyle online, by showing you relevant wine information based on whatever preferences that you build into your Cruvee profile, or by keywords you give when you sign up.  We consider ourselves a wine lifestyle aggregation platform, basically being able to analyze anything that's dynamically created for wine, or the information on wine that's on the web, and tailor it to a consumer.  We would do this for a member on the Cruvee site in real time, based on their preferences and things that they've done within the actual site itself that will allow them to focus on information about wine that is relevant to what they want to see, rather than just random bits information, if you will.

Now, the reason we started this whole thing is because there's just too many sites out there that have content that's, again, not relevant to what you want to see, or they're very specific sites for specialized things like wine purchasing or cellar management.  We really wanted to be able to bring everything into one location, if you will, to give people the opportunity to have not only a social network, but also to be able to learn about wine by having other wines introduced to them that they may personally consider important based on their profile.

NM: But why do you think something like Cruvee is really necessary?

EC: Well, it's such a fragmented industry, right?  There are so many different sites out there [with which] you can do one thing at a time.  For example, CellarTracker may be the leader in cellar management, whereas WineSearcher may the best place to search for wine and buy it online — you can go even more generic and say that FaceBook is the best site to connect with other people and their interests — so why not bring all that information together in one area for a member to be comfortable when they want to bring their wine lifestyle online?  Cruvee is bringing it all together.


NM: It sounding like you're harnessing the technology to turn what might otherwise be noise, so to speak, into music.  You're assembling wine information from what would otherwise be a disjoined collection of online sources, and then channeling it in a way that resonates with individual users.

EC: Exactly!  The vast amounts of real-time information is really difficult to search.  And it's never perfectly correlated to keywords that you might put into Google or whatever [other search engine].  So, you don't have the opportunity to bring it around in one location where someone can actually, as you said, remove the noise from around it and get a key focus on specific information and what's important around that.  We give you a more focused look at the wine information that's available, as opposed to leaving the user not knowing where to start.  With Cruvee, you don't have to start anywhere in particular, because based on where you begin to browse or searching [for wine information] throughout the site, you have the opportunity to learn from other members who are posting information you're interested in, as well as from the outside sources, news, and blog posts — all based on the search term you plug in.

The other nice thing is that, based on your experience level when you sign up, we can customize [the language]: cryptic terms can be switched out, like from 'vintage' to 'year' or from 'varietal' to 'grape.'  Then as the user becomes a little more experienced they can change their settings to start seeing words that are more the standard in terminology.  Now, granted, we can't be all things to all people.  However, we wanted to make Cruvee very approachable and easy, so it would be comfortable to the beginner but at the same time — because [the site] has the power behind it — more experienced wine drinkers can also use it.

NM: Speaking of using it, let's take a closer look at the actual Cruvee website.  Can you walk me through each of the general features and how they all fit into the big picture?

EC: [Once you're logged in, you'll see that] on the top side of navigation is the My Cruvee page, which is your world of wine and everything that's interesting to you [based on the information you've provided when you set up your profile].  Inside that area, you have your friends, plus different wine news and information; you also have your cellar management program, as well as the wine lifestyle type of feature, where we aggregate all the information and tell you the different events that are happening in your location.  Next is Browse Cruvee page, which gives you the opportunity to search our database of wine information.  Now, whenever you do any kind of search or browsing, we also put other types of [context relevant] information in front of you.  Plus, you have the opportunity to drill down [more deeply] to anything you want to see, based on the specific wines, varietal, or region you're looking at.

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Next is the Wines page, where there are two sections.  [On the bottom left] is Wines You May Be Interested In, where we implement our proprietary technology to sum up a profile about your wine interests, and take the opportunity to introduce some new wines that may be of interest to you.  [To the right of that] is Popular Wines, which is really based on other users feedback and applies that to your personal profile, to best match some wines that might be interesting to you.  On the same note, the Wineries page is very similar, only it applies to wineries that might be of interest.  It also features wineries that are very active in the [Cruvee] community, through blogging or starting [online] discussions — activities that make their rankings go higher and higher on the list of popular wineries, giving them the opportunity to be showcased within the site.  So, while users may not otherwise find out about a small winery, if those wineries are active [on the site], users will start learning about them.  On both the Wines and Wineries pages, there's a section called Related News, where we're aggregating content from all the wine blogs and other wine-related areas on the web.  Again, it's not just random bits of news; the information is related [to the wines or wineries listed in on the page].  So, basically, we give this focused view of wines, wineries, and wine-related information that's available [and targeted] to you, the user.

