Wine.com Expands To Germany

Wines & Vines, Dec, 2000

Wine.com has agreed to acquire European Wine Exchange GmbH (EWX), a pioneering e-commerce company addressing both the business-to-consumer and business-to-business market in Germany. The acquisition of EWX is said to be the first in a series of steps wine.com is taking to secure a leadership position in the European market.

The EWX site will be integrated into the wine.com U.S. site in 2001 and will serve the German wine market via wine.de with an internationally-sourced collection of quality wines. The acquisition follows the recent announcement that wine.com and WineShopper.com would merge.

"Our goal is to build the leading online wine destination in the world," said Bill Newlands, ceo of wine.com. "Europe is the world's largest wine consuming region, so it's natural that we would focus there as a next step. To be successful, we will have to create a compelling service that meets the unique needs of European wine consumers. The EWX acquisition brings us critical additional assets we need to be successful --a proven regional team with local market expertise."