Who’d buy a wine shop? I wouldn’t. Supermarkets now account for eight out of 10 bottles sold and independents simply can’t compete on price.
To succeed you have to have a great range and decent customer service. Unfortunately Threshers-owner First Quench were lacking in both departments. I popped into my local Thresher this week before it finally collapsed and quite frankly, I couldn’t see an interesting wine in the place. It was all branded wines and in a specialist at higher prices than the multiples, it just didn’t cut the mustard.
So, now we have the inevitable news that more redundancies are on the cards for the wine industry. 81 have gone today and more are likely to follow. The industry has already been flooded with people laid off from their wine jobs. Things have gotten so bad that a small independent retailer in Sussex told me he’d had more than 600 applications for an assistant manager job in his shop, with ex-Constellation staff filling his inbox with their CVs.
The administrators KPMG are still unsure what’s happening next. They’ve said they’d like to sell the whole portfolio off in one fell swoop including Threshers, Wine Rack, Haddows, The Local but you’d have to be a madman to buy them. They no longer have any brand equity and I can only see them being sold off bit by bit.
Independents are succeeding – take The Sampler in Islington or Taurus Wines for example – they offer customers an interesting selection and make you feel like you are valued. It’s sad news about First Quench but you can’t help feeling it was their own fault.
Hopefully Oddbins will pull themselves out of the red in the next year to keep the high street wine retailers alive. They are doing the right things and it’s their press tasting next week. I’ll let you know if their wine range is up to much after I’ve swirled and spitted.
Have a good and wine-filled weekend.
