Flaviar acquires Wine-Searcher

Beverage manufacturer and e-commerce company Flaviar Inc has acquired Wine-Searcher for an undisclosed sum, with plans to add direct-to-consumer sales to the wine search engine’s offering.

Flaviar co-founder and CEO Jugoslav Petkovic said the acquisition was a “classic case where the sum is greater than the parts”.

He said: “We at Flaviar are experts in spirits and e-commerce in the US and Europe, while Wine-Searcher brings unparalleled global reach, depth of wine expertise and a wealth of historic pricing and availability data. At the same time our two companies share a lot of our values, especially around independence, focus on benefits to the consumer and acting as an enabler for the industry participants to operate and improve their business.”

The acquisition “adds significant new capabilities across Flaviar’s existing business divisions”, the company said via an article published on Wine-Searcher yesterday (6 December).

Wine-Searcher founder Martin Brown, who retired from his role as chair of Wine-Searcher in August 2022, said he was “leaving the company in the capable hands of a wonderful team”.

Brown said he had “full confidence” that “the best days are still ahead” with the management team and new ownership.

Julian Perry, Wine-Searcher CEO, said: “Flaviar’s acquisition will allow us to keep doing what we’re good at, while adding significant new capabilities that provide consumer value, especially in facilitating e-commerce sales, which is something we have never been able to do before.”

Wine-Searcher’s online database collects and indexes products, prices, locations, producers, and retailers. It has nearly 18 million listings from more than 33,000 vendors across 126 countries. According to internal figures, its database is searched nearly 300 million times per year and has more than 5 million monthly active users.

Perry added: “This will create more value for the many retailers with whom we work, and further enrich our data and the power of our market insights we offer the industry. Moreover, we will have more resources at our disposal to accelerate our technological development, particularly in building AI-powered services.”

Flaviar, founded in 2012, completed the acquisition of e-commerce company Barcart earlier this year. In 2022 Flaviar announced a strategic partnership with US beverage alcohol distributor RNDC.

CEO Petkovic said e-commerce penetration in beverage alcohol sales is still very low compared to other product categories, especially in the US. He argued that this was due to a lack of modern, consumer-friendly services. “We’re firm in our commitment to support partners across all three tiers of the US alcohol system, as well as internationally, to enable more of such services to launch and capitalize on this giant growth opportunity,” he said.

Terms of the deal were undisclosed, and Flaviar was advised on this deal by Akur Capital.