When all is said and done running a successful wine distribution and merchants business comes down to how well you can do the day job. Or in other words how good are you at importing, distributing and selling your wine so that it arrives in full, on time and in the right place.
In terms of on-trade demands Lucie Parker says what Jeroboams customers are looking for is “consistency” not just in the wine they get, but also the service levels and the people they are dealing with - all the touch points they have with the business.
“All those areas have become just as important as product now,” says Parker.
Matt Tipping is confident Jeroboams now has the right team and strategy in place for each side of its business across retail, on-trade, independent wine merchants and private clients
Matt Tipping believes the customer service side of things has always been a “strength” of Jeroboams - you only need to look at the fact it has had customers going back 15 to 20 years to appreciate that.
“That can only come from service levels and that continuity in terms of staff is very important. It is the small things that make the biggest differences,” adds Tipping.
The fact there is also so much experience within the trade team itself is also important, adds Parker. “That stands for a lot as well. You are their go-to person because they can trust and rely on you.”
The fact it has spent the last two years working hard on refining its on-trade portfolio - including switching to an exclusive agency model – means that there are now more reasons than ever to work with Jeroboams and “new things to discover and add to their (your) list,” she adds.
“Most people are looking for really good value wines that taste great, always deliver and a supplier that does not let them down on invoicing and delivery..”
It’s also important, stresses Tipping, that if things do go wrong, Jeroboams is well placed to get the problem sorted as quickly as possible.
It’s also why it’s proud of its long-standing, 20-plus year relationship with logistics provider, London City Bond (LCB), that it can rely on to get its wines in the right place at the right time to its customers.
“They do an amazing job for us,” says Parker. “We have a very strong relationship with them and it’s a nice way of working. We also have touch points with them across different parts of our business; we use its private client storage as well as their services across all our core trade wines.”.”
It is also set to release in the autumn a dedicated retail website for trade orders supported by a dedicated LCB warehouse.
“You need a really good partner and with LCB you get that when you invest your time and effort in your relationship with them and knowing when to call a favour and when not to,” adds Tipping.
Managing expectations
Lucie Parker says it is great to be working so closely with its exclusive producer partners to get the right strategy for them in the UK
Running an exclusive agency model also means you have to be geared up to respond and live up to your producers’ expectations, says Parker.
“The more exclusive agencies you have the more demands you get from your producers about where they want to be so there is always that element of keeping producers happy and balancing that with the business needs as well,” she explains.
That is where Jeroboams has really been able to turn the dial for its producers in getting their wines sold in a wider network of premium bars, restaurants and pubs.
Which in turn puts greater focus and pressure on their trade team to make sure it is concentrating its efforts on those on-trade outlets and operators where consumers are really wanting to spend their hard-earned money - particularly in these cash-strapped days where the number of dining out occasions is in decline.
Which again reinforces Jeroboams’ decision to go down the exclusive agency route.
“We have got these wines that you can’t get anywhere else and that is what makes us interesting,” says Parker.
To help deliver the sales it needs, the trade team is divided into a few core areas with one person looking after large corporate and national accounts, another managing its gastro pub customers and then a trade team that is London on-trade focused.
It is important, says Tipping, for the team to develop their own specialist knowledge in key areas of the trade and by “type of business”.
Corporate push
Jeroboams is keen to build wider contacts and customers amongst indepdent wine merchants and the on-trade
On the corporate side it has long had good relationships in the cruise ship and airline sectors - and is now the preferred supplier for Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class and Clubhouse - which might be a surprise to some of its peers and customers.
Tipping says its relationships supplying cruise ships goes back to the early 2000s.
“With those type of contracts, you need to make people’s lives easy and you do that by doing what you say you are going to do (and sorting it out quickly if things do wrong.) It’s simple in that sense,” he says. “There is also good quality wine going in there now and it is a point of difference for them.”
Which is why it has also had great success with the contract caterers as it can be super flexible in terms of supplying last minute bottles to an event from its network of stores.
“That flexibility has been wonderful for them,” says Parker.
It is also where the customer training support it can provide is very important, adds Tipping - pointing to the level, for example, of training it gives to Virgin Atlantic and its staff.
