Entrepreneur

Specialty retail, Italian wine craft, and a family business story that started in 1978 — still running today.

Ongoing

The Italian Wine Depot

Online shop for Italian wines. CEO, administration, marketing, purchasing, development — and everything else that keeps a specialty retailer alive.

gerardo.de
Heritage

45 Years of History

1978–today — the story of family, company, and craft. A milestone blog chronicles decades of change in specialty wine retail.

Company history
Technology

Custom E-Commerce

Not Shopify or WooCommerce — a bespoke PHP platform built and maintained in-house. Full control over features, integrations, and economics.

See Coder section

Unity 3d Asset Development

Side business

Unity Asset Store

5+ years building and supporting Unity3d packages in C# — networking, feature implementation, and production-ready game assets. A side business alongside the wine shop: design, code, document, and maintain tools other developers can plug into their projects.

OpenMMO Groundwork

State-certified commercial assistant, IT manager for new media, and sommelier-adjacent craft — wine is both livelihood and genuine interest. The shop is also my primary social outlet: customers who stay to discuss life, politics, philosophy, and technology.