An mobile phone App for Port Wine lovers

[JesperR]

We are a group of 4 port wine lovers, who are looking into developing an app/webpage just for Port Wine lovers.

The app will as a start have 3 main functions:

• A complete encyclopedia of all port wine ever produced, growing every year, which will contain all the information which we can find about each Port Wine, the price development for this Port Wine, based on prices entered by the users of the app. There will be notes about the Port Wine entered by the users of the app, if users has accepted to make their notes public.

• A cellar inventory system, private for each user, where the user can keep track of his/her collection of Port Wine, possibility for printing of inventory lists to be used e.g. for insurance purposes

• A market place where both private and commercial users can buy and sell Port Wine, but the app is NOT a shop.

The app will be tailored for Port Wine and only Port Wine.

A couple of future ideas is already on the drawing board, but we would appreciate inputs from this forum of Port Wine experts and lovers about what functionality you would be looking for in an Port Wine app, as we are open for implementing other features than the ones above to make it THE app for Port Wine.

We have no intention of making the app/webpage a forum for discussions about Port Wine, these should be kept in a forums like this and various FB groups.

You can see more about us on www.portfamly.com where from you can also access our crowdfunding campaign.

[slateshalehead]

This seems like an intriguing app, and one that I would probably use! A few initial thoughts:

What will distinguish your app's features from other more robust and established options, except for the focus solely on port wines? An encyclopedia of all port wines would in some ways be unique (at least as a web-accessible resource), but cellar inventory and market place apps are plentiful.

If you are not trying to create a forum or social media platform, how do you propose creating an "online community for amateur and professional enthusiasts, experts, and wine houses"?

Your Kickstarter page describes the app in such a way that it sounds more like a platform for commercial vendors trying to gain more/new eyes for their products, than it does a truly socially driven platform. Other than creating a "universal port database" for user reference and providing cellar tracking, what non-commercial activities is this app supporting? (e.g. port-based events calendar; a single point of connection with social media posts and news from all major port houses, distributors, and the IVDP; expert discussions and tutorials on various topics a la The School of Port; reading lists and a digital library of public domain port books/pamphlets/etc.)

Your Kickstarter is currently set to an all-or-nothing target of just under 256k GBP ($348k USD, 300k EUR, 2.237m DKK). Where is this money going? Surely the primary functions of the app itself are easily created using public codes (for a marketplace, an encyclopedia database, a user management system, a search engine, etc.) that would only require a bit of thematic harmonization and taxonomic scaffolding.

[JacobH]

Putting to one side the query about the target goal, I think the attempt to produce a “complete encyclopedia of all port wine ever produced” is going to be quite a big undertaking, verging on impossible. Julian (jdaw1) attempted to do this with Vintage Port to 1986 which took him years of primary research. I guess post-1986 you could probably rely on IVDP records, if they let you have them, but I am not sure it will be any easier to keep an accurate record of all the small shippers that have now cropped up. And getting an accurate list of non-Vintage Port would be surely impossible?

I suppose you could produce something that is “good enough” by relying on the public websites of the shippers and allowing users to add new Ports they find, but that would be somewhat distant from the aim.

[Glenn E.]

• A complete encyclopedia of all port wine ever produced, growing every year, which will contain all the information which we can find about each Port Wine, the price development for this Port Wine, based on prices entered by the users of the app. There will be notes about the Port Wine entered by the users of the app, if users has accepted to make their notes public.

As Jacob said, I think you are dramatically underestimating the difficulty of this feature. Even with years of research before publishing, Julian (jdaw1) already has a PDF addendum to Port Vintages providing an additional 42 pages of references, with more additions trickling in every year. And as the title might suggest, his book only covers Vintage Port - wood-aged Port could easily be a second volume of similar size, not to mention all of the Late Bottled Vintage Port that has been produced in the past 50-odd years (and, unofficially, longer than that).

That said, as ambitious as the project is I eagerly await the result.

[JesperR]

Thanks for your comments, very valuable.

