PROFILE: ND JOHN WINES

ArticlesMerchant profiles

Nigel Huddleston visits a Welsh merchant that started in 1995 as a wholesaler, but now also embraces retail and on-premise sales and prides itself on its adaptability

 

Swansea’s ND John celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, but it feels like a business that’s constantly looking forward instead of back.

There are plans to develop the store – once a car showroom and, before that, a girls’ school – to add a further tasting area this year.

There’s already been rapid expansion in the past couple of years, with tasting flights, Enomatic machines, weekend pizzas and weekday supper clubs being introduced to great effect to yield more from the two-level retail space. In-store retail sales grew by around 54% in the space of 12 months.

It was the latest evolutionary stage in the business Nick John first established as a wholesaler in 1995, helped on the way by supplying music gig and festival riders through a contact in the Mean Fiddler group.

The first retail foray was a Majestic-style by-the-case operation from the front of the building, with wholesale warehousing to the rear, but the concept never really took off. 

A proper shop followed on the site, in the once-affluent Uplands district, in 2003, but changing perceptions took longer.

“It still gave the impression when you drove past of a place that was just a warehouse where you had to go and buy a case of wine and not a bottle,” says Nick. “It took us years and years to lose that stigma.”

Ecommerce came on stream in 2007, with the main warehousing eventually moving to a separate location. Nick owns the freehold to both the store and the warehouse site.

Web business boomed during the pandemic but the mix has swung back towards conventional retail since, and wholesale has rebooted to regain its position as the most significant chunk of ND John’s business. 

 “We’ve kept on evolving,” says Nick. “I was probably the stick in the mud, because I’m oldest, but a newer generation is here now. 

“Larger shops like this that aren’t in the centre of a major city need to diversify, and we should arguably have done so a long time ago. 

“We’re not trying to heavy-handedly educate people. We want to give people a thumpingly good evening and it seems to have grabbed their imaginations.

“We purposely haven’t gone out and heavily promoted what we’re doing, because we couldn’t cope with the numbers. It’s already fully booked on Fridays and Saturdays.”

Nick was joined for The Wine Merchant’s visit by general manager Geraint Davies, and Chris James from the retail team.

Tell us more about Uplands.

Nick: It’s only a hop, skip and a jump to get into the centre of Swansea – half a mile, if that. Many years ago, it was one of the most affluent parts of Swansea.

Geraint: The house Michael Heseltine grew up in is just up the road. It became a student area – and it kind of still is, but they’re all going into these massive purpose-built blocks in the city. In the early noughties it was definitely more studenty and bohemian, a bit rough and ready. Now, it’s kind of an overspill for nightlife. There are loads of bars about 250 metres up the road. On Fridays and Saturdays, it’s jumping up there, with a slightly older crowd than goes into town. But the people who come here don’t want to go up there – and we don’t stay open late.

Chris: It’s been growing very organically. Every time people come through that door and have a really good experience, word of mouth has slowly been building. We’ve got a good community who come here. Basically, our wine list is the shop, and they’ve got so much more choice than anywhere else.

Nick: We could do double the numbers. We could clear that area [on the top level] and do another 30 people in here but, while it’s great for people to come in and do tastings and flights, people still need to come and buy wine [to take home]. If we had 100 people in here on a Saturday it would be a struggle for someone to walk around and buy bottles of wine. We’ve got to have balance. 

 

The weekend tastings and flights have made a seismic difference

 

Have you reached an end point in your evolution, then?

Nick: No. The next phase will be to sacrifice one of the two warehouses we still have at the back and have a dedicated tasting room area type thing. There’s an appetite for it for sure. We’ve got 400,000sq ft of warehousing just up the road and we’ve got drivers out in vans every day, so the shop can be stocked quite rapidly from there, and we don’t need to worry about losing that space.

The weekend tastings and flights have made a seismic difference which is why we’ve got an appetite for taking it to another level.

What’s the current revenue split between the different parts?

Nick: Wholesale has always been the largest amount, though it’s marginal now. The [bricks-and-mortar] retail side is probably the smallest part, but we were already established online before Covid, and during the pandemic that grew massively. It’s obviously calmed down a bit afterwards but we gained a lot of new customers during that period. But the biggest increase recently has been in the shop, percentage-wise. 

Do you have dedicated staff for each part of the business?

Nick: There are 14 of us and we’re all multi-taskers. There are two full-timers and two part-timers in the shop and Geraint and myself occasionally step in. But they’ve got to be desperate to get me in.

