An innovative young startup company called Trust in Taste which is based in Adelaide has been using Chinese social media platform WeChat to forge a new distribution channel in the country.
The service targets relevant WeChat users and offers them an in-home tasting of Australian wines for A$5 (US$3.60). The company then ships its customers miniature bottles for them to taste at their leisure in the comfort of their own home. The customers receive three 60ml sampling bottles filled with wine sourced in South Australia.
In keeping with Chinese consumers’ love of technology, the next step is for the consumer to scan the QR code on the bottles which they liked. This then leads them to the Trust in Taste WeChat shop where full size 750ml bottles of each wine can be ordered for around A$30. There is also the ability for consumers to give feedback on the bottles they received.
Trust in Taste co-founder Peter Evans explained that the idea came from discussing the difficulty of connecting consumers with quality wines. Evans concluded that “the problem was how do they find out about the product? When you go into a wine store, a supermarket or even online, and there’s just this massive group of labels, so how do you get yours to stand out?” The answer proved to be WeChat, a powerful platform that allows marketing, ordering, engagement, and transactions to all happen in the same place.
Evans is optimistic about the potential for Trust in Taste and hopes to have over 30 Australian wineries onboard by the end 2019. The company has already sent out over 1500 tasting kits and has experienced a 10% conversion rate to full bottle purchases on certain labels. By the end of the year the company plans to have sent out at least 200,000 samples with a boosted conversion rate of 20%.
