Sommsation
About the Company
Sommsation is an online marketplace that is modernizing the way people share experiences over wine by connecting independent wineries, wine experts, and wine enthusiasts.
Sommsation provides users direct access to world-class sommeliers and hard-to-find domestic wines delivered from the winery right to a user’s door. Sommsation also offers unique virtual tasting experiences and facilitates turnkey event planning for businesses and personal events.
Sommsation approached Remedy in 2021 soon after their founding. Initially, Sommsation wanted Remedy’s help building out an internal platform that automated the process of interfacing with wineries for partnerships.
After a few months, Sommsation decided to pivot and prioritize customer experience. Instead of the internal tool, they wanted to increase Remedy’s involvement to work on building out a custom external-facing website.
The Problem
The Solutions
"My teammates and I see Remedy’s team as an extension of our own and an extension of what we’re doing – that means they understand what our business is, understand the technologies we’re building in, and also understand the people. We’ve built personal relationships with both the leadership and every individual on the team."
Matt Hessinger
Chief Technology Officer
The Result
However, when the focus shifted to the external platform three months into the partnership, the Remedy team grew to 10 people, and the team began working as a fully integrated part of Sommsation.
As a full-time extension of Sommsation’s team, all key development features were assigned to Remedy, and Remedy became integral in all product strategy discussions.
Remedy built and launched the MVP of Sommsation’s online wine marketplace in one month. Since the launch, Remedy has continued to perform market research, update the platform’s UI/UX, and expand the shop’s functionalities with custom features.
At the beginning of the partnership, Remedy’s three-person team worked autonomously on the internal platform, building the product mostly independently from the Sommsation team.
Before the partnership, Sommsation’s external platform only offered virtual tastings and blog content. For the first year of the partnership, Remedy focused on building out the platform to include an online marketplace – known as the “wine shop” – to allow users to browse and check out curated wines for delivery directly from Sommsation’s site.
Remedy built and launched the MVP of the “wine shop” with a custom checkout feature in one month. The platform also complied with U.S. legal regulations for online alcohol sales.
Following the launch of the MVP, Remedy continued to make improvements to the marketplace. As Sommsation performed market research and built out their brand image, Remedy redesigned the UI/UX of the website accordingly. Remedy also streamlined the platform’s content management abilities, designed different blog options that could be managed from the contentstack, and released new features, including checkout promo codes and online gift cards.
As Sommsation grows, Remedy is currently working to expand the marketplace’s functionalities, focusing on upgrading the website’s custom checkout functionalities to allow Sommsation to expand their product offerings. Sommsation currently sells wines from various sellers and will expand to sell other food and beverage products that complement the wine. Remedy is building a new custom checkout feature that will allow users to purchase these various products in one transaction while automating the complicated internal money flow.
Beyond the technical partnership, Remedy and Sommsation have collaborated on events. To kick off cohort 2of Remedy’s scout program, Sommsation led the community through a virtual wine tasting. Sommsation collaborated with Remedy on a “Toast to the Community” NYC tech event, speaking on industry innovation in front of 80+ founders, investors, and operators.
