Wine Sellers Dream of Amazon

Filed in archive Wine Shops on January 18, 2007

Who would of thought so many years ago that a little web site selling books no less, would become one of the major Internet powerhouses today - Amazon.com? Of course, book fanatic that I am, I've always knew they'd make it big, and that's exactly what Scots duo Esme Johnstone and David Campbell are counting on with their new venture: FromVineyardsDirect.com.

Here's a report from Scotsman.com:

MAJESTIC Wine's founder has teamed up with one of Britain's top publishers to launch what they hope will become the "Amazon" of the wine world.

Scots duo Esme Johnstone and David Campbell, who masterminded the resurgence of the Everyman Library, the publisher of reprinted literary classics, say their new venture, fromvineyardsdirect.com, will undercut supermarkets and the high street by up to 20%.

The site, which offers a niche selection of fine wines direct from the vineyard, cuts out expensive overheads such as stock and retail premises.

Johnstone, who sold Majestic Wine in 1989 for £15m and is now a director of the Bordeaux wine Chateau de Sours, says the idea came to him because he had seen what the potential of the internet had done to book buying and was annoyed at having to fork out more than £12 for decent Chablis.

He said: "It is a niche business, but we hope it is going to become a very big niche business. Our principles are a short, restricted wine list up to a maximum of about 30. We believe that anything more than that confuses people.

"Almost by definition if you list a couple of hundred wines you reduce the average quality. You can't list 300 really good wines, but you can list 30 really good wines. It's designed to be simple and spectacularly good value."

The business, which aims to sell more than a £1m worth of wine this year, will work on a margin of 10% to 15% per bottle compared with 30% to 40% at which most retailers operate.

At the moment it concentrates on mainly French producers, including d'Angludet, du Glana, Fourcas-Dumont and Leoville Barton, but Johnstone says they are planning to expand the range into Italy and Spain.