Ray Nicholls had worked for Asda for a quarter of a century when he decided to abandon a career in the multiple grocery sector and set up shop as an independent wine merchant in a West Yorkshire village. Nigel Huddleston asks how that’s working out for him
It’s not unusual for independents to cite distaste for the supermarkets as a core facet of their identity. Depending on who you talk to, multiple grocers can be viewed as an irrelevance, an irritant or an existential threat.
For Ray Nicholls, the relationship is a little more complicated, because until opening the Ripponden Wine Company in West Yorkshire four years ago he managed Asda stores in Keighley, Huddersfield and Manchester and had a spell at its head office in Leeds.
“Everyone thought I was mad to leave my well-paid, secure job of 25 years to start my own business during the pandemic. But here I am,” he says.
Ray’s love affair with wine was a happy accident arising from his early days at Asda.
“They used to offer qualifications through City & Guilds: master butcher, baker, greengrocer and vintner.
“The stores used to get funding to send people on them and there was no one to go on the vintner course, so my boss at the time said ‘you’re going on this course’. I was a spotty 19-year-old. I just used to drink Stella Artois and Smirnoff Ice at the time, and that was probably about it.”
Ray became fascinated by the subject and became a customer of Huddersfield indie Hoults, increasing his knowledge by attending its tasting events, in the process planting the seed to open his own shop as a later-life retirement project.
That plan actually came to fruition much earlier than expected. “Covid came along and the stars aligned with some buyouts at Asda and some shares I had. I thought if I’m going to do it, now’s the time.”
Ray’s first major step towards opening the store, on the high street in the village that he already called home, came during lockdown, when a friend suggested he start hosting Zoom wine tastings as alternatives to the ubiquitous quiz nights, which he did using wine bought from Hoults.
“I was still working in my full-time job. My lockdown experience was very different to everyone else, because I was running a supermarket. I didn’t have the change or the isolation.
“But I started to do the tastings and they took off, and I decided there was a good market around here. I gained an understanding of the market and people started to tell me I should open a shop in the village, so that’s what I did.”
The store is in a one-time large pub converted into smaller retail units in 2009, and since first leasing the unit, Ray has bought the freehold of the entire building. The searches for that process revealed a previously hidden cellar that he now plans to convert into an additional space for private events.
Why did you decide on Ripponden as a location rather than one of West Yorkshire’s bigger towns?
We moved here because of work and fell in love with the village and the community feel, so I decided this was where I wanted to open a shop. It’s slap bang in the middle of Leeds and Manchester. Most of the people who live in the village are commuters to those places, so it’s quite an affluent area. A couple of big new housing estates have been built in the past 20 years, so it’s gone from being a very small farming village to a more populated area, but most of the people who live in Ripponden don’t work in Ripponden.
Why did the site appeal?
This had been empty for about two years and when we first opened people thought we were mad. There were only four shops open on the high street and it had gone through this cycle of being rather vibrant with restaurants, pubs and shops to, like many high streets, being all hairdressers and estate agents. I think there were seven hairdressers in the village at one point.
But bit by bit they all drifted off. I kind of had a hunch that if one business could succeed here then others would follow, and that’s what’s happened.
We got really lucky, because at the same time as us the craft beer shop opened [next door] and then a record shop, and a vintage clothing boutique and a gift shop. So now it’s become a real shopping-driven high street rather than a service one.
People travel for things like record shops, so it brings people into the area. It’s a really thriving community now and it’s been great to see it grow over four years.
You have retail experience but of a very different kind of retail. What did you take from your time at Asda that you could apply here?
We probably look very different to a lot of wine merchants. We’re not piles of stock and boxes everywhere. Everything I’ve learned about good retailing I’ve tried to put into here: clear signage, clear pricing [there are large handwritten luggage labels around each bottle with the price dominant] … it’s really easy to find what you want to find. Some wine merchants you go in and it’s clear the only person who knows how to find anything is the owner. That’s not how I’ve been brought up from a retail perspective.
Wine shops can be intimidating places for wine novices and there’s nothing worse than when you pick up a bottle and the first time you see the price is a little sticker on the top. You might be the only person in the shop and you’re in an awkward situation where the wine’s out of your budget but it’s in your hand now. We try and take all that away.
What’s your approach to merchandising?
