Jeroboams launches its own fine wine exchange platform

Fine wine merchant Jeroboams has launched its own trading platform and Private Cellar Plan to offer clients a better chance to enjoy and “interact” with the wine collection, while filling a gap in its business model.

The new Jeroboam Exchange, which has been two years in the building, will enable customers who store their wine with the company, to sell their wines on the Exchange website to potential bidders. The platform will benefit from transparent market data, the company said, including Liv-Ex market pricing, Wine-Searcher benchmarks and its own insights, to help sellers make informed decisions at every stage of the process.

Speaking to the drinks business, CEO Matt Tipping said the new trading platform, which has been running in beta-testing on the site since November, will complement the business’s existing private client and bricks and mortar business and provide customers with more opportunities to buy wines they want to drink.

The platform will backed by six private client sales under team leader Simon Herriot, who can assist clients if required.

“We know that some customers like to shop in some ways and others in other ways, but we want to make sure that we’re there on hand for those customers that want some help,” he said.

He explained that in the modern environment, “people are looking for the ability to interact with their collection” and although they can now do really well through our website, “we all know that tastes change. Customers might have been buying wines 20 years ago that they really loved, but now their taste has evolved, so now we’re giving them the ability to offer those to other customers through the site.”

As well as appealing to the “core” private sales customers who already buy and store wines in bond, Jeroboams Exchange offers retail customers who currently buy single bottles of fine wine in its shops the chance to buy aged wines that the shops doesn’t stock and to “delve into the world of buying younger wines and looking after them,” Tipping said.

It will also connect Jeroboam’s private customers with their business customers, by offering restaurants and independent shops the chance buy wine that has already been aged. “30 years ago, restaurants used to buy wine and sit on it, but we know [those days are] long gone,” he explained. “These wines are perfect for those restaurant lists, and independent shops.”

In addition to the Exchange, it is launching Jeroboams Cellar Plan, to “complete a full circle offering for fine wine collectors” that will act as an accessible entry point into fine wine collecting.

The plan will enable buyers to build their own wine portfolio for a monthly investment starting for £250 a month, it said, with the team of private client under John Cawoood working closely with customers. They will offer advice on sales and purchases alongside market analytics to help clients build a collection to drink or as as investment, whichever the customer requires.

“We realised that we were missing something that customers were looking for, so this is very much a reaction to that,” he told db. It proved, he said that are “really listening to our customers in the way that we should”, building its own site to “be our own masters and own our own destiny”.

The fine wine merchant is on track to come out of the downturn stronger than when it went in, Tipping told db, with turnover in the “high thirties” and approaching £40million, with growth in the trade and private side. Meanwhile the retail market has ‘starting to level out and move upwards’, he said, and the team has successfully integrated wholesale wine business Haywood Bros, which it acquired in August into the group. It has also strengthened its national trade presence followed the acquisition of Davy & Co’s in-bond wine storage, broking and en primeur service in November 2024.

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