Relocation pays off for savvy wine business

MOVING TO a new location can be a risky proposition for retailers especially when it involves converting a tired and vacant industrial building to a state of the art specialty retail store.

Jeff and Virginia Poole started The Fine Wine Delivery Co from a spare room in their home on Auckland’s North Shore in 1997, but for most of its life the business was based in premises on Cook St in the city’s central business district.

The company was one of the country’s pioneers of internet wine retailing but its bricks and mortar store was also an integral part of the business, providing a space for customers to come in and taste wines before they’d buy and interact personally with staff.

As with many businesses, the looming expiry of their lease prompted some hard thinking for the Poole’s about whether their existing premises were continuing to meet the business’s needs.

Jeff Poole said although the premises had a floor area of just under 2000 square metres, it was spread over three floors meaning much of it was poorly utilised. Insufficient parking and increasing traffic congestion also made life difficult for customers.

‘‘The CBD has become a difficult place to do retail business,’’ he said.

The retail shop was providing about 29 per cent of the company’s turnover and sales through it were static, while online sales provided 71 per cent and were continuing to grow.

‘‘So we knew we had to relocate,’’ Poole said.

Giving himself plenty of lead time, Poole began working with commercial leasing broker Matt Lamb of Jones Lang LaSalle to firstly choose a new location and then to find suitable premises, two years before the lease on the Cook St building expired.

The company’s extensive database meant they knew where most of the customers lived, and after weighing up various options Poole settled on Lunn Ave, a busy commercial thoroughfare connecting the leafy suburbs around Remuera with Auckland’s industrial heartland.

As it happened, the first building Lamb took Poole to look at, a vacant former plumbing and lighting supplies warehouse, was the one the company ended up moving in to.

It had a nice high stud, most of its 2500sqm of floor space was on a single level and it had plenty of parking and 20,000 cars a day going past the front door, all heading to or from some of the city’s most expensive residential suburbs.

‘‘We had a very strong vision of what the business should look like physically, so when Matt brought us into this premises first, within 10 minutes we said this is our