Can crowdfunding promote innovation in the wine industry?

Abstract

In this paper, we study three leading crowdfunding platforms specific to the wine industry and analyse how these platforms have opened up new channels of innovation in viticulture financing needs and the promotion of consumer-winemaker engagement. The platforms include Cruzu from the USA, Fundovino from France and Naked Wines headquartered in the UK. We also study the challenges winemakers face, and how crowdfunding helps mitigate these issues. We found that crowdfunding can be a viable means to bridge the financing obstacles that exist for bootstrapped projects or those that are unable to obtain support from traditional financing sources such as banks. We manually collected data from these platforms to highlight how innovation has been fostered via crowdfunding. We further demonstrate that improved engagement levels between consumers and producers create a win-win scenario for everyone.