YesMyWine Raises US$40 Million In Series C Financing

YesMyWine, a Shanghai based B2C membership site focusing on wines, has just announced raising US$40 miilion in a Series C financing led by Chengwei Capital. The vertical had raised over US$53 million since its launch in late 2008, US$3 million for the Series A by DCM and US$10 million for Series B led by Mandra Capital.

Yuan Jiang, YesMyWine chairman remarked that the funding would be applied to uplift customer experience, enhance warehousing and logistics services, improve online shopping process, as well as widen collections. And Liu Jun, YesMyWine CEO said most part of the funding would be used for stocking up and warehousing since unlike other goods, wine has higher requirements with respect to storage and transportation. YesMyWine had built two constant temperature and humidity warehouse in Beijing and Shanghai, amongst some regular warehouses in Chengdu and Guangzhou. Yuan Jiang once disclosed that cost of warehousing and transportation accounts for 14% of the vertical’s gross margin.

“We are planning to built more constant temp and humidity warehouses, abandon the supply on demand model, increase our stocks by ten times to make sure all orders get delivered in time. Besides, our Hong Kong subsidiary will reinforce overseas sourcing, direct procurements from French wineries, for instance.” Liu Jun, CEO of YesMyWine added. YesMyWine now has nearly 3.5 million customers, with a monthly sales volume of over RMB 10 million (US$ 1.5 million) and forecast sale volume of over RMB 200 million (US$ 30 million) in 2011.

JiuXian, YesMyWine’s competitor which founded in Sep. 2010, has also raised US$ 20 million last month. But differently, JIuXian operates a vertical site offering wine, white spirit, high-grade beer, wine set and so on. JiuXian plans to go public in 2014.

China displaced Japan in 2009 to become the largest Asian wine consumer. According to statistics by China Customs, the total import value of wine increased 70% last year.