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Gifting and corporate sales leads to better than expected Christmas at Virgin Wines

Published:  20 January, 2017

Gains in its gifting business and expanding it loyalty membership by over a third helped Virgin Wines to pull in bumper sales this Christmas.

For the nine weeks to December 30, total sales reached £12.6m and profit was up 35% YOY to £1.3m.

The company's Wine Bank loyalty scheme section of the business - which increased its members by 25,000 to 75,000 in total over the nine weeks - and its Sendagift.co.uk off-shoot helped to achieve these figures.

At Sendagift.co.uk, sales were up by 137% YOY at £850k - 30% higher than expected.

Additionally, a strong focus on corporate sales yielded results with revenue up 110% YOY.

This equated to £1.3m of business over the festive period. 

CEO Jay Wright said: "I'm really pleased with the B2B corporate sales. In the financial year 2015 we took £395,000 over the course of the whole year compared tor the £1.3m we took during Christmas 2016.

"A part of that is that part of the business getting on its feet, and that's the same with our gifting business which had been up and running for two years now. But none of us thought they would that well. They're areas of the business we've really been focusing on."

The B2B section sells to businesses which want to incentivise customers through sales of wine, including Littlewoods and kitchen supplier Wren.

The company operates entirely online and set up the gifting business two years ago when Wright saw a gap in the market.

"I don't think there's anyone doing a brilliant job in wine and champagne gifts. With any business, you have to seek out opportunities to take piece of the market and specialise."

Sendagift.co.uk offers around 100 products in its range, including single bottle packs of Champagne, personalised wooden packaging options and gift messaging.

Wright has been at the helm of Virgin Wines for nine years.

He became involved after his start-up business, Warehouse Wines, was bought out by Direct Wines along with Virgin.

He then merged his company with Virgin Wines to form the current incarnation of the company.

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