Majestic Wine to double store numbers
Majestic Wine plans to double its number of stores to 330, it announced today, revealing healthy sales and profits increases.
Sales for the year to 28 March rose 10.3% to £257.3m while pre-tax profits grew by 26.6% to £20.3m.
Like-for-likes in the UK were up 5.3%, while wholesale sales to restaurants and hotels grew by 17.2% and now represent almost a quarter of UK sales.
The number of customers at Majestic continued to benefit from the reduction of the minimum in-store purchase from 12 to six bottles, with the number of customers growing 8.2% to over half a million. The number of transactions was up 12.5% to two million and the average bottle of wine purchased cost £6.94, 38p more than the previous year.
CEO Steve Lewis said the reduction in Majestic’s minimum purchase requirement had clearly widened its demographic. “Consequently we commissioned a detailed research project mapping our current store portfolio and changed customer demographic against the UK population as a whole. The project has recently concluded and we are now confident of being able to expand Majestic to an estate of at least 330 stores,” he said.
Majestic’s estate currently stands at 165 stores, after it opened 12 in the last financial year.
“Whilst we recognise that market conditions continue to be challenging, we are encouraged to have achieved UK like-for-like sales growth of 4.4% in the first ten weeks of the new financial year,” said chairman Phil Wrigley.
