In 2018, considering the needs of our users, we launched a crazy idea: a wine cellar that would know in real time how to manage my bottle inventory and could tell me which bottles I should drink first.
As Director of Product Development, with over 10 years' experience in the wine cellar sector with the market leader, this project was a real challenge and a fantastic opportunity to have fun with an unusual product and, above all, to develop a solution that was unique on the market.
To achieve this, we had to face many challenges and ask ourselves many questions. How could we offer our customers real-time inventory? How do we know when a bottle has been consumed? added to? when to enjoy it? All these questions are asked every day by our thousands of users. To provide them with the best possible solution, we worked with a number of partners, all of whom were French and local: in Angers, the electronic engineering and development company Eolane, the application developers Playmoweb and mechanical engineer Hubert Chevallier, in Nantes, the designers Foxdesign, and in Haleine, our supplier of Maherault racks
By combining our strengths we gave birth to a first prototype equipped with internal sensors able to detect the addition and removal of bottles, and tested public interest in this cellar 2.0 at the IFA 2018 trade show in Berlin. The result was unmistakable, with an exceptional reception from customers and journalists alike: "Finally, a connected product that serves a purpose ". It was this mantra that we heard throughout the show, and which spurred us on to take the plunge and create a new generation of connected wine cellar.
The development of the finished product mobilized our teams for just over two years. Once the technology had been imagined, it had to be fully developed, adapted to the specific features of the wine cellar and made intuitive for the end user. We had to overcome a number of challenges and sometimes change technical solutions along the way, causing delays in the launch. Offering high-performance technology and ensuring aesthetics and user intuitiveness were our biggest challenges.
Every feature that seems so simple is the fruit of hours and even days of thought and testing. Faced with our choices, we had to find ingenious solutions with our mechanical engineers to solve these successive puzzles. In fact, FRIO has filed several patents to protect the technical solutions used.
Awarded the "Grand prix de l'innovation d'Or 2022" at the Foire de Paris, our commitment to excellence was recognized - a real pleasure for our teams and partners.
The Ecellar is an illustration of our commitment to designing products to serve our users, while ensuring perfect conservation and tasting of their wines.
At La Sommelière, we're revolutionizing the wine cellar with ingenious functions, and we're constantly studying wine conservation and the evolution of our lifestyles to imagine the wine cellar of tomorrow, which must adapt to the demands of wine lovers thanks to simple, intuitive, innovative and aesthetic solutions.
Patricia PELTIER
Director of Product Development.