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News
Baile’s ExCellar goes into administration
The ExCellar chain owned by former Oddbins director, Simon Baile, has been placed into administration.
The administrator, Griffin, was called in on Monday (28 January).
In December last year Baile was forced to close his Paris and East Sheen branches, the latter he described as having been a “bloody disaster”.
At the same time it was announced that the business would undergo some sort of restructuring this year, with Baile’s wife widely tipped to be nominated as a director.
Furthermore, plans to roll out a deli concept were broached after trial runs at the Surbiton store went well.
Déjà vu ?
I hope the Inland Reveue look into the business with diligence
We had only just written about how a local Oddbins had been taken over by “a wildly over-optimistic independent wine merchant, who did his best to bring the art of fine drinking to our very slightly substandard neighbourhood.”
Baile closed this branch of ExCellar, saying it was “a bloody disaster” – a term now being used to describe the chain as a whole…
http://www.sedimentblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/high-street-terminal.html
Any normal person, after losing £20M or so with Oddbins, would have the decency to crawl under a rock and pull it over him – Simon Baile, on the other hand, decided that he’d replicate the failed Oddbins business model on a smaller scale and with suppliers who trusted him even less than before – with the same predictable end result. Those who fail to learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them. I bet he expresses surprise that ExCellar failed, will blame the economy, and will pledge to return once more.
Perhaps now the lazy wine journalists who fawned all over him because his dad ran Oddbins in the Eighties and he was good for a quick quote will see him for the incompetent manager that he clearly is. I have sympathy for the staff but none whatsoever for Mr Baile.
It’s time that Simon Baile realised that the days of the off licence are over!
We all should want the wine specialists to flourish on the high street, the only problem is that they can not survive in all the high streets up and down the country. Breakeven for a one man operation is much lower than for a chain of wineshops, but if trading changes due to economic, competive or consumer reasons then both can get caught on the wrong side of this divide. Bad Christmas trading usually kills most marginal retail businesses, as you need the cash to pay all the bills due in January. I am sorry for the employees, suppliers and for the Baile family, as surely money and livelyhoods were lost by all. The wine retail business is a marginal business, but you have to really good at it to survive in this market.
It couldnt have happened to a more deserving man. My heartfelt sympathy goes to the poor staff. Mr Baile couldnt organise a p*ssup in a brewery