The Creation of an E-commerce Startup

As one of the biggest beer brands in the world, Heineken sees opportunities to capitalise on the growth in e-commerce and the rise of small-scale, specialist brewers. The two ambitions come together in the form of a new startup, Beerwulf: a platform to connect beer brewers with beer drinkers.

The idea behind Beerwulf is to combine the rapid growth and interest in special beers with the opportunities offered by e-commerce. To help them, the Beerwulf team asks Valtech to help with the UX, design, digital marketing, analytics and overall development of the platform. 

The ambitions are high: to build the biggest and best beer platform in Europe; a platform with brewers and beer lovers at its heart. Seeing the potential, HEINEKEN gets behind the idea and, as the only investor, makes a financial commitment to Beerwulf B.V. Less than 17 weeks later, the site, running on the Optimizely platform together with inriver PIM, went live. Before the end of 2017, it was rolled out across multiple European countries.

In three months, we have set up Beerwulf, a new company, and brought together a new team of beer and e-commerce experts. Thanks to our partnership and the exceptional collaboration with Valtech, we have been able to set up a web shop for special beers where beer brewers and beer lovers can come together. Thanks to having opened our doors quickly, we are able to learn fast and push through improvements on a continuous basis.

Hans Böhm, Managing Director Beerwulf.com

The new beer platform offers a focused but strong local, national and international assortment. The goal is to introduce as many people as possible to the growing choice of special beers. Beerwulf.com therefore features stories about the various beers and their brewers, and interviews with beer lovers and beer experts.

You can talk endlessly about startups – and that is what a lot of corporates do – but just starting like this is very unusual. It demands the utmost from the Beerwulf and Valtech team, and the relationship goes much further than is usual a client.

Freek Bijl, CSO Valtech