“I like to think about the business model; I’m that kind of person,” says Lam, who got into the wine trading business in 2008 when the Hong Kong government abolished duties on wine. “All along, I wasn’t just focusing on wine trading. I could see the pain point; I could see how inefficient and fragmented the wine buying experience was.”

Lam’s solution was to create a peer-to-peer wine trading network. Sellers can upload a list of their inventory and set their own prices, which are then displayed anonymously except for the physical location of the wine. Once a transaction is made, the seller delivers the wine to WWX in exchange for payment. 

“Our differentiation as a platform and not an e-commerce company or online wine merchant is that we provide you the largest variety of wines,” Lam says. “A wine vendor can give you a certain number of producers they carry in stock but as a platform we are actually helping these wine merchants and even some private collectors with physical stock to sell their wines. We're trying to facilitate or channel sales to these merchants by connecting them with buyers.”

Lam compares it to a marketplace for stocks or a platform such as hotels.com, whereby different agencies may offer the same room but at varying rates. “The uniqueness of the wine is that they are physical assets, but in different locations,” she says. “We want to connect all of the available offers into a platform so that everyone can have more transparency.”  

That transparency extends to the provenance and handling of the wine, with WWX selling and shipping only by the case in original packaging. Buyers can opt for direct delivery in Hong Kong or Singapore, for the time being, or have the wine stored in WWX’s Hong Kong, London or Bordeaux warehouses or another European bonded warehouse. 

Besides buying, selling and transporting wine, Lam created WWX with an eye to wine as an investment. “Our belief is that wine is not just a liquid pleasure, it’s a liquid asset,” she says. “We do see similarities with stocks. We’re trying to serve our customers like the banks serve their private customers, by giving them more personalised data on our platform.”

Besides tracking market prices from established merchants in the UK, France, Singapore and Hong Kong, WWX monitors everything from published reviews and ratings to tasting notes and drinking windows. 

It also helps to evaluate and manage collectors’ portfolios. “We have clients who buy a lot of wine and store all the purchasing records in an Excel [spreadsheet],” Lam says. “So one of our other business propositions is to provide valuation for these. The wine portfolio provides an insight into the total valuation, how many cases of wine and how many bottles, the valuation over time, and also whether the wines are bought in different currencies.” 

For Lam, who aims to add even greater functionality to the site and eventually connect all the major players in the global wine industry, this is just the beginning. “As a start-up, I think we’re ambitious. Our ambition is really to go global because you can see where our business model is scalable,” she says. “We're a platform that facilitates only in wine. We’re very specialised in this one product because wine itself is already fascinating.” 

Start-up Express is organised by HKTDC and supported by Strategic Partner, AMTD Group. The programme targets start-ups with products or services suitable for mass consumer market, as well as with strong desire to enter the international market. Through a series of capability building, mentoring sessions and marketing activities, the programme aims to assist Hong Kong start-ups in building connection, exploring markets, seeking partners and enhancing brand awareness. For more details: please click here.