The Groups page gives the opportunity for people to get together, be social, and learn about what's fun and interesting to them [in the world of wine]; they can talk and have discussions inside these groups, they can also send out messages.  We're going to expand that page at some point in time to include different types of event-handling and stuff like that.  So, it's in its beginning phase, but it builds the community.  And then finally, the Forums page is the general place where anything anybody is talking about — whether they start a blog post on their Cruvee page or a discussion about a wine or winery — is dumped into there, so a user can actually see that type of information [easily & centrally] and respond accordingly.  On the same note, those types of posts and discussions also get displayed on a user's activities screen on their My Cruvee page, if it's something that's important to them.  It brings a focused view of information, whether it's within Cruvee or outside Cruvee, as well as wines and such that would relate to them.


NM: So, it sounds like there's a lot of intelligent aggregation going on site-wide.  Even back on the Home page I notice that there's a section called What's Happening Now, which seems to be funneling wine information in real time.

EC: What's Happening Now is bringing the whole world of wine online.  A lot of that information is not only user-based, but also comes from the different wine blogs that we're monitoring; there are thousands of blogs we monitor, so when [entries] get published, we actually see that information, read it intelligently, and start putting it in that area.  There, you can find discussions of people opening and tasting their wines, and reviewing them.  Also, if someone's tasted a certain wine and then posted it on Twitter, it'll show up [in that section] as well.  It's all part of our [proprietary] technology: being able to take all the different things that are happening within and outside the site, consuming it intelligently, and then directing it to the individual Cruvee members as well as into that Home page section of What's Happening Now.

NM: It's looking like you and your team are at the epicenter of this burgeoning field of social wine media online.  The way I see it, there's a shift going on with media in general: the center of gravity is moving away from the traditional (print and TV-based) to the online-based.  Can you tell me some of your ideas about all this?

EC: It's an interesting question.  Obviously, the Millennials are taking over; let's put it that way!  And this is how they're going to access information — through sites like ours.  Now, while traditional media is no longer going to be the sole source of information, let's face it: magazines will always exist.  But people are wanting to get their information quickly and accurately, learn a little more about something than just what's actually being focused on (on a page of print media), and have the opportunity to purchase it from there.  [With online media], there's a much more fluid way for them to get immediate gratification, as opposed to doing their research through something more traditional.

NM: It sounds like we're on the same wavelength on that.  There's definitely a shift going on, and it remains to be seen how it's going to affect the consumption of mass media.  The question remains whether these newer internet-based resources and technologies are going to take over entirely, or rather create an entirely new niche in the exchange of wine information that will peacefully coexist alongside the more traditional wine media.

EC:  It's such a young market right now, too; it's only going to grow at this point.  So, that's another reason to get into this game early.  In order to be a leader, you've got to get out there and make it something of value for not only your own members, but — for us — we're also providing that same value for the wineries.  And because the information is going to be so widely used, so widespread, we'll be able to give that information to the wineries, and that's going to make sense for them to understand where their brand is [in the marketplace].

NM: Regarding the younger market that you mentioned, I wonder: by harnessing some of the online technologies that they're already their familiarity with, do you feel you might actually be increasing the interest and involvement in wine among younger people who are really only beginning to get into it and otherwise not know where to start, and who might be a little intimidated, confused, or even put-off by wine information as its been traditionally conveyed?

EC: Absolutely!  Like I said before, the Milennials are taking over.  Look, they're people who are comfortable with the web, comfortable to navigate through it to get the information they want, and this now just gives them an opportunity to [use those skills] to focus on their wine [interests].  Plus, you can see that we made Cruvee very easy, very approachable — if you look at the characters [or avatars] on our site, [you can see that] we wanted to remove any pretentiousness around wine so that people can come to the site and have it feel comfortable for them.  It's something that we want them to be able to go into, start learning about, and increase their knowledge on, so they can feel comfortable going out to eat and knowing a little more about wine, knowing what goes well with what and such, and take it from there.  So, yeah, absolutely, it's only a matter of time before everything [wine related] comes here.  We leverage the technology with our own stuff that we've created, try to give [users] some useful, valuable information, and connect them around [the web] to other people who might have similar tastes and also to the wineries.


