London’s Brixton is known for its Caribbean flavour but a little bit of Kiwi seasoning is about to be peppered a stone’s throw from Electric Avenue, made famous by Eddy Grant.
North Shore girl Mel Brown will be opening a pop-up New Zealand wine store in a new development in the centre of Brixton after raising £42,502 through crowdfunding.
Mel owns The New Zealand Cellar, until now an online-only business. She launched the Kickstarter campaign to raise £35,000 to open the store-cum-bar in the ‘Pop Brixton’ development. She reached her target within five days and three hours, and the pledges kept on coming – and that’s largely due to the generosity of the New Zealand wine industry.
“Most of the pledges were given by the the New Zealand wine industry. The reality is the UK market is extremely developed, however the difficulties to succeed in this market as a premium producer is solely based on the efforts of the importers and distributors. Small to medium premium NZ producers so often get overlooked and lost on large portfolios and aren’t given the support and encouragement deserved,” Mel told me.
“I believe they felt this was a great investment for the awareness of not only their individual brands but the entire NZ wine industry.”
Social media also played a hand in her success with more than 10 percent of the referral traffic to the donating page coming from Facebook and 7 percent from Twitter. The average pledge was £219.
It also has a licence so instead of going to the DogStar bar, which can be a bit grimy, you can go upmarket and have a glass or bottle of wine at the store. The development’s late licence and event space also offer tasting and event opportunities that Kiwi winemakers and wineries can use when they visit London.
