Wine merchant enjoys 30% increase in global business

Founded in 2017 by wine enthusiasts Timothy Chow and Anthony Yau, Hong Kong-based Two More Glasses has rapidly emerged as a leading fine wine and spirits e-retailer and importer across Asia Pacific.

With its mission to make quality, authentic wines more accessible to all, the company offers over 2,000 labels from family-owned vineyards all over the world. The company guarantees cost-efficient rapid delivery even for smaller order volumes that competitors shy away from, shipped tax-free to its customers globally. Through its deep partnerships with niche suppliers, Two More Glasses provides rare and well-curated varieties that more prominent retail players struggle to source. 

Two More Glasses has brick-and-mortar stores in Kwun Tong and Sheung Wan, in Hong Kong, and operates its eCommerce arm on the popular platform Woo (formerly WooCommerce) – which is available as an extension for Airwallex customers – and has expanded to Macau and Taiwan, with plans to grow further.

The company’s customer commitment and service excellence across its global operations guarantee cost-efficient rapid delivery even for smaller order volumes that competitors shy away from.

Glass half full: quenching the desire to grow global transaction volumes

As Two More Glasses experienced explosive demand growth from overseas buyers, managing cross-border transactions became a severe bottleneck that threatened to throttle further expansion plans. However, they are encountering below limiting factors:

• High wire transfer fees and unclear transaction status hindered the customer experience, especially internationally

• Payment approval delays caused inventory management confusion and cash flow unpredictability 

• Foreign exchange (FX) volatility eroded margins on global wine procurement activities 

Timothy Chow

Managing Director, Two More Glasses

“We had big dreams to be the premier online wine retailer across Asia Pacific, but our global ambitions were hitting a hard transaction ceiling. We desperately needed payment infrastructure to scale up, not hold us back.”

He continues: “Our homemade solution of traditional banks and payment providers was like duct-taping a bunch of leaky hoses together. As order intake grew, we kept springing major money leaks in the form of costs, delays and confusion until it was a huge problem.”

The perfect pairing: How Airwallex natively integrates with Woo 

After a lengthy search, Two More Glasses chose Airwallex’s cloud-based financial infrastructure to natively integrate to the e-retailer’s central nervous system – the Woo platform. Why Airwallex? Tim, who along with Anthony used to work in finance, says that it was not only the rates and pricing that appealed – it was Airwallex’s technical solution and excellent support service.

“Unlike other off-the-shelf payment service providers, Airwallex’s technical solutions are developed in-house, which is more comprehensive, as the developers can investigate and fix any problems directly, and quickly," Anthony says.

The impact on global business growth and finance efficiency has been dramatic. On the revenue side, Airwallex powers frictionless customer payments from 180+ countries through 160+ methods like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and an advanced local network. 

Anthony says that by using Airwallex, their global revenue has increased by 30% “because it is easier, faster and cheaper for overseas customers to pay us”. For example, now shoppers can pay Two More Glasses locally instead of using more costly SWIFT payments, which was previously the only option.

By leveraging Airwallex, FX volatility has been neutralised through low-cost currency exchange and transfers across many major currencies – reducing FX erosion of product margins by up to 5%, and reducing transfer fees by 25%. It amounts to $30,000 USD a year.

Happy hour: payments infrastructure for global scale

Centralising and automating reconciliation through the Airwallex platform has also recaptured numerous hours per week of precious finance team bandwidth previously wasted on manual payments admin. The Airwallex web app acts as a central hub for transaction reconciliation and cash flow planning and forecasting, while syncing back to the WooCommerce platform. Tim calculates that payment management time has been reduced by 50%, despite the increase in orders.  

Timothy Chow

Managing Director, Two More Glasses

“I can safely say that revolutionising our global payment infrastructure with Airwallex has fundamentally transformed and accelerated our global commerce ambitions. Plugging into Airwallex payments infrastructure was like upgrading from country roads to a global superhighway overnight.”

Anthony further reveals that Two More Glasses is looking to expand to new countries such as Singapore and Vietnam. Airwallex will help them pay and collect funds easily and save FX cost, Anthony states. He concludes: “We can now confidently scale volumes with reliability and speed as we bring amazing wines from all over the world to our growing customer base wherever they live.”