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Majestic accelerates fine wine push
d=”standfirst”>An e-alert last week offering Majestic’s 400,000 strong online customer base a selection of Lay & Wheeler library stock was the first indication of the multiple specialists’ ambitious fine wine plans post its acquisition of the well-known merchant and broker in March this year.
“Lay & Wheeler is now part of Majestic Wine PLC and we are aiming for wider audience for it [L&W] in the long run,” Jeremy Palmer, MD at Lay & Wheeler told the drinks business.
“We are delighted to be offering Majestic customers a rare opportunity to purchase older vintages of some top wines selected from Lay & Wheeler’s impressive library stocks,” it was noted in the newsletter sent out at the end of last week to Majestic customers who have registered their details on the company’s website.
“We’ve transferred much of the stock in this parcel to Majestic’s Fine Wine Centre in St. John’s Wood, from where it can be specially distributed to your local Majestic store to cover orders placed online,” the e-alert continued, before listing some of the wines on offer, including a Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru 2006 from Jean Grivot, at £60.00.
Palmer, further explaining the retail group’s fine wine plans said, “My first job has been to streamline the Lay & Wheeler business and the next stage is to get Lay & Wheeler working in tandem with Majestic.
“Last week’s email was the first step,” he continued. “Lay & Wheeler have a great library store – older vintages of wine that are quietly getting better, and that can be fed into the Majestic range. We can offer great prices and still get good margins on them,” he added.
Palmer also believes the two businesses are complementary. “Majestic has been working increasingly on fine wine over the last few years and while the turnover on fine wine has become quite significant we got to a stage where we wanted to take it to the next level,” explained Palmer.
“Majestic is about buying wine and taking it home to drink, but fine wine is also about storage, and in particular storage in bond. Majestic did not offer these facilities so it was a case of either introducing them or acquiring a specialist in that area,” he said, adding, “and 87% of Lay & Wheeler business is done in bond, so that’s entirely complementary to Majestic.”
Further, he pointed out that while Lay & Wheeler’s sales centre on “grand cru classés and top blue chip wines from everywhere, Majestic’s fine wine sales are mostly at the drinking end, £20 to £30.”
Nevertheless, he stressed, “At Majestic, there is a pent up demand for good quality wine and now our database of 400,000 people don’t have to go to a competitor to lay down wine – and we expect the Majestic customer to access Lay & Wheeler broking facilities.”
Finally, Palmer said that Majestic customers could expect another parcel of Lay & Wheeler stock to be offered pre-Christmas.
27.08.09, Patrick Schmitt