NM: Speaking of which, what sort of reception or feedback are you getting from the wineries themselves?

EC: We're getting a lot of great feedback — and this, of course, applies more to the Cruvee for Wineries site.  Because of the information we're able to provide to them, they know exactly where their brand is (they're able monitor that), they're able to interact directly with people who are on our site as well as other sites because of the aggregation of information that we put into their dashboard and tools.  And we allow them to be the exclusive retailer to sell their wine, because the whole direct-to-consumer market is what we feel is important.  We're getting a lot of great feedback from them right now, and it's only a matter of time for them to be able to see even more value [in Cruvee].

NM: Are you getting a sense of how the wineries are using this information?

EC: Looking the sample screenshots for Twisted Oak Winery [below], what we're able to do is show them who are their new fans, their new consumers, along with their demographics and buying patterns and such, as well as what's being said about their brand across the whole web today.  We take the information from thousands of blogs, several of the social media outlets, and lot of different forums, and then aggregate that information, providing the winery with a brand-monitoring service, if you will.  And then they have the opportunity to interact with [customers online] who are talking about their brand, whether it's negative or positive chatter — they have the opportunity to really connect with them.  As you know with [services like] Twitter and everything else, if [a winery] is just a marketing machine, they're going to get kicked out of the water.  But now [with Cruvee], they have the opportunity to be a part of the online community, as opposed to just a marketing arm.

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NM: Wow, this has some serious implications for market research.  Using your tools, a winery can start to gauge attitudes, opinions, and knowledge on the part of consumers who are drinking their wines — the kind of information for which they'd otherwise have to move mountains to get!  Let's be honest: traditional means of market research are inherently very inefficient and costly.

EC: Right, absolutely — and we recognize that!  Because of that we take the consumer side of the Cruvee site and apply the information from their reviews, along with their demographic information, and give [the wineries] the opportunity to a) connect directly with those consumers through other marketing channels, and b) learn about what's being said about their brand and how their wines are being rated and reviewed over time.

There's another side to the coin here, too, on the social media side.  If [a winery's] brand is not being talked about at all, that's actually worse than having negative chatter.  So, we give them the opportunity and some guides to getting into social media outlets.  Like with  Twitter, we'll suggest certain people to 'follow' so it gets to that viral process, without having to make it an actual marketing position.  There's a couple of different avenues we're trying to provide to the wineries to get into that social community, as much as access the research behind it.

NM: Now, you mentioned that the information provided through Cruvee will allow wineries to better market and sell their wines directly to consumers — bypassing the entire three-tier system of traditional wine retail.  Would you say that consumer-direct sales are what this entire model hinges on and might, in turn, actually strengthen and propagate?

EC: It's definitely one avenue.  No winery should have to compete with an online retailer for their own customers.  So, why should we have to make them try to compete with those retailers, or even give us commissions?  We don't want that type of situation in place.  We want it so they have the opportunity to connect directly with consumers, and reap the benefits to consumer-direct sales.  It's important, because obviously once you start building the loyalty of a customer directly with a winery, you can start giving him more information and making them feel like they are truly part of a family, as opposed to being a guy who goes to Wineshop X to buy a bottle of wine, whom then you don't anything about later on.


NM: It sounds like what you're providing is really a market-neutral platform, acting almost as a liaison between the producers and the consumers in a way that we really haven't seen or explored before.  What you're doing through this is providing a choice that the consumer didn't otherwise have  — not in a literal sense, because the consumer-direct option has been there for a few states for some time now, and it has been expanding now with loosening interstate restrictions — but you're putting some real strength behind that process, because now the consumer can become educated enough to feel confident to purchase directly from the wineries.

EC: Absolutely!  And there are other benefits to that, as well.  As we get more and more wineries on board, what they'll be able to do is that with anybody who purchases directly through the winery, that winery can turn back around and send the customer tasting notes, updates on shipping time, and even have their winemakers communicate with them.  [This model] provides more value in the experience for both the winery and the consumer.

NM: Speaking of which, what advice would you have for the consumer who's interested in wine, wants to learn more but isn't sure how to go about doing it in a way that's useful for them and will fit into their lifestyle?  Are there any general tips you would recommend for this sort of person.

EC: Absolutely: first and foremost, I would say, "Go to Cruvee.com!"  {laughter}