HYDRANT announced today the availability of a public beta version of the new VinCellar, a free, easy-to-use, web-based wine cellar management application offered by San Francisco based Vinfolio, Inc. the foremost fine wine and collector services company. Vinfolio tapped HYDRANT as its partner for the ground-up redesign of VinCellar which utilizes Web 2.0 technologies and adds a host of new features that make it the most sophisticated wine cellar management application in the world. Web-based and completely free, VinCellar (www.vincellar.com) offers more features and a better user experience than existing specialized software costing thousands of dollars.
Some key features of the VinCellar application:
- The ability to visually browse a collection by label image
- Inventory tracking and management of every bottle of wine in a collection across multiple storage locations
- Rapid filtering, sorting and searching to locate an individual bottle or group of wines that meet any number of criteria
- Integration of scores and reviews from top wine publications as well as the world's most comprehensive auction and retail pricing data for collection valuation
- Detailed analysis tools to evaluate a whole collection or a select group of wines based on any single or multiple pieces of data
- Tasting note authoring tools that allow users to create notes on their wines that can be shared with other users of VinCellar
"HYDRANT was instrumental in helping us deliver the ultimate cellar management experience for wine collectors," says Vinfolio founder and CEO Stephen Bachmann. "From the process of defining the customer experience to working with our team to design and execute that vision, HYDRANT has helped us deliver on our promise of 'Fine Wine and Finer Service.'"
Vinfolio chose HYDRANT as its partner for the project because of HYDRANT's expertise in designing complex web applications with great user interfaces and because HYDRANT's Founder and Principal, Alder Yarrow, brings significant wine industry knowledge to the table as a result of his award-winning wine blog, Vinography.Com.
"We always love the opportunity to design a best-in-class web experience from the ground up," says Yarrow, "but the chance to create a fantastic application for fellow wine lovers was a special treat." The project's many challenges included managing the incredible complexity of data management and manipulation required without overwhelming the user with a difficult-to-use interface.
The public beta of VinCellar represents the first of several releases for the application. Future enhancements will include added community functionality as well as multicurrency capability to support Vinfolio's launch in Hong Kong this fall.
About Vinfolio
Vinfolio is the foremost fine wine and collector services company serving wine lovers, enthusiasts and collectors worldwide. With an extensive selection of over 3,000 wines and a full complement of services and resources to find, buy, sell, manage and enjoy fine wine, Vinfolio delivers on its commitment to "fine wine, finer service." Founded in 2003 and headquartered in San Francisco, the company will open its Hong Kong operation in Fall 2008 to service the Asian wine market. For more information, visit www.vinfolio.com.
About HYDRANT
HYDRANT is a San Francisco-based strategy and design consulting firm that helps companies improve their customer experience. Using a proven methodology, HYDRANT helps its customers think about, design, and deploy multi-channel customer experiences that utilize interactive technology. HYDRANT provides strategy, information architecture, interaction design, visual and identity design services, as well as full technology development and implementation services for the web, mobile, desktop and physical environments. For more information, visit www.hydrantsf.com.