Day-to-day, I get to the warehouse at roughly 6am and try to get an hour and a half in before everyone piles into the warehouse. Wholesale is predominantly my thing, the internet is Geraint’s – and I do a little bit of the shop, from an overseeing point of view, but Geraint does most of that. 

Geraint: There’s an overlap between the internet and retail because they’re all the same products and prices, and we’ve got our own Shopify which powers the till and online. I tend to roll them into one thing in my head.

Nick: We brought Chris in because he was a bit of a beer aficionado and brought a level of expertise. That huge beer wave has calmed down a bit now. A lot of small brewers are disappearing quite rapidly, sadly, but we still try to be involved with local brewers.

What’s your approach with the tasting machines?

Geraint: We started off using them for free samples but now we’ve got printed ND John cards and people top them up. We charge £2.50 [for the card]. They get that back if they give the card back, or they just keep topping it up. It’s just to cover the cost of getting the cards from Enomatic UK, because they’re the only people that do them. Unfortunately, we’re a bit tied there.

Nick: One of our customers described it as the pleasure card. You put it into the machine and wine comes out.

Chris: They’re not new things. You go into most major cities the UK and they’re everywhere but we’re the only place in Swansea that has them.

Geraint: I think we might be the only place in Wales.

Chris: We focus on changing the wines regularly. If you go to your favourite restaurant you’re drinking the same wines over and over, but we’re constantly changing the wines in the machines and recommending new things. They work really well. 

Geraint: And we don’t price it crazily. Four of us went into [a place in London] and put 50 quid on the card – and before I’d poured the fourth glass, I was heading back to the counter to get more credit. We tend to look at it a lot more sensibly. We sometimes chuck in crazy wines that are £150 a bottle, but it’s, like, five quid for a 25ml pour. I hate to think how much that might have been in some other places.

Nick: It just encourages people to try things and for us it works really well. We will have to buy more when we do the back. 

 

We’re looking for those little niches that other people haven’t got

 

Tell us about your buying process. 

Nick: We went to Prowein, which is huge and the worst place on the planet and a rip-off and all those sorts of things, but we did reunite with a producer who we had the agency for many years ago. 

It’s from Patagonia. It’s not exclusive but we do the majority of it; we lead on the Malbec and do our own labels, that kind of thing. There are huge links between Patagonia and Wales because people from Wales sailed from Liverpool on a boat called the Mimosa and that was the first settlement in Patagonia, so we’ve majored on that. We’ve had it for a year now and we probably do just over a container a year. As it gets more trade listings, we’ll probably go to around two containers a year, which is not bad is it?

I’ve just done a little trip out to northern Spain to look at things like Rías Baixas, and trying to find some sensible Albariño. 

Even before we did the Patagonia thing, Geraint did a trip out to Portugal and we linked up with a producer called Casal da Coelheira. We took a punt and shipped a couple of pallets. We now probably ship every two months, but every time we order it’s eight pallets. A lot of the wine is entry level and we use a bit of it in the on-trade. The more premium stuff sells in the shop at £20 or more and there’s an appetite for it. There’s lot of bangs for your bucks and Portugal produces really good value. 

We’re looking for those little niches that other people haven’t got, both from a trade and retail point of view.

Do you favour direct shipping or UK agents?

Nick: Where we can find something we want to ship we’ll ship it, but we’re also part of the IWBC [Independent Wine Buyers Consortium]. It’s a great group of people. We’re all shipping individually from various places. 

We also use the usual suspects because you’ve got to, really: Boutinot … we’ve got very good links with Mentzendorff, MMD, Hatch as well. We’ve started to do a lot with North South now. We’re trying to find those little nichey things from them, because they do a lot of mainstream stuff. 

We use Sichel for Bordeaux and we’re shipping quite a lot direct from the region. We do buy a few private cellars as well. We bought a massive Champagne one at the beginning of the year and we’ve got another one coming on stream. We’re essentially trying to cut out a few people in between the producers and our customers and get them value, so we remain competitive and the customer gets a good deal.

Is shipping getting harder to justify?

Nick: You’ve got to be canny these days. To ship one pallet is very expensive. To ship four brings the cost down quite considerably but you’ve got to like something enough to want to ship four pallets. Or they’ve got have enough of a range to make it worthwhile. The producers must have the same passions as us. They are out there. They definitely are in Portugal! 