And yes we are take on a big task we know, but we also know that when you want to eat an elephant you have to do it in small bites, so the completeness of the database might not ready day one but we will work hard to get closer to the goal as soon as possible and hopefully over time get to a complete state.

Regarding the amount we are trying to collect via crowdfunding, what is this going to be used for? 2 things after different fees and taxes has been paid:

- Building the platform (iOS App, Android App and the webpage) it will be using standard tools for developing these apps and webpage, but still it has a cost, when it is build from scratch by a professional SW house,
- Cover the cost of operation of the platform for the first 3-4 years. As we are offering 3 years membership to the ones who supports the project with money via kickstarter.com, all these users will generate zero income during the first 3 years the platform is running.

@slateshalehead, couple of the items you mentioned are already on the drawing board if we get the first part of the project funded, e.g. events listings, which of course will be searchable/filterable to find specifically what you are looking or in a specific area or...
Some of the other things you mentioned, is for sure some of the functionalities we will look into and see how that could be implemented in a later version of the platform.

We hope you will support the project As it is via Crowdfunding, only if the project is funded you will pay else your money is never withdrawn from your credit card

[jdaw1]

• How big is the market? That is, how many people collect Port and exclusively Port, such that they wouldn’t want a generic multi-wine app?

• Whence will come the data about Port wines? I’m confident the plan isn’t just to lift it from my book (which you do not have permission to do), so how will you obtain the promised elephant?

• The app seems mostly vanilla, and certainly a lot more vanilla than suggested by a €300k budget. What’s the money for? And, relatedly, why the “ambition is to build our solution from scratch”?

[winesecretary]

@jdaw1 - perhaps they're going to offer you most of that money for a licence to use your IP?

[DRT]

@jdaw1 - perhaps they're going to offer you most of that money for a licence to use your IP?

Or perhaps a 10% deposit to secure an option to buy the IP after a decade trying and failing to find anything better?

Having assisted JDAW in the early years of his research I can confirm that the IVDP will be no help whatsoever.

[MigSU]

I could see this coming from a mile away.

[nac]

Would also suggest that some/much of this functionality exists already within the WineOwners.com platform.

You might want to talk to them?

[flash_uk]

Jesper

This seems rather far fetched to me. Almost everything your app aims to achieve already exists today in other products, so you’re not really offering something new or groundbreaking. If I were tempted to think this concept had legs, and was considering funding the venture, I would be particularly interested in the capabilities of the people leading the venture. Yet when I try and discover this, I find nothing. No profiles/bios on the website you link to above, or on the funding platforms that website links to. Can’t find you on LinkedIn. Can’t find you contributing on any of the many port community websites and forums globally.

Why is this? Who are you?

[Alex Bridgeman]

I commend the idea and the concept, but there are already some very similar products being offered, tried and dropped. I once tried using Cellar Tracker, which offers most of what you are looking to develop. I gave up because it was just too much hassle.

I went back to my much more ordinary Excel spreadsheet. It does the job for me.

I’m really not convinced that there will be a big enough group of Port lovers willing to pay an annual membership fee to make the project viable. If others have already tried using Cellar Tracker (free of charge) and have given up on that it’s hard to see how a fee paying platform will succeed.

In the words of the Dragons, “I’m out.”

[JesperR]

Many thanks for all the additional thoughts. Great to get the external perspective such as reminding me us to share the ‘Who we are’ part of our story. So to answer that one first, we are a team of 4. Ole Stubbe, Thomas Thrane, are both well known within the Danish port wine community and then there is Søren H. Andersen and myself. Søren and I bring our strengths and experience in automation, software and tech to compliment Ole and Thomas.
jdaw you are 100% correct that our intention is not lift content from your book. Your book is an extensive volume of work of which we do not intend to be a competitor to. Our goal is to create a new product using technology to offer a solution for the Port wine community enabling timely updates. I hope that better explains who we are to those who were wondering. Your critical thinking and insights are invaluable to best understand the real needs of the community. At the moment our thinking is the encyclopedia part would be a free feature.
With our platform, our wish is to make it possible for the “experts” to spread their knowledge and show the rest of the world of port wine lovers both now and in the future.
So, getting back to my initial post: we would appreciate inputs from this forum of Port Wine experts and lovers about what functionality you would be looking for in a Port Wine app…

If you have a wish list we’d love to hear them, either here or you are welcome to write to me on email jera@portfamly.com. I’m now off to ask our web creator to add an ‘About us’ page to the website. Thank you for pointing that out.

