The Vivino wine trading platform has a new CEO. The company has announced that Olivier Grémillon will take over the position on 26 July from Heini Zachariassen, who founded the platform and assessment app in 2010 together with Theis Søndergaard.
Grémillon has several years of experience in e-commerce. He spent three years at booking.com and six years at Airbnb in management positions and was responsible for development and expansion.
Zachariassen is to remain in the company as a board member and "Chief Evangelist".
"This is the perfect moment to join Vivino," said Grémillon. "With the collective strength of 50 million people sharing a curiosity about wine, now is the time to lead the revolutionary change in wine buying habits. With ten years of data collected from nearly two billion wine label scans and hundreds of millions of unbiased reviews and ratings, none better than Vivino is able to bring the wine drinkers of the world closer to the wines they love."
Vivino claims to have earned around $265 million in 2020 and, like many e-commerce companies, benefited from the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, which shifted many sales to the Internet. The platform has more than 50 million users.
"As this past year clearly shifted consumer habits to purchasing more wine online, it felt like the right time to bring in a new leader with the skills and experience to take our business to the next stage in its development and accelerate our growth from where we are today," said Zachariassen.
"Olivier is bringing years of success and experience to Vivino that will allow for even more consumers to buy wine through our marketplace with the confidence that they are getting the best possible wine for their specific taste."
It wasn't until February 2021 that the company completed a $155 million Series D round to drive further growth and market expansion. aw
