Fullstop for Winestop

In the week that Wine Planet, Australia's leading wine Internet site, has gone live in the UK, wineStop.com has become the first casualty among Britain's growing band of wine e-tailers. WineStop has been forced to cease trading due to the withdrawal of its major backer, e-commerce incubator, ci4net.com. The company is currently in the process of selling off its assets, of which 750 pages of original editorial are the most important. The content-led site, which promised to "be entertaining, user-friendly, informative and continually updated" was launched last year by managing director and founder, Alona MacKay, a former advertising operations manager for Yahoo! Europe. WineStop was principally a Web magazine, but was planning to develop wine sales through links with wholesalers. As well as MacKay, wineStop's management team consisted of journalist and former WINE magazine editor Susan Low and business development manager Patrick Rosin, a former business manager at Thomas Peatling. At the time of writing, the company's website, wineStop.co.uk, was still live.