We recently heard about BODEGA43 and realized how important constant temperatures for preserving bottles of wine is to connoisseurs. We caught up with Roger Kolenbrander, co-owner of BODEGA43. He tells knowitall about his product.
Why did you start? What has been the inspiration?
Out of love and passion for wine. I have been in the wine business for 25 years, always missing a wine cellar at home. The idea came up, after leaving the wine business, when we could take over a very small Dutch company for wine coolers.
We started to design our own wine coolers under the name BODEGA43. It started for fun and to finally have a good wine cellar for private use. At that time it was not meant to be set up as a big international company like it is now, but due to already existing international experience in another job, soon after starting in The Netherlands, we decided to expand to Germany. After that followed Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Israel and now most of the European countries, like Switzerland with weinkuehlschrankshop.ch.
What is the biggest obstacle you have had to overcome?
Initially the production. We were growing so fast that for the first few years, we could not produce the quantity we were selling. Now the biggest challenge is to handle the technical part of all the websites we manage.
What are your plans for the future?
BODEGA43 is one of the few wine cooler companies that has a Europe-wide selling and distribution network. Since our concept is very easy scalable, we are not limited to the European market.
What is your favorite product you offer and why?
Our spacious BODEGA43-180 for 180 bottles, is my favorite wine cooler. No matter whether you are a starting wine enthusiast with a few bottles or an experienced wine lover, if you buy a wine cooler, you almost always buy it too small. With the B43180 model, you don’t face that problem so quickly, but if you do, it is easy to put another one next to it, at least if your wife does not protest, and it will look like 1 big BODEGA43.
BODEGA43 in fact is very simple to use. Personally, I completely dislike buttons that have more than one function. It makes me confused and nervous. Every time I need that button, I have the feeling I need to find out the functioning again. Mainly for that reason, BODEGA43 does not use an app so that you can communicate with your wine cooler when you are on holidays. Once you enter your preferred settings, you don’t need to touch anything anymore on your BODEGA43. When you are on holidays and there is a power cut, it only can make you nervous to notice that from your holiday location. Wine is strong enough to survive 2 weeks in circumstances that are different than what you had in mind as your ideal temperature. I don’t want to say that we will never design an app for our wine coolers, especially when the market asks for it, but for me it is a toy that only takes your attention when you are not there, without any useful advantage.
Anything else you think our readers would like to know
BODEGA43 offers 3 years of warranty, more than most wine cooler brands. For us, warranty is a proof of confidence in your own product.
BODEGA43 is continuous improving their products. Nowadays it is difficult to design 2 zone wine coolers in an energy class better than G. We recently launched the B4364F model that saves 30% of energy and has achieved energy certificate F. The B4340F and B43180F will follow in the beginning of 2024. For sure competitors will follow, but for now BODEGA43 is pretty unique with 2 temperature zone wine coolers in energy class F.
A few clients have said the following comments
"The unit is superbly finished and looks great. The service from BODEGA43 is very good - you can always find a competent contact person!"
"Everything as described, great handling, great product, highly recommended."
"For the money.... TOP product! Great design."
BODEGA43
https://weinkuehlschrankshop.ch
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Write to Roger that the above email for more information.
