MASTERS engages with prominent figures in the business world, including Frank Laurentius, Founder & Managing Partner of VINVIN Wines. The company's exclusive portfolio focuses on established, authentic and also emerging family wineries working with passion and also often organic.
"My love of wine started when I was nineteen. I was doing business with a Swiss man and he said to me, 'Sie sind wie ein Tignanello.' Little did I know that was a famous wine from Antinori! Over lunch with him, I went to taste that wine. Later I also worked a lot in France in my position as managing partner of Piecom, which deals in semi-finished products for cleaning products. With the French distributors, I went from one lunch into another dinner and learned about wines and how to pair them with food.
Eventually I met a woman who had studied at The Institute of Masters of Wine in London and has now been in wine for twenty-five years. Corinne Hofland worked at a major importer and purchased 12 million liters of wine and champagne on an annual basis. We shared a love of Champagne. Galeotto fu lo Champagne! is an Italian proverb that sums it all up: it's all because of Champagne. From this passion we organized Champagne events and also trips to Reims with a number of other enthusiasts. It turned out that we not only clicked when it came to wine and champagne: we have been living together for almost eight years now. Then one and one becomes two. From the moment we were together, I arranged my time so that I could go with Corinne to trade fairs. It was very quickly clear that her passion, and mine, lies with the premium segment in wines."
"During our travels, I had quite a lot of anschluss with the winemakers. One of them, Pascal Jolivet, a top winemaker from the Loire region, Sancerre, became a good friend. With Pascal, I talked a lot about entrepreneurship and new business opportunities in the world of wine. Corinne quit her job in 2020 after more than 20 years. That's when we started the new challenge. Pascal thought out loud, "2020 ... vingt vingt. We'll call the company VINVIN!' In the wine world, the better producers know each other. Chateau La Tour de l'Eveque from Provence, Domaine d'Henri from Chablis and Famille Hugel from Alsace hooked up, and eventually a lot of other winemakers.
What especially moved me emotionally was the fact that Champagne Taittinger chose us. It's incredible that our current portfolio came about within a year. We now have more than three hundred wines, mostly classic world. A colleague of Corinne's, Marcel Just de la Paisières, also left the company she had just said goodbye to. I had already said to him, 'If you ever do anything else, call me' - purely on my entrepreneurial fingerspitzengefühl. Eventually, he became a partner in VINVIN Wines. He knows a lot about sales and marketing, Corinne about the international wine world, purchasing and the portfolio, and I throw my lessons and experience from entrepreneurship on top of that."
"VINVIN could move into Consensus Group's office, which I run with Rob Boele, for nothing, so that at the start the costs remained low and the facilities could be used. Consensus bills itself as a 'game-changer in hygiene & health, hospitality and happyness', with VINVIN I also want to be a game-changer. Sustainable and innovation driven as I am, I want to do things differently than what is happening now in the wine world. So we put the focus in our exclusive portfolio on established, authentic and also emerging family wineries, working with great passion and also often organic. It is not for nothing that it says "Let's change the world of wine" above our website. Not only our assortment is game changing, but also the way we started: we work with contemporary artists, including Pablo Lucker, who design our Favorite Boxes. For these boxes, you can put together the contents yourself and then hand them out as a business gift, for example, with a personal message under a QR code.
Also quite unique is that we operate on three fronts. We started online in B2C, we expanded that to B2B and then we started selective distribution for the specialist trade. Today, with our partner for this trade, we supply over four hundred better wine and specialty-trade stores throughout the Netherlands. Add to that the fact that we are the first wine company in the world with a metaverse environment. And that we as a Dutch company with Bon Vivant are going to market a new wine brand worldwide - that was Marcel's big dream. All these developments make us the talk of the town."
"We are innovative in another respect: as VINVIN Wines, we have 34 certificate holders, including ourselves - all individuals and entrepreneurs who have invested in the company. The commercial value of the certificates has now risen to triple the initial value. In addition to a nice return, there are benefits such as discounts and events attached to a certificate. And later we will also pay dividends. But honestly: nobody does it for the money. It is fun! They just enjoy doing something with wine, and with us and with each other.
Through this healthy and fun structure, we have created a lot of ambassadors. Among our so-called VINvestors are a number of Dutch celebrities including Klaas Jan Huntelaar and Pierre van Hooijdonk. But also our employees and several wine producers have certificates in VINVIN Wines. My best wine experience? I got to drink a 1976 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs, a top-tier vintage. Wine has now become my job, but it has also remained my passion. I never drink rationally, but always with pleasure. Our slogan is "drink less, but better. Life is too short to drink bad wine."
Click here for VINVIN Wines' website and get to know its exclusive wines.Â
Visit VINVIN Wines at MASTERS EXPO. From December 8 to 12 in RAI Amsterdam: MASTERS EXPO - The Colourful Edition. Ticket sales for MASTERS EXPO 2022 have started. Order here your tickets here.
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