For a year, Ana Gómez has dedicated all her energies to ‘Perfectanino’, an online platform to share experiences from the world of wine. “What I intend – Ana says – is to put wineries and sommeliers in contact with people who want to have a cultural or tourist experience related to vineyards or wines. I want it to be a platform for the promotion of tours in wineries, tastings and pairings in surprising places”.
The business is in an initial phase, in which Ana promotes the idea among the sector’s businesses in order to add the maximum quality experiences to the platform. At the moment, the market in which it moves is Mallorca, but its idea is to expand throughout the Peninsula and even Europe.
Perfectanino is a social platform in the world of wine in which experts and amateurs get in touch to share a bottle of wine, a course or a tour of the vineyards of a beautiful winery.
Ana shares her knowledge of wine on the blog https://www.vinetur.com/perfectanino and has already started offering events from Instagram, a network with more than 10,000 followers. When the Perfectanino website is fully operational, all kinds of experiences related to the world of wine can be reserved (tours in wineries, tastings and events, and courses carried out by winemakers and sommeliers).
In search of the perfect tannin
Ana studied Chemistry, Biochemistry and specialized in Enology. She started two other business projects at the age of 32, even though they were recognized in local entrepreneurship competitions they didn´t go through: one, in 2012 on reusable packaging and another, more recent on personalized diets online. Her passion for wine and her knowledge in digital marketing, led her to consider the Airbnb of wine, but not in the sense of buying and selling bottles, moreover as vital experiences related to this sector. ‘I realized that there are many platforms to promote certain products, but I did not find any that would bring a sommelier to your place and or why not? I started working on the idea while I was employed in a Mallorcan winery but my project began to grow and absorbed all my time. So now I am a freelancer on my own and my goal is to make Perfectanino become successful’.
The key to mentoring the project
Through the Chamber of Commerce of Mallorca, the young entrepreneur has participated in the European project TouriSMEshare, in which collaborative economy companies in the tourism-cultural field were sought, under the double objective of analyzing its operation and helping with the consolidation. Thanks to this project, Perfectanino has received the consultancy services of the collaborative expert startup Pako Rodríguez, who after two individualized work sessions has given her important advice in order to improve the initiative business plan: ‘It has been a very positive experience for me. He explained everything related to financing and most importantly, it took away my fear of financing the project on a larger scale, in order to make the leap and turn it into a profitable business’.
Perfectanino, in addition, was chosen, together with Yoomers and Driveando, as one of the companies representing the collaborative economy of the tourism-cultural sector in Spain to participate in the final TouriSMEshare event in Rome last November. ‘Attending this event has been a great opportunity for me: in addition to sharing experiences with other digital collaborative platforms across Europe, I have been able to meet several Italian wineries interested in my project and I have already made the decision to start opening Perfectanino to the European market , starting with Italy’.
Thanks to TouriSMEshare, Perfectanino has also received a free innovation diagnosis and internationalization advisory services from the Chamber of Commerce from the Bit Foundation. Its commercial profile is now on the platform of the Enterprise Europe Network, the European network from which companies from all over the continent are contacted to establish synergies and collaborations.
Ana and her project have already crossed the borders of the Island. As a result of one of the meetings in Italy with a partner of the EEN Canarias network, the young entrepreneur has been able to take advantage of the Erasmus project for Young Entrepreneurs, which will enable her to professionally be part of other European cities.