We go purely by country, whites and reds together, and then it’s almost split by region, but we don’t signpost that. But in Italy, for example, there’s Tuscany along the top and Sicily at the bottom. If you know you know, but if you don’t it doesn’t matter.
What were you aiming for design-wise?
The place is hand built by myself and a cousin who’s a builder. It’s made out of scaffolding and boards that we’ve painted and stained ourselves. I made the counter. We already had the branding from the Zoom tastings. I always knew I wanted it to be a dark colour scheme, kind of industrial but not too rustic. That was just my personal preference and pleased my eye, but it works. We get a lot of compliments about how the place looks.
How’s the shop changed over time?
A lot in four years. The tasting lounge and seating was added and we migrated from being a purely bricks-and-mortar retailer. We started to do food with tasting events which then evolved into a permanent tasting lounge and that’s grown as we’ve gone on. We dabbled with wholesale for a little bit but we don’t do it anymore. It’s too much work for not enough reward. We’ve now settled into a nice model of part bar, part shop.
We call it a tasting lounge rather than a bar, because if we can get a wine in someone’s glass, they’re more likely to buy a bottle. We see a lot of take-home sales from what we put on the by-the-glass list, which changes every month.
We keep the list interesting and different. No one comes into a place like this expecting to find an Argentine Malbec or a Pinot Grigio by the glass. We bought in a wine preservation system, so we’re not worried about opening top-end Champagnes or bottles of claret. We can keep them fizzy, or as they should be, for long enough.
Has the team grown with the shift in format?
There was just me until last November but there are now two people who do the late nights. We originally only opened the tasting lounge until 7 o’clock on a Friday and Saturday, but we now open until 9pm through customer demand. I’ve always been really clear that everything we do will be driven by our customers, not just because I want to do it or think it’s a good idea. But I’ve taken on two people to do the later night bit because I never really wanted to run a bar. I’m a retailer – that’s what I love doing. But it’s too good an opportunity not to go ahead with it.
You do Wine by Post on your website, which is a single bottle gift service, but no big by-the-case ecommerce. Why’s that?
We always did Wine by Post as a service from the shop. We found some really great packaging which means we can send individual bottles by Royal Mail and get them there really quickly and safely. We started putting it on the website because we had people emailing asking if we could send a bottle here or there. We only put a very small range on there: if you realise it’s someone’s birthday tomorrow you can click on there and we’ll get it sent off really quickly.
But I never wanted to do faceless retail. I’m bricks and mortar and, although I obviously had a big ecommerce operation in my previous life, it’s not something I want to do. It’s costly, the competition is too fierce, the cost of acquiring customers is too expensive, and the risk of couriers and damages and all that sort of stuff … it was just not the way I wanted to go. And economically it’s probably not the best way to go. I know some people are very successful at it, but unless you’re doing huge volumes … and it takes time to build that.
How did you acquire customers for the bricks and mortar side?
The word of mouth from the Zoom tastings was a big part of it but we also shared the journey online. We put two massive posters on the window for people to find us on Instagram or Facebook. It took us three months from getting the keys to opening and we shared a lot of it. We shared me, because up until that point my name hadn’t been mentioned in any of the social media we’d been doing [for the Zoom tastings], purely because if my employers had found out I had something on the back burner … We shared everything, including pictures of me standing there with paint brushes, and colour charts on the wall.
We built a big swirl of excitement and anticipation in the community about what we were doing. We were still in that time of face masks and hospitality was closed, which helped, because if you were drinking you were doing it at home. People realised you could do something really special at home without paying through the nose. We just got lucky and tapped into that. It was a crazy time, but it worked for us.
How did you go about building the range?
Rob Hoult [at Hoults] was very supportive. We’re far enough away not to be competing with each other. He put us in touch with a couple of suppliers and I got really lucky with a couple of them. Liberty are still my biggest supplier. I literally went to my account manager and said, “if you were opening a shop tomorrow with 150 wines from your portfolio. what would they be?” and he sent me a list and a load of samples. That was probably one of the best times. I was just getting boxes and boxes of wine sent to my house; more than one person could drink, but that was the only way it could be done at that time.