Crunching the detail
The foundations have been very much built for Jeroboams’ next stage of development, but it will be continuing to add extra services for its customers as the trading situation evolves. It is looking, for example, to be able to provide more sales and analysis data and information to its customers where it can.
“We are definitely in that world where five or six things add up to make a bigger difference,” says Tipping. “If it was about one big thing, you would have done it already. It’s about detail and having systems available that can provide your customers with more of that detail, so your sales team is freed up to do things that they are good at which is the people bit. You try and get the systems to support everything behind it in terms of getting the right data in.”
Jeroboams retail operation provides the ideal opportunity for its producer partners to introduce more of their wines to the UK
So, we can expect to see more resource going into the level of detail it can access, update and analyse across all its wines and not just its core range.
But he is also keen to stress that when it comes to investing in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems “we are at a size where people are still key” but it is an area it will need to invest three or four years down the line - in systems that can hold all its data together.
“CRM can be a step backwards when your business is built around people unless it is very well designed and works to cut down the noise and allow your people to do their jobs better and, for me, that is about getting data into one place so there is one view for them. Rather than a CRM system that would go out and segment all our customers - that is not how we would use it,” he explains.
“This is about using systems to allow us to do what we already do, but do them better - not to make us big and faceless. But it is on the horizon as we want our team to spend more time outwardly with their customers and less time organising things.”
“We don’t want to run people into a bunch of robots, like using automated emails, this industry does not lend well to that,” adds Parker.
It is the same with its trade ordering process, its customers have said they would rather be able to call up and speak to someone rather than use an online ordering system as any tweaks or alternations to their order, be it out of stocks or vintage changes can be dealt with at the time of ordering, she says.
But equally, she says, as a business it must respond to all the outward pressures that are now affecting the industry like calculating individual alcohol duty rates and know all our bottle weights to comply with EPR.
People first
Jeroboams has been working hard to get out and visit its exclusive producer partners
The people within Jeroboams is a theme that both Tipping and Parker come back to time and again during our conversation. Having a people-first strategy is very important to the business, says Tipping.
“Our staff retention is better than it has ever been,” he says which is good news for the whole company in terms of the service and support it can provide its customers across all three sides of the business.
“From a customer’s perspective they have a familiar face for much longer and internally it allows us to look forward and work, plan and complete longer term projects rather than constantly on-boarding people. It is moving into a much more virtuous cycle.”
A key factor in that is the work it does with The Drinks Trust and in particular its Business Advisory Programme which is a service that Jeroboams,along with a number of other drinks companies, including Davys and Hatch Mansfield, have helped The Drinks Trust set up and implement.
A programme that has been specifically designed to support businesses and particularly middle managers and “help us and others create supportive working environments that would either stop crises happening or give people better skills to deal with them”.
As a result, The Drinks Trust and the trade have been able to pull together a website that is full of health and well-being advice and best practice support. A resource Jeroboams’ wellbeing champions and managers can access for themselves and their team.
As more businesses in the trade have signed up and supported the programme, it has led to holding quarterly meetings where all the stakeholder companies can come together and share ideas and experiences and see what else they can do together.
All with the goal of “championing best practice within the industry” and “not preaching downwards but creating something that is accessible to all merchants that sign up,” says Tipping.
Jeroboams is working closely with The Drinks Trust to provide its staff with all the help and support they need
“The Drinks Trust has been amazing in pulling this together,” adds Tipping and there are now steps underway to see how the programme could be extended to the wider trade and how it can provide more business and HR people support.
“Effectively, it helps me as a boss to access best practice research and understand what other companies are going through and look to create a very supportive working environment where wellbeing and wellness is talked about and prioritised,” he explains.
"For Jeroboams, as a family business not only does it allow us to ensurewe are looking after our team the way we should, but also, from a commercial perspective, it is allowing me to recruit and retain staff better. So, it is a double win really.”
* You can find out more about Jeroboams at its website here.
* You can read the first part of our interview with Matt Tipping and Lucie Parker here.
* Jeroboams is a commercial partner to The Buyer
