Some of the most famous wines are made from a single grape. Romanée-Conti is 100% pinot noir; Petrus, merlot; Vega Sicilia, tempranillo. Even so, the art of combining different varieties, extracting the best characteristics of each to compose a wider and more exciting range of aromas and flavors, is one of the main resources of oenology. Allows you to add different typicities to obtain even better results. In French, this mixture is called assemblage. For the English, it’s the blend. The wine business has also evolved from the addition of different components. Mergers, acquisitions and partnerships drive the sector, whether with scale gains, greater efficiency or complementarities.
In Brazil, the most recent example of a blend between companies is the holding resulting from the purchase of the importer Grand Cru by Evino. The first, founded in 1998 and specializing in premium wines, was controlled by the private equity fund Acqua Capital, and its CEO and executive was Alexandre Bratt — who now holds the same position at the holding company. The second, born as an e-commerce for accessible wines in 2013, has become the largest importer of labels from Italy, France and Spain in Brazil. “The two companies come out of this negotiation stronger because they are very complementary,” Bratt told DINHEIRO. “Evino is younger, has a reputation, an incredible portfolio in the entry-level segment and high competence in the digital environment, where it was born. Grand Cru is a little more traditional, with a network of 127 physical stores and a mature clientele,” he said.
For him, one of the great synergies that can come from this mixture is to accompany the customer from the moment he starts to like wines until he becomes a connoisseur. According to the executive, no one could do this before. “The companies that best served the initial customer lost him at some point to another, to which he became loyal after a certain stage of taste evolution”. Retaining the consumer throughout their entire journey will not be easy, but this is just one of the challenges that Bratt sees in his new role. At the helm of a business whose goal is to earn BRL 800 million by the end of this year, with 20 million bottles sold, he understands that he will have to dedicate a good part of his energy, time and knowledge to the integration of the two companies, which from from now they remain as brands. “For the end consumer, this integration doesn’t change anything. We will continue to maintain the positioning of each brand, which will be even clearer and more solid”, said Bratt. “The biggest work will be with the internal public. Make employees undress their Evino and Grand Cru clothes to wear those of the holding company. It is a cultural change that requires creating processes and routines in order to allow us to fully exploit these synergies”.
BRANDING With that in mind, the holding’s design created transversal business units (BUs). One of them is retail, which currently takes care of its own stores and Grand Cru franchises, but whose goal is to develop a physical model for the Evino brand. Another BU is digital, which accounts for more than 50% of the new company’s revenue, and whose mission is to take this expertise to Grand Cru. The third unit is B2B — the one that is likely to change the most. “It is the only one that will not carry the existing brands, as it makes less sense for me to arrive at a restaurant or supermarket with two salespeople and two catalogues”, said the CEO of the holding. “Right now we are defining how this catalog will be and the brand it will have”. A branding agency was hired to help with this definition, expected to be announced in March. “The holding brand will have to represent what we want to be and not what we are,” said Bratt. Among the company’s projects for the future are internationalization, which is still in its infancy, and the offer of more gourmet products, complementary to wine, such as pasta, sausages, cheeses and olive oils — as other importers do, such as La Pastina. and Flora House.
For Ari Gorenstein, co-founder of Evino alongside Marcos Leal, the holding represents a transformation of the Brazilian wine market. “We foresee a new look with bolder and more strategic paths, greater proximity to wineries, expansion of physical stores and customer segmentation”, he said.
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