Europ@Web, the Internet investment company
of the Bernard Arnault empire, has taken a stake in
WineandCo in
return for investing around 100 million French francs
($17 million) in the international wine distributor.
WineandCo has established Internet sites to serve
France, Italy and England, and now plans to speed up
its development in other countries. It offers a
huge selection of wine from France and overseas.
WineandCo’s founder Marc Perrin did not reveal the
size of Europ@Web’s stake but said he thought
the investors understood the concept of WineandCo
very well.
“The numerous operational synergies that can be quickly
established will allow us to accelerate our global
development as well as giving us access to numerous
partnerships,” said Perrin.
Chahram Becharat, managing director of Europ@Web, said
WineandCo’s strengths were a strong knowledge of the
wine industry combined with more than five years
experience of operating on the Internet.
WineandCo is an information-intensive site that helps
users make up their minds when choosing wines by
providing expert advice, opinions from other consumers,
and other details.
Competition between Internet sites wooing the wine
consumer is become intense in Europe, where both the
home and export markets are vitally important.
This month also saw the launch of
Madaboutwine,
aimed at wine lovers in the U.K.
(See our repo
rt).
Vinternet, the company set up by WineandCo founders
Marc Perrin and Rodolphe Boivin, has created more than
600 web sites for the wine industry and continues to
work with WineandCo.
Europ@Web has investments in Leisureplanet, Sportal,
imediation and Netvalue, as well as being instrumental
in setting up free Internet access provider Liberty Surf
which recently took a stake in X-Stream.
