Pre-empting supply chain issues by stocking up early and managing stock efficiently has allowed Virgin Wines to keep gross margin largely in line with expectations whilst being able to successfully deliver customers the wines they want, when they want, the company said in its interim results this week.
Virgin Wines delivered total revenue of £40.6 million, in line with the six months ended 31 December 2020 and up 55% compared to the six months ended 31 December 2019. Subscription-based revenue rose to £26.3 million, up 23% on the first half of 2021. The company said that its subscription memberships increased by 7% during the period to 158,000.
The second quarter of 2022 saw Virgin Wines launch subscription schemes for its beer and spirit channels – BeerSave and SpiritSave. They operate on the same premise as WineBank, where customers save money each month in their BeerSave/SpiritSave account and then receive preferential pricing on all products across respective categories.
Virgin Wines admitted in February that there had been operational challenges when it revealed that the pressures on warehouse labour and absenteeism as a result of the Omicron variant taking hold had led to an early cut-off (by 48 hours) for guaranteed Christmas deliveries. That cost the business circa £800,000 of sales in the final week running up to Christmas.