[DRT]

A complete encyclopedia of all port wine ever produced, growing every year, which will contain all the information which we can find about each Port Wine

How do you plan to achieve this objective?

It seems to be critical to the uniqueness of your intended app but having witnessed the effort and frustration JDAW went through for over a decade to create a book covering one type of Port produced by some shippers over a finite range of vintages (which might amount to 5% of the production of the Douro region over that period) I struggle to imagine how you could possibly identify "all port wine ever produced".

Please say more about how you plan to do this as I think it is important information that potential investors should know.

[jdaw1]

Søren and I bring our strengths and experience in automation, software and tech to compliment Ole and Thomas.

Put yourself in the position of somebody who doesn’t know you. (OTINKYAAD.) Is this your first app? (Translation: are the investors paying €300k for you to attend app school?) If it isn’t your first app, show us the goodies. What others have you have written? I’m expecting multiple links to both Apple App Store and Google Play Store, describing what each app does, and a summary of the IT behind each. (What data base? What IDE? What what what?) Show goodies that would help strangers trust you with €300k.

• How big is the market? That is, how many people collect Port and exclusively Port, such that they wouldn’t want a generic multi-wine app?

This question does not disappear by being ignored. ¿How big is your market?

[JesperR]

@DRT,
Hard work, including research and collaborations with experts (which of course will be credited for their inputs) within different port communities as well as inputs from users of the app. As we are using an online system, nothing has to be set in stone from the beginning, we will always be able to update/add/delete information entered as we go along and get wiser. With an online system we will also be able to have the newest/best/most accurate information about each port available to the users at all times.

Yes it is an elephant, we know, so it has to be eaten one small bite at a time.

We are not going to write the app ourselves, but will contract a professional SW company, that have the skills to do these kind of jobs, hence why we are running a crowdfunding campaign.

Our market surveys and investigations is our IP, which we would not reveal here, but is the basis for our fee structure.

If you, or anyone else is interested in talking more about my original request then I'm more than happy to continue talking directly. Email address above. Thank you for the inputs to date.

[slateshalehead]

We are not going to write the app ourselves, but will contract a professional SW company, that have the skills to do these kind of jobs, hence why we are running a crowdfunding campaign.

If you are hiring outsiders to code the app, what are Soren and your roles in the project that require "strengths and experience in automation, software and tech to compliment Ole and Thomas"? It's one thing to ask a crowdfunding group to cover your personal expenses as you code the product yourself; asking a crowdfunding campaign to fund a software design company to build the app is another thing entirely.

That latter scenario, combined with the fact that the app is clearly designed to leverage the "port encyclopedia" to collect market data which is then used to set prices in a marketplace to create a captive audience for port sales subsidized by vendor subscriptions (in the vendors' hope that they will realize higher profits), removes any true sense that your team is interested in the community beyond for the purposes of market data collection.

All this leads me to my biggest question: who are your industry partners, and why aren't they capitalizing on the chance to put out a small sum in exchange for a piece of ownership in what (you assert) will become *the* port wine community online? Combined with jdaw1's (likely correct) implication that your customer market is too small to realize any true profits for yourselves (let alone your industry partners), the above makes me think that your market surveys (which at this point are your only true IP) have revealed less-than-convincing data.

[jdaw1]

For the record, KickStarter reports that

the pop-up explaining “Converted from €938 pledged of €300,000 goal”.