Jeroboams: retail growth in 2025 shows market ‘starting to level out’
Following its purchase of Haywood Brothers last year, fine wine merchant Jeroboams are on track to come out of the downturn stronger than when they went in, with CEO Matt Tipping saying that the retail market is starting to level out and move upwards.
With the last year proving a hard one for both retail and the fine wine languishing in a depressingly low position, it might not have seemed the obvious time to expand, but according to Mark Tipping, Jeroboam’s chief executive officer, things are starting to move, even if we haven’t quite reached a corner yet.
The market has now reached a point market where “some of those indicators are starting to either level out… and some of them are now started to move up,” he told db at Jeroboam’s recent en primeur tasting. For example, Jeroboams’ shops saw growth coming through in the first half of last year “which is really, really good to see” and while the retail market “is probably the most reactive in terms of ups and downs”, customers buy expensive wines even though “they buy them to drink rather than to invest in”.
“Customers are being quite analytical, quite practical about what they’re choosing and sales are up”, he said pointing out that the combination of having a longer-term strategy of sourcing well-made wines from smaller producers, as well as a stable, well-motivated, well-trained sale team meant “all of those things have come together”.
In terms of staffing in store, things have “stabilised” since Covid, Tipping said, noting that store staff retention had improved on the back of “significant” investment not only in wages but in training and development, with staff also able to do secondments in head office.
In turn, customers have responded very well to the welcoming atmosphere in shops where staff know the specific demographic and preferences of their customer base in each individual store, providing the team “a real foundation of that knowledge”.
He explained that while a data set might provide a fairly uniform snapshot of its London customers, even within each area there were a mix of different nationalities and demographics. “For example, if you look to Hampstead, you’ve got lots of Italians and French people and lots of families, whereas in Knightsbridge, you’ve got nationalities with a different profile and lots of embassies. And just down the road in Elizabeth Street, Belgravia, you’ve got more UK, European and American residents there, so that all comes into it,” he said.
Integration and enthusiasm
Meanwhile the integration of wholesale wine business Haywood Bros, which Jeroboams acquired in August, has gone “very well”, Tipping said, pointing to the similar cultures between the two businesses, the high level of overlap in terms of clients, as well as the enthusiastic team at Haywood’s.
“They’ve been so on board and enthused by it – and the company was really well run,” he added.
The acquisition, which strengthened Jeroboams’ national trade presences and added more than 80 producers to its portfolio, followed Jeroboam’s buying Davy & Co’s in-bond wine storage, broking and en primeur service in November 2024.
“We’ve already seen that the clients that have come with Haywards are buying Jeroboams’ wines, and Jeroboams’ clients are already buying some of those Hayward wines,” Tipping noted.
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The business is “very much looking to support the regional specialists supplying other independents” and being independent and family-owned company “we understand what makes them tick”.
Due to the size and scope of the firm allows it to “pick and choose very carefully who [Jeroboams] is selling to, and respect who Hayward is selling to, and giving geographic exclusivity on anything that we’re selling them, so we’re not going to sell it to the next person down the road to them,” he said. “It’s giving them a chance to sell these wines.”
Range refinement
Tipping doesn’t rule out further refinement to the range but points to the work already done in the last year to review its fine wine offering in its shops, not only in reviewing the range, but also how the wines were priced.
“Looking at where the market was, we’ve made some changes – we actually brought down prices, and we have really invested in a core range of classic European and Bordeaux wines, but the results there have been really encouraging in terms of customers reacting very quickly to that,” he said.
He also pointed to the new range of grower Champagnes that was introduced last year which, “which have done amazingly well” over Christmas, picking up a double-digit share of the retailer’s Champagne category, “which is a huge success”.
The team have now embarked on the hectic Burgundy en primeur campaign, which combines pricing that haven’t gone up, fundamentally “very good wine” (the white in particular, Tipping notes) and tight supply, which is provoking great interest among its customers.
Natural ebb and flow
In terms of annual sales, Jeroboams turns over roughly £40 million a year (“it’s in the high 30s at the moment,” Tipping noted), with the trade business private sales and bricks and mortar historically contributing a third of sales each.
In recent years, the trade and private side have grown quicker than the shops, “so it’s more like 40% trade, 40% private and 20% from our shop teams,” Tipping explained, adding that it was worked well for producers and customers to have “different strings to our bow”.
“It also means that as the market changes, we’ve got different options in terms of what we do, so I’m very happy with the ratio as it is now. We don’t we’re not trying to artificially do anything, so you see that ebb and flow as the market changes”.
Tipping concedes that it is “a really fine line between holding your nerve and not adapting enough, or on the other side, starting to meddle for the sake of it” but is happy with the current situation.
For as he points out, “my job is to make sure that we from when we saw the market slowing down to when it starts to pick back up again, we emerge as a company that’s better than the one that went in.”
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