New Direct Wines chief advocates getting more personal with consumer
David Thatcher, new group chief executive of Direct Wines, says the key to success in 2015 is a continued focus on personalisation, as he prepares to take up the role later this month.
David Thatcher, new group chief executive of Direct Wines, says the key to success in 2015 is a continued focus on personalisation, as he prepares to take up the role later this month.
David Thatcher steps up to become Group CEO at DIrect WInes
Thatcher, who joined the company as UK managing director of Laithwaite's in April 2014, told Harpers.co.uk that he planned to "maintain progress" in the firm as "sometimes when a business has been around for a long time, they can forget how good they are at certain things".
The company, which operates under a variety of different guises including Laithwaite's, the Sunday Times Wine Club and Avery's, has done a lot of work in the past two years on improving its personalisation for customers.
In July 2014 Justin Howard-Sneyd told Harpers.co.uk that Laithwaite's was offering customers Amazon-style tasting recommendations based on an algorithm that creates a taste fingerprint for each wine on its website. The service, which pulls up three similar tasting wines when consumers click on a particular bottle, was turned on "gently" over the summer, and has helped boost customer spend as well as encouraging greater experimentation.
"We give our customers the chance to tell us their preferences about regions, grape varieties and particular bottles, and we also have the ability to build customer preference profiles according to their buying patterns. That gives us a real edge," Thatcher said, especially given customer are buying more and more online.
Thatcher said Christmas trading was up by a small percentage on last year, despite operational headaches when courier firm City Link went into administration over the holidays.
He said Prosecco was a stand-out success, outselling Champagne at 2:1. He predicted the Italian sparkler still has room to grow.
The former Carphone Warehouse boss worked in Pay TV and communications for a number of years before entering the wine trade at Direct Wines. He replaced Glenn Caton last year when Caton moved to food and confectionery giant Mondelez International.
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