We also used Richmond Wine Agencies and Moreno. It was a similar conversation with all of them and I picked the best from each. As time’s gone on, we’ve broadened the base and work with sone real specialists: Marta Vine do all our Portuguese, Alpine Wines do our Swiss and Austrian stuff, Southern Wine Roads our Greek, and we’ve started working with Eurowines, who do a chunk of our Italian range. Liberty is still probably two-thirds of the range.
Is that because their portfolio really hits the mark or is it loyalty from the support they gave you at the start?
A bit of both really. I think they’ve got by far the most exciting portfolio out there, and I do feel a bit of loyalty towards them. But I also think building relationships with suppliers is really important. They’ll bring a winemaker along for a lot of our tasting events, and if I identify a gap in the range I feel pretty confident I can pick up the phone to one of my account managers and they’ll give me some recommendations.
What do you look for when deciding whether to list something?
We don’t really sell anything below £15. It doesn’t really work for us. When I was in supermarkets the average price for a bottle of wine was about £5.50. That’s probably closer to £8 now. And if you’re going to spend £8, £9, £10 on a bottle of wine you’re probably going to buy it in the supermarket or the Co-op down the road. If you’re looking in an independent you probably want to spend a little bit more. We do have the odd £10 or £12 bottle but we don’t sell a lot of them. The sweet spot for us is somewhere between £15 and £25. So, one of the things I’m looking for is value for money in the right price bracket. And things that people ask me for, which doesn’t happen so much now as the range has grown, but it was one of the ways we went from 150 wines when we opened to the 500 we have now.
What excites you personally in the wine world?
I’m a firm believer that no one does it like the French, and France probably has the largest amount of space in the shop. I’m a big fan of the Rhône – and Burgundy. But I’m more keen now to try things I haven’t before, whether it’s a grape variety, a region or a style. I can’t get on with natural wine. We don’t do any and we don’t get asked for them. I’ve tried lots of them but they’re just not my style. One thing when I’m picking wines, it doesn’t matter if it’s a tenner or £100, if I wouldn’t drink it, it doesn’t go on the shelf. It’s hard for me to stand here and recommend somebody to drink something that I wouldn’t enjoy myself.
Australian Shiraz is my wine hell. I can tell a bad one from a good one and I have to have them on the shelf, obviously, so I have got some very good ones, but it’s the last thing I would pick on a wine list, that’s for sure.
Do you end up steering customers to your favourites then?
90% of the people who come through the door don’t say “I want a bottle of X”, they say “I’m looking for a bottle of red, can you recommend something?”, so there is a bit of what I steer people towards. But we’ve got a regular customer base now and I know what a lot of them like or don’t like. If people can give two reference points – “I like Australian Shiraz, but I really don’t like Californian Pinot Noir” – I’ll show them something interesting. The by-the-glass list is good in building trust and confidence with the customers.
Why did you turn away from wholesale?
It was challenging. I didn’t enjoy that as much but I didn’t have any negative experiences with people going bust on me or anything like that. When there was only me it was hard to go out knocking on doors and drumming up business, and if you’re not doing it on a large scale, it really is a lot of work for not a lot of money.
Pubs and restaurants are the worst for dropping you an email or a text at 6pm on a Friday saying they need something by tomorrow morning, so you have to build a bit of stock in the cellar in case.
What have been the other big challenges? The cost-of-living crisis?
Year one was good and exceeded my expectations. Year two we grew massively, and last year flattened off a bit but didn’t go into decline. It was never going to be double-digit growth every year so I was happy with that.
It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. My previous job was very intense. It was a 24/7 operation and you never really get a day off. If you’re not there the phone’s ringing or there’s an email, or whatever. This is very much, at 6pm I’ll turn the lights out and go home and turn them on again at 9.30 the next morning. And there’s nothing that’s gone wrong in the meantime. It’s been a really positive experience. I’ve not really hit any major bumps in the road yet.
So, no regrets?
My life is undoubtedly better than it was at Asda. I’ve got more time, less stress, my life is enhanced greatly, but my bank balance isn’t. But that’s the pay-off, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, I make a comfortable living and everything’s fine, and I enjoy life more as a result of doing this. Why did I do this? I wanted a different lifestyle. I wanted to be more involved in the community I live in. Since opening I’ve become a parish councillor, I’ve set up a local business network group, and I’ve met built more friendships with local people in the last four years than I had in the previous 10 that I was living here. And that’s what I wanted.