Do they have to be able to cover both wholesale and retail lines to work for you?

Nick: Personally I’d look and say “can I put that into the trade?”. If I can, I know I can get a lot of volume out of it. If I can put three pallets into the trade and one to play with in the shop that’s the perfect scenario. Being able to supply wholesale wines is not the be-all and end-all, but it does help.

How do you split the buying between you?

Nick: Chris just buys the weird stuff. If it’s weird and it’s on the shelf, it’s him.

Chris: People are asking for skin contact wines, organic wines and pét nat, so we have a small selection. I also look after spirits and beer, working with a lot of small producers. Little things like that fall on my shoulders, so these two don’t have to worry about them.

What do you buy, Nick?

Nick: I recently renewed my love of Bordeaux. I think it’s a very special place. I’ve also started to fall back in love with northern Italy. Bordeaux is still very expensive but northern Italy is coming out with incredibly good wines and they probably represent better value.

Geraint has got the best palate of all of us.

And what excites you, Geraint?

Geraint: I definitely have a love of Champagne. I think for bangs-for-bucks Rhône is still where it’s at, although things are going up a lot. My first port of call would be southern Rhône. Everyone in the wine trade normally goes for northern Rhône, but I quite like those big juicy wines.

Nick: He finds weird southern Italian grapes that we’ve never heard of and says they’re going to be the next big thing. But to be fair we normally put them on and they do sell.

Geraint: I was on a Wine Merchant trip to Sicily and chilled Frappato has been a big thing for us as a result.

 

Swansea is the Beaujolais Nouveau capital of the world

 

Your events include the Swansea and Cardiff International Wine Festivals.

Geraint: We created a monster and decided to kill it. On pure numbers, 1,000 people over two days is pretty impressive for South Wales for a wine tasting event. It started with Swansea for about 300 people, and we moved into a bigger venue for 600 people, and sold that out. We decided to do Cardiff as well for 350 people [in 2022 and 2023] back-to-back on the same weekend as we had all the producers over anyway. 

But we got too many spirits and beers involved in the second year and I think it lost focus on the wine and became a bit boozy. So we went back to doing a Christmas event that’s completely wine-focused and that seemed to be a lot more sensible – and we sold more wine.

Nick: While the festivals were extremely profitable, we probably weren’t giving good value to our producers and suppliers. I made the decision to take a step back. 

Geraint: We became obsessed with the numbers, doing 400 one year and aiming for 600 the next, rather than thinking “is 600 too many?” It gave me Bingo Lingo vibes. Do you know that? It’s bingo on stage in an arena with dancers pulling people out the crowd – a whooped-up version of bingo, 5,000 people or whatever. It’s massive. 

Nick: You do know that Swansea is the Beaujolais [Nouveau] capital of the world, though? While the rest of the UK has forgotten about that first pressing, Swansea hasn’t. It’s been going on here for ever. It’s a huge event where nearly everybody takes the day off and goes on a massive … 

Geraint: … day out?

Nick: Yes, day out. We got through maybe 250 cases last year. 

Geraint: On the third Thursday in November every restaurant will do two, three, four sittings at lunchtime. 

Chris: It’s like New Year’s Eve!

Geraint: It’s most places’ biggest day of the year.

Why do you think it survived here?

Nick: We did push to keep it going as a wholesaler. My sales pitch to my customers was: “What else could you be doing on a wet Thursday in November? Do you want to put a bit of lunch and music on and dress the place up, or do you want to sit back and do your normal stuff and not take enough money?”

We’ve had a few scary moments over the years where the wine’s arrived on the morning, bearing in mind we have to get two pallets across to Wales in a few hours. That can be a bit dodgy, though normally we get it a week before now, so it’s not so problematic.

If anything was going to kill it, it was Covid, but it’s just kept going and it’s never going to stop. Some restaurants we supply are fully booked for the following year by the end of the day.

What else is still to come for you?

Nick: We’re going to try and run WSET courses because we’ve got a lot of trade customers who want to sign up to them. We already get sommeliers from restaurants coming in on Mondays to do a tasting flight to find something different. 

It seems overall that things are moving in a very positive direction.

Nick: We’ve got a very good team. We work really well together and all sing from the same hymn sheet. We want to take the shop to the next level when we open the other tasting room next year. And then we will maybe start to push ourselves even a little bit more. But the guys aren’t under any pressure. We’re doing well.

Related Articles