Oddbins closes doors on UK stores

Wine retailer Oddbins has reportedly shut the doors on its remaining UK bricks and mortar estate due to falling commuter footfall, and pivoted to online operation.

The move follows rumours last month that the retailer was about to be sold, however a post on a wine forum  from an assistant manager of the West Dulwich store, Louis Gwinn, confirmed that a buyer had not been found and the remaining branches in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh had now been closed.

According to the company, the change in the buying habits of customers during the lockdown had proved “difficult to reverse” despite heavy investment in the last two years.  “We were hampered by lack of credit leading to pressure on our cash flow along with the increased costs of trading from traditional bricks and mortar sites,” director Balbir Chatha told Harpers, who added that the company was “trying to pay back the loyalty of the suppliers that did support us by shifting to an online presence.”

It is a sad development in the story of the quirky wine retailer which was founded Ahmed Pochee in 1963 to sell bin-ends and ‘oddities’ and had around 278 outlets at its height during the 1980s and 90s (with a store cupboard in one of its stores supposedly being the ‘home’ of fictional Ab Fab character, Patsy Stone). During this time it changed hands several times, being bought first by Nick Baile and Dennis Ing and later US distribution firm Seagram before it was acquired by French Groupe Castel, who also owned the Nicolas chain of wine shops. It subsequently returned to the hands of the Baile family, under Nick’s son, Simon.

Financial woes

However, its financial woes first surfaced in April 2011 when it went into administration after racking up considerable debt, including £8.6 million to HMRC. That month, Whittalls Wine Merchants, a subsidiary of EFB Retail, purchased 37 of the 45 Oddbins stores, saving more than 200 jobs in the process. The business was relaunched by former Nisa-Today chairman Raj Chatha with a revamped wine offer, witty marketing and by 2014 was back to profitability.

However, in 2019 the parent company European Food Brokers (EFB) appointed administrators for all four of its retail businesses (EFB Retail Ltd, Whittalls Wine Merchants 1 and Wine Merchants 2 (operating as Oddbins ) and sister company Wine Cellars Trading Limited (WCTL, operating under the Booze Buster, Simply Drinks, Oddies, and Shop2Go fascias). At the time, it cited Brexit and the  “deterioration of the high street” for the decision, however the parent company had already posted a £10 million drop in turnover in 2016, and further losses were reported in 2018, before it was stripped of its alcohol wholesale registration scheme licence (AWRS) by HMRC in July 2018. This had barred it from operating as a wholesaler, putting it under considerable financial strain and six months later its retail businesses were placed in administration.

More than 70 stores were closed but 28 stores were bought out of  administration in June 2020 by Wine Retail Limited, a newly created subsidiary of wholesaler Wine Retail Holdings Limited – itself a subsidiary of EFB Holdings Ltd. Although Oddbin’s ecommerce operation boomed during the pandemic, rising 800%, the most recent accounts (filed in November 2022) showed retailer owed £1.673million to creditors in the 12 months to  31 July 2021, up from £1.535 in 2020. Accounts for FY 2022 have not yet been filed.

Oddbins’ supplier European Food Brokers Limited – a subsidiary of the main parent group, EFB Holdings Ltd and the group’s wholesale company – also continued to make losses of £755,000 – down from £3.25million in 2020, the accounts show.