Five years ago, Steve Bachmann abandoned his 17-year career in investment banking to open an online shop for devoted wine collectors. Bachmann himself was no stranger to fine wine — at the time, his personal collection was in the thousands.

Bachmann’s vision was to tailor a one-stop solution for aficionados within a field whose existing services he saw as rather fragmented. “We wanted to streamline the process,” he says. “People always get excited when they find out the scope of what we do.” The website goes beyond a typical wine store by providing expert information, community functions, and access to other members’ private collections.

Bachmann knows that investing in fine wine often requires selling as well as buying, so it’s not uncommon for him to purchase new varieties from his customers’ collections. In total, Vinfolio purchases 70 percent of its inventory from private collectors. Vinfolio’s own collection-management software called VinCellar is another way to attract wine-minded Web surfers and keep them coming back to the site (32,000 users are currently registered to the service).

So far, the strategy is working. Last year’s sales totaled more than $14 million, and this year, the company expects to break $30 million. A Hong Kong office, set to open in the fall, will tap into the growing Asian wine buyers’ market.

“The VinCellar software is something that wine collectors and enthusiasts can visit every day, so it helps us create a shared mind with them, and gives us an opportunity to educate them about the wine they own,” Bachmann says.

To help promote his company as a veritable voice of authority in all things wine, Bachmann also hosts three blogs on the Vinfolio site. One is devoted to California wine, one to staff picks, and one to his own thoughts on the industry. Besides enabling a sense of community, the blog lets Bachmann view his own work from an analytical level, outside of the daily frenzy of running a business, he says.

Ana Patricia and Laura Palotie
Source: http://www.inc.com