Durham wholesaler’s retail shop eyes up online

The retail outlet of bottling specialist and wholesaler The Lanchester Group is looking at online expansion after launching a new wine club with a London crowdfunding company.

Ben Cleary heads up The Lanchester Group’s retail outlet, the Pip Stop

The Pip Stop, which opened in a former 1950’s Morgan garage outside Durham in April, is looking to use the wine club to expand its online reach and boost its profile. Starting next month, it plans to run monthly tastings at the CrowdShed, led by wine consultant Catherine Monahan of Access Uncorked, who has been brought on board to develop the marketing and branding across the Lanchester Group.

The shop is headed up by manager Ben Cleary, son of The Lanchester Group’s founders Anthony and Veronia Cleary, who is keen to broaden the shop’s catchment area from its North East heartland, by pushing online national sales and targeting London and the South East. He told the drinks business the shop’s online sales had been growing at 150% month-on-month since launch.

“We want to push ourselves. We are hoping to expand as a retail and wholesale unit in North Yorkshire area. It’s a winner for Lanchester as a retailer and as a wholesaler,“ he said.

Cleary, who previously worked for Majestic Wine, is also looking for a second site in the Manchester, Leeds or Newcastle area, targeting derelict garages that offers a quirky retail unit and space to develop a ‘hub’ for its fledgling wine wholesale business, which he is keen to develop further.

When it opened, he said it intended the store to become “as big as a small Majestic store”, with a turnover of between £300-500k.

The Lanchester Group comprises Lanchester Wines, Lanchester Wine Sales, the Greencroft Bottling business, as well as energy, gift and pet store companies. Since being founded in 2003, it has become one of the largest wine bottlers in Europe, filling over 50,000 bottles an hour and supplying most of the major multiples, beer groups, chains and retailers, as well as a wholesale and sales division.

In April it invested more than £6.5m in its warehousing facilities to boost capacity, taking on additional warehousing near, Gateshead, to bring its total storage to nearly a million sq.ft.  This was on the back of a 23% increase in turnover, which went from £65m to £80m.