Wine Suite, the CRM and marketing software designed for the wine industry and developed by the start-up Divinea, has announced that it has received investment from the US fund Performant Capital, a US private equity firm specialising in technology companies, enabling Wine Suite to enter a new phase of growth. After investing in OrderPort, a leading provider of digital solutions for wine in the United States, in January 2025, Performant Capital has now expanded its international presence by acquiring a stake in Wine Suite. The aim is to bring together two complementary and innovative companies, OrderPort in the United States and Wine Suite in Europe, to create an integrated and scalable technology platform.
This collaboration aims to leverage expertise and knowledge of vertical realities in the wine and innovation sectors, bringing concrete growth in know-how and technology to the benefit of the entire Italian and European wine industry. “With Wine Suite, our CRM and marketing software dedicated to wineries, we started out inspired by US models, where direct-to-consumer is the main channel for wine sales,” comments Matteo Ranghetti, co-founder, in a statement. Today, we are extremely proud to see our company join forces with a leader in the American market. This milestone recognises the progress we have made and opens the door to a new phase of even more ambitious growth. We are excited to collaborate with the teams at OrderPort and Performant Capital to create the global all-in-one solution for the wine industry.
Performant Capital’s investment gives Wine Suite renewed financial capacity, enabling it to significantly accelerate towards achieving its growth and development objectives in its target market. In addition to providing financial momentum, the investment places Wine Suite at the centre of an ambitious global initiative in the field of wine technology. But that’s not all. Demonstrating their confidence in Wine Suite’s long-term vision, the company’s founders remain operational and highly motivated to build a solid and sustainable future for the project. Furthermore, the industrial investors who have supported Wine Suite since its inception have also chosen to remain partners. These include Le Tenute del Leone Alato di Generali, Alessandro and Sebastiano Marzotto for Herita Marzotto Wine Estate, and the Gussalli Beretta family for Agricola Gussalli Beretta.
“This significant investment underscores our commitment to supporting founder-led companies that have developed essential software solutions, where Performant Capital’s operational expertise can help unlock future growth potential,” said Michael Ciaglia, partner at Performant Capital. “We are excited to partner with the Wine Suite team as a strategic partner and support their continued development across Europe.”
In recent years, Wine Suite has consolidated its position in the CRM and marketing solutions sector for Italian wine companies. Now, with its technologies and expertise in direct-to-consumer, it is ready to scale its business in Europe.
“The investment in Wine Suite represents Performant Capital’s first European investment. After evaluating several companies on the continent, they chose to focus on us. Although they usually invest in companies with a turnover of around €2 million (higher than ours), they were impressed by the solidity with which we operate and the motivation of our team, elements that made the difference in their decision,” Filippo Galanti, co-founder of Wine Suite, told Startupbusiness. Our company is growing in contrast to the global wine market, which is currently in decline due to tariffs and complex international dynamics. Wine Suite, as a technological solution dedicated to direct sales, has recorded steady growth: in the first half of 2025, turnover increased by 50% compared to the same period last year. We aim to close the year by reaching the milestone of one million euros by the end of 2025. Performant has invested heavily in enhancing management, creating the conditions for us to work with resources, salary conditions and benefits well above the Italian average. For this reason, future plans are mainly linked to the internalisation of Wine Suite. We have planned an initial phase of integration between some OrderPort features for the US market and those that our wineries have been requesting for some time, such as the Wine Club, the loyalty programme and a digital cash register system. At the same time, we will begin to look at wineries outside Italy. For several weeks now, we have been actively collaborating with partners in Croatia and Switzerland, which has allowed us to validate the solution outside Italy. Performant’s financial contribution and integration with OrderPort’s features will allow us to target the most relevant markets in Europe, such as France, Spain, and Portugal, in 2026.
Over the years, Wine Suite has built a sustainable business model based on CRM and marketing software that has become an essential solution chosen by over 500 Italian wineries with the ambition of increasing visitor flow to their cellars and improving direct sales. This system has enabled them, thanks to a real understanding of the end consumer, to promote wine, winery tourism and, more generally, Italian products around the world, focusing on the uniqueness of each winery in the different wine-producing regions. These objectives are now set to grow exponentially thanks to new investments and renewed financial resources.
The amount of the transaction has not been disclosed, but the shareholders who invested in previous rounds and exited following the entry of Performant Capital obtained a return on their initial investment of approximately 3.4 times. Among them are private investors such as Veronica Mariani, Mattia Riva and Nicolò Mascheroni Stianti (owner of Castello di Volpaia and, to date, representative of the industrial shareholders who remain in the company as mentioned above), Gianluca Cocco and Carlo Rossi Chauvenet, all investors who have backed the project since its inception. The two founders, Ranghetti and Galanti, remain shareholders, having sold only half of their shares, and members of the board of directors. (The image shows the founders together with incoming and outgoing shareholders following the signing of the deal.)
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