Wine.com facts for kids
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| Industry | Online wine retail |
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| Founded | San Francisco, California, 1998 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
Wine.com is a big American company that sells wine online. It's like an online store just for wine! They sell over 2 million bottles of wine every year. They have more than 17,000 different kinds of wine available in the United States.
Contents
The Story of Wine.com
How Wine.com Started
The company we know as Wine.com today has an interesting history. It actually started as two different companies. One was called Virtual Vineyards. It was founded in 1994 by Robert Olson in Los Altos, California. He worked with Peter Granoff and Harry Max. Virtual Vineyards was one of the very first places to sell wine online. They sold their first bottle on January 24, 1995.
The other company was eVineyard. Mike Osborn started eVineyard in Portland, Oregon in 1998. There was also a website called wine.com, which David Harmon founded in 1995. He later sold it to Virtual Vineyards in 1999.
Becoming One Company
In the year 2000, VirtualVineyards.com and WineShopper.com joined together. They decided to use the name Wine.com for their new combined business. However, this new company faced some big challenges.
In the spring of 2001, eVineyard bought the parts of the struggling Wine.com business. After this, eVineyard changed its name to Wine.com. The company then moved its main offices to San Francisco, California.
Growing Bigger
In 2006, Rich Bergsund became the CEO of Wine.com. He helped the company become very successful. Wine.com grew to be the largest online wine seller in the United States. A company called Baker Capital, which is based in New York City, owns most of Wine.com today.
Wine.com on Your Phone
Apps for Wine Lovers
Wine.com also made it easy for people to shop for wine using their phones and tablets. In December 2009, they launched an iPhone application. This app let people browse and buy wine right from their phones.
In November 2010, Wine.com released an iPad application. This app had cool features. You could see wine labels clearly and even take a virtual tour of where the wine was made. This tour used geo-location to show you the exact places.
In November 2011, Wine.com also created a special mobile site. This made it easy for anyone to use their website on any mobile device.
