Wine Societies is a unique online wine marketplace that provides wine collectors all over the world a reverse sales channel to monetize their vintage wine collections, without having to consign the wine to an auction house. Buyers of the vintage wine are licensed wine retailers, wholesalers and wineries. Sellers are in complete control of the price and time-frame of the auction process, without having to give up possession of their wine before a committed buyer is found.

We also provide downstream sales channels for wineries to sell wine to wholesalers and wholesalers to sell to retailers.

The site's verification algorithm ensures that transactions happen only between authorized parties and conform to State and Federal laws.

The site has several community and networking features to promote member interaction, information exchange and user stickiness.

There are two revenue streams.

1. Commissions from e-commerce transactions.

2. Fees from Classifieds postings and Advertisements.

- Sellers of wine on Wine Societies have complete control over the price and time-frame of the sale/auction process, as opposed to traditional wine auction houses, where the wine has to first be consigned.

- Most wine auction houses cater to large collections. Individual collectors wanting to sell/auction a few bottles will not find it cost-effective to consign and ship their wine to an auction house, in order to have it sold. The Wine Societies Marketplace provides a much more cost-effective solution, where sellers can keep possession of their wine till a committed buyer is found. They can then ship the wine directly to the buyer.

- The Wine Societies platform provides the most comprehensive set of social interaction and community features of any wine 2.0 website. These features enhance member loyalty and stickiness.

Raj Ramamurti  - Founder & CEO

- 17 years in the high-tech industry, in semiconductor and systems development

- Entrepreneur - Founder of Wine Societies (June 2006)

- University of Pennsylvania, May 1992 - B.S. E.E. (Moore School of EE), B.S. Econ./Entrepreneurship (Wharton School of Business)

- wine lover and wine culture enthusiast for many, many years.

- U.S Patent filing: Application # 11/607,202 - "A Method and/or a system for value analysis and value added concoction of a beverage in a network environment of the beverage."

Patent Applications

1. Collection of opinion data from the Wine Societies community, both interactively and through the site's data mining tools. This opinion data can be used to determine the auction/sale price of vintage wine.

2. Usage of member history on the site by wine merchants to selectively advertise products and services to members.