Cambridge Wine Merchants Ltd

Cambridge Wine Merchants are independent wine merchants with shops at Mill Road, Bridge Street and King's Parade, and Cherry Hinton Rd Cambridge, as well as franchises in Salisbury, Royston (Herts) and Ampthill (Beds) plus successful mail order and wholesale operations.

THE FULL STORY

Established in 1993 by two friends, Hal Wilson and Brett Turner who met at Peterhouse May Ball in 1990, and they still own the company. Sharing a love of wine they desperately wanted to work in the wine trade but didn’t fancy working for somebody else, and so CWM was born.

We started with one shop in Mill Rd, Cambridge. Now we’re one of the biggest independent wine merchants in the country and we are continuing to expand, constantly looking for new shops both for CWM and franchisees, and forging ahead with our successful wholesale arm.

Since we started, almost every one of the wine merchants we identified as competitors has gone bust or failed in some way. Oddbins, Thresher, Wine Rack, Bottoms Up, Unwins, Thomas Peatling to name a few.

The Mission

To be the best independent wine merchant in the country, and to have fun doing it.

The Team

A varied and hugely talented team covering many nationalities, ages and backgrounds. Many are ex-Oddbins, Thresher or Majestic, all are passionate about what we do, and pretty amazing at what they do. We have around 45 staff and excellent retention rates.

Company Structure

There are three directors: Hal, Brett, Lyndsey. We have 7 branches (3 of which are franchises, 4 are in Cambridge) and a large wholesale operation run from our HQ on a gorgeous farm just outside Cambridge. We call it “The Farm”. Each of our (non franchise) branches is run like a separate business – after making a contribution to central company costs all profit is divided 50/50 between the branch team and CWM.

Growth and Investment

The owners have never taken a dividend from CWM. Everything we make, we plough back into the company – more stock, bigger range, more shops, staff training. We’ve grown 110% over the last 5 years without taking on any debt. We have a multi-million pound turnover and, by industry standards, a healthy stockholding. By sticking to only high quality wholesale accounts we have barely any exposure to bad debt.

Retail

Our shops have often been described as the best drinks shops in the country. Based shamelessly on the good old Oddbins model, they’re fun places to shop, full of interesting stuff and interested staff. We have a dedicated retail director (Lyndsey) to make sure we’re the best. Several of our shops now have on-licences so we now offer wines by the glass and paid sampling.

Distribution and Logistics

Managed in-house, we have our own big warehouse and fleet of vehicles – a little shabby, but cost-effective. The warehouse supplies our branches and wholesale customers. Four guys - Paul, Kevin, Stuart and Richard organise the whole thing.

Wholesale

Most of our wholesale is to Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, plus a few high quality restaurants and pubs. We’re hard to beat on value, range and service and we offer staff training through our wine school. Our wholesale managers Stewart and Alex form a large part of the buying team and also work at a strategic company-wide level. We don’t have any “sales reps”.

Oxford and Cambridge College wine supply

This is such a highly competitive market, with merchants from all over the UK trying to get their wines into colleges, we have to work extremely hard to succeed, which we do. Oxbridge college buyers are cautious, careful with money and most of all highly expert – they seriously keep us on our toes. When they choose our wines we know we’ve got it right.

Buying Credo

We only want the best, at the best price, and we put a LOT of effort into finding it. We like real stuff made by real people, preferably on their own land. Buying research is split between six of us with different specialities - hard work but very exciting. Buying strategy and choices are democratic and all staff are invited to offer their opinions. We never buy just to fill a gap in the range, if we can’t find a good example of a particular wine we simply won’t offer one.

Independence

In order to retain total independence of what we do and what we buy, we deliberately don’t have agency or sole distribution agreements, we’re not part of any buying group, and we don’t have any external investors.

The owners

Hal and Brett own the company. They’ve been friends for over 20 years, are in their 40s and both live in Cambridge. Their children aren’t interested in the wine trade so who knows what will happen in the future…

Franchising

As far as we’re aware we are the only serious wine specialists to operate franchises. Our Royston, Ampthill and Salisbury branches are franchises - although very much part of the CWM group, each is privately owned. Franchisees benefit from our huge central stockholding and receive full marketing, retail, training and systems support from CWM.

Range and Value

Our range is absolutely vast – 300 malt whiskies, 800 wines, loads of crazy stuff from local Ales to cocktail ingredients. We’re excellent value because we import directly or deal directly with large suppliers. Being based in a student city means we’re pretty good at the 3 for £12 “get you onto/chucked out of parties” range.

Fine Wine and En-Primeur

We are very lucky to have some of the largest institutional wine buyers in the country on our doorstep – the wine stewards of Cambridge University colleges. We understand their buying needs and through a number of portfolio and en primeur tastings we select the best quality wines that still offer affordable drinking. We sell these to wine stewards, private clients and supply our retail estate with fine wines for the future from our en primeur purchases. Our whole approach to en primeur and fine wine is to find and offer wines that our customers will actually consume.

Balls and Parties

As a major supplier to Oxford and Cambridge Balls and large event/wedding venues, we get cracking deals for party drinks. We offer sale or return, have 20,000 glasses for free loan, and with years of experience and hundreds of events organised, we’re pretty good at party planning (a free service) and several Oxbridge Balls (1000-2000 guests) use us to organise and plan all their drinks requirements.

Tastings and events

We host hundreds of fun, informal and informative tasting events, dinners, etc in our shops, at restaurants, even in other countries. Usually several per week, sometimes several per day!

Education

We’re a leading Wine and Spirit Education Trust School. The WSET is the world’s leading wine trainer. Everyone at CWM is highly trained – even our van drivers and admin staff have WSET certificates. We also train members of the public at our in-house schoolroom, and run regular WSET courses at an Oxford University College.

Good Works

Both individually and as a company we have a strong commitment to giving something back to our community and supporting charity. We do good works each year by staging our own charity fundraising events. We also engage with our local community via tasting events for schools, clubs, community groups etc to raise money to raise money for them at no profit for CWM. Chairman Brett Turner has established his own charity, The David Hardie Project, which organises extravagant days out for disadvantaged and disabled children – a great success.

Responsible Retailing

CWM is totally committed to being a responsible licensee. We like to think we are one of the very best in the UK. We don’t stock anything of interest to “troublesome” drinkers, and avoid stocking anything of interest to under-age customers. Though we do stock cigarettes in some branches, they are always hidden from view. We stopped selling 10-packs over a decade ago as they encouraged under-age purchase attempts. None of our shops stays open late. We decided not to take advantage of relaxed laws on trading hours. Our busiest shop closes at 8pm.

Consequently, though we hold 7 off licences, in 18 years of trading we've had as good as zero trouble – a handful of random events out of over 5m customers served.

Future strategy

We plan to keep expanding, in retail via franchises and a couple more CWM-owned shops up to 15 or so, and in wholesale by moving up to bigger customers but sticking to our policy of only selling to high quality stable customers.