Lots of things have changed since Julie Mills bought Vinomondo in Conwy, north Wales, 15 years ago. She tells Graham Holter about how the business has evolved, how she stays motivated – and how she’ll be celebrating this milestone
Congratulations on 15 years of Vinomondo. When you started out, did you expect to get this far?
I was really naive when I first started. I had no idea of the sheer amount of work involved in this type of business. In my head I envisioned it going from strength to strength but the reality of how difficult the business is to run took hold about three years in.
What are the main pressure points?
Staffing is incredibly difficult, almost impossible, specifically in north Wales. To find anybody with any wine or spirit qualifications is pretty much impossible. So that’s the one and only thing really that’s held us back. Having said that, we’ve grown quite considerably, certainly over the last seven years. We’ve gone from having four staff to having nine on the team, made up of six full-timers and three part-timers and we employ students during the summer.
Tell us about the changes you’ve made to the business.
There’s been a massive increase in stock. Currently we have over 1,430 SKU codes in the shop. I did go through a stage of paring everything back and went down to just two suppliers but I realised we just didn’t have enough to offer.
We’ve now got eight [wine] suppliers and seven spirit suppliers. We decided that we would order slightly less often from them, but still order enough to meet a really good price point for the shop.
There’s a lot more diversity in the wines. We have quite a few from Lebanon, Hungary, Romania, Greece, right across to the old-school ones: France, Italy, Germany. The price point has probably lifted because we decided that we would never compete with the supermarkets. People will come here because the service and knowledge is good, so they will spend more on their treats. That’s what we’ve focused on.
And you became a hybrid.
We knew that hybrid was the way forward because it’s very difficult to run just a retail business alone, when competition is so fierce.
Initially we opened the bar upstairs to dip our toe in the water as a hybrid. We opened the first garden and now we’ve opened an enormous second garden.
There’s seating outside for 80 people, and all this has hugely increased the turnover. The split between retail and drinking in is 50/50.
How many days a week are you there?
I’m here every day. I work fully in the business probably three days a week and the rest of the time I’m doing the accounts, wages, the planning of the events and so forth.
Do you stock local products?
We’re hugely Welsh-focused in terms of spirits and that’s because there are hundreds of Welsh producers. It would be foolish for us not to use them when the quality is so very high. The local Welsh people who come in expect local products and the tourists expect to see interesting local products.
We have stocked Gwinllan Conwy wines since their very beginning. We helped them plant their vines and at the very first harvest I said to him, “whatever happens, we’ll put it on the shelf – we’ll give it a go”. He’s won gold, silver and bronze awards internationally for his wine now.
Are your customers interested in particular wines because you are championing them, or are they getting that education and curiosity from elsewhere?
I think people are getting into them anyway. Younger people are starting to experiment with wine, which is fab. We wouldn’t have seen that 10 years ago but now younger people are like: you know what, this is really interesting, let’s get involved, let’s try different wines.
They’re looking at some of the natural wines. They’re not top of my list but there’s a big demand for them, so we stock quite a decent range. We never thought that we’d be able to cope with demand based on fashion, but because it’s just me, we can turn on a pin.
If we suddenly decide to have 20 orange wines, and so many natural wines, within two weeks we’ve got them. We don’t have to worry about shifting an enormous amount of stock to clear space for them to come in or anything like that.
Fifteen years ago there were far fewer women running wine shops or even going to wine shops. Does it feel to you that there’s been a change in that respect?
I remember when I first started going to tasting events: in terms of people attending, it was probably about 80% male. I’ve seen a huge change in that and now I would say it’s probably a 60% men and 40% women attending tastings.
We do a customer survey every year and when I first took over the business our customer base was 85% male. The last survey results from four months ago show that the customer base is now 72% female.
What do you put that down to?
I think it’s simply because women are generally involved in buying luxury items, and maybe it’s because we’ve been an all-female team for a long time. We do a lot of cocktails and things like that, so it’s quite a girly vibe. But by the same token we’ve got quite a few beers by the glass and 400 beers on the shelves, so I don’t know. I wish I could explain it. But there’s definitely a massive change.
Do you still find time to go to tastings or on the occasional trip?
We don’t really get offered wine trips very much. I don’t know if that’s because of where we are geographically.
We spend quite a lot of time at the beginning of the year going to tastings in Manchester, some down in London, and then again in September, we’re out and about at tastings and we taste as a team, so the whole team goes.
The whole thing costs us thousands of pounds, and I’m saddened that a huge number of tastings are in London and there’s nothing even in Birmingham or slightly further north. It’s like a black hole when it comes to wine tasting. It’s quite short-sighted, but I don’t think it’s going to change.
How often do you run events for your customers?
When we first started it was quarterly, but now we do a tasting or an educational event a week. That’s a lot of time for me and people always say, how the hell do you do it? But we have to do it because it brings in a really good income and it sells wines off the shelf, and introduces people to really more obscure stuff that we like, and enjoy having on our shelves.
We have relied on suppliers to do tastings, but I have realised that customers would rather I do them. They can ask a lot more questions and feel a lot more comfortable. I love doing them, it’s one of my favourite parts of the whole job, whether it’s going out to people’s houses to do private tastings or tastings here in the gardens. I love it.
We’ve got a big supper club as well, where we bring 20 to 30 people together every month to come and join us for supper. We invite one of the local businesses to come and do the food and we do all the wines. It’s about engaging our customers and they are really loyal.
What are you doing to celebrate your 15th anniversary?
I think it’s better to focus on the customers, so we’re arranging a number of things including a Champagne dinner in the garden which we’re offering at cost price to a base of loyal customers. We’ve got discounts to offer for all our customers, and a big garden party. It’s really to say thank you for coming for 15 years.
How do you keep your enthusiasm going?
It’s quite hard because of the physical nature of the job. I’m 57 now and I was quite ill for a couple of years; I’ve got quite a serious lung condition. But, the customers, improving my own knowledge base … I spend a huge amount of time learning about different regions. And bringing young people through and encouraging them to learn is what keeps me motivated. I love it.
And what’s next for the business?
I don’t think I want a second shop because replicating what we’ve got is only doable if I’m there, and my business is mainly me.
We’ll continue to grow this, and if we could find a bigger premises, that would be absolutely brilliant. I own the building and I’m just waiting for the opportunity to try and find a bigger premises.
It’s easy to look for a way out. To carry on building and looking for a way forward is the difficult route. But I think that’s what being a business person is all about. It’s about working at finding a way forward to bring your team along with you. I think the biggest investment always has to be your team. That’s number one and then everything else just falls into place.
