Slurp News
Showing 1 to 15 of 42 news items
Slurp Enjoys Extremely Strong Start to Year – Is Very Optimistic on 2010 Prospects
Today Slurp.co.uk – the UK’s fastest growing online wine company – announced that January sales had continued the excellent pre-Christmas momentum, increasing over 4,000% yoy (over January 2009) and rising 25.6% from an already buoyant December. The year on year comparison was flattered by the extremely difficult trading conditions at the start of 2009, but the increase over December underlines the very strong secular grow currently driving the company. The failure of First Quench and the closure of most Wine Rack and Threshers shops underlines the rapidly changing retail landscape, and the pressure on high overhead outlets. Slurp’s Managing…...
An Apology and 1,000 Cork Points for Some Slurp Customers
Today, due to a fault on our automated emailer, we sent out duplicate copies of an email offer. For any company this is clearly a distressing event, but for one that prides itself on its technology it is about as distressing as it gets! We tried to make some reparation by crediting all affecting customers' accounts with 1,000 Cork (loyalty) Points immediately, and Managing Director Jeremy Howard is in the process of contacting each affected customer with a personal apology. The free bottle of wine on us probably doesn't make up for the annoyance caused but we wanted to…...
Excessive Web Traffic Causes Outage at Slurp.co.uk
We regret that some disruption was caused to our webservers on Friday 29th January and into the weekend, which resulted in www.slurp.co.uk being down for a period and then running very slowly while we recovered.
What happened was that the Daily Mail wrote up the amazing perform of the Nyetimber Cuvee Classic 2003 English sparkling wine at the Bollicine del Mondo contest in Verona - where it beat rivals Louis Roederer, Bollinger, Pommery, Gosset, Joseph Perrier and Devaux in a blind tasting. This caused a huge surge in traffic (and orders) for this product just at the time we sent…...
British Venture Capital Assn names Slurp in Top 200 Companies for 2009
The BVCA is the umbrella organisation for the UK's venture capital industry. This week it named Slurp.co.uk as one its Hottest Venture Capital Backed Companies of 2009. For the full report and list of companies see here. Slurp is on page 145....
Slurp.co.uk Sales Boosted as Online Wine Sales Surge over Christmas
Slurp.co.uk – the UK’s fastest growing online wine retailer with almost 4,000 products – today announced that Q4 (Oct to Dec) 2009 sales had jumped 460% from the same period in 2008, with the number of customer orders more than tripling. Almost 50% of the Q4 2009 total came in the first three weeks of December, in a last minute stampede of online wine and Champagne buying. As well as benefitting from slightly looser purse strings on luxury items like fine wine this Christmas, Slurp also received a lot of online orders from people unable or unwilling to…...
Slurp Holds All Prices Steady Amid VAT Increase – But Delivery Charge Increases Slightly for 2010
We are pleased to say that we have decided to leave our prices unchanged despite the increase in VAT which rose on 1st January 2009 from 15% to 17.5%. This represents a substantial margin reduction for us, but we simply don’t want to make wine any more expensive at this time of the year. However, due to the soaring cost of delivering wine (as a result of recent increases in petrol prices and other factors) we are having to increase our delivery charge slightly to £7.99 per order. This charge will continue to be a flat rate irrespective of mainland…...
'Cyber Monday' Effect Lifts Slurp
The first Monday of December has been dubbed ‘Cyber Monday’ and is traditionally the strongest of the year for online retailers. The effect was felt strongly by us this year. Monday 7th December 2009 saw Slurp.co.uk receive the highest number of individual orders (some 17% more than the previous busiest day) in our four year history. Online sales have been extremely resilient across the economy through this recession, and wine has proved no exception. We are hugely grateful for all the Christmas orders we have received and you can be sure that Santa’s little wine elves will be extremely busy between now…...
Slurp Launches New Fine Wines Division
Today Slurp.co.uk – the UK’s fastest growing online wine retailer – launched its new Fine Wines Division headed by rising industry star Alan J Macdonald. Alan was headhunted by Slurp from Quintessentially Wines to establish the new operation and to build a team of fine wine salespeople and product specialists. Based in Slurp’s new corporate headquarters in West London, Alan will bring Slurp’s existing client base a personal sales dimension to its already strong suite of online tools and amazing list.
Alan has an excellent wine pedigree. He was born on a vineyard (in Victoria, Australia) and since coming to the UK worked…...
Slurp.co.uk Continues to Defy Recession with 211 percent YOY Jump in Q3 2009 Sales
“This year’s dramatic rise in Slurp’s wine sales revenues showed no sign of abating in Q3 2009, despite extremely challenging conditions for the wine retail market generally. Slurp’s revenues were 211% higher than the same period in 2008 and up 28.7% on Q2 2009. Slurp’s performance in Q3 2009 is in stark contrast to the overall market, with the Wine and Spirit Trade Association reporting in July (the latest sales data available) that total UK wine sales had fallen year on year by -4.5% (July 2009 over July 2008). Even the previously buoyant online sector of the market has…...
Slurp's Lower Alcohol Recommendations
There is abundant evidence that alcohol in moderation is beneficial to a long and healthy life. But it is also clear that today many people are interested in wines which have a lower alcoholic content, whilst of course still retaining fantastic character and personality. There is no precise definition of what constitutes a lower alcohol wine, but we believe that anything with less than 12% ABV (alcohol by volume) is certainly a lower strength wine in today's market place. So here is a our list of recommended wines under 12% ABV - sorted by alcoholic content - designed to help you Slurp a little more responsibly when…...
Slurp Launches Virtual Tasting Notes
The most annoying thing about being an internet wine retailer is our inability to sit and taste wines more regularly with our customers. So we are always on the lookout for things that can bring the joyous sights and sounds of wine closer to people over the internet. Virtual tasting notes, delivered over YouTube are clearly a very helpful tool, and today we launched the first batch of what we hope will be a huge virtual tasting library. Our first notes come from our friends at the excellent Chilean producer Vina Ventisquero. We hope you find them useful and…...
Slurp.co.uk Appoints Chief Technology Consultant
Slurp.co.uk today confirmed the appointment of Debbie Carne as the company’s first Chief Technology Consultant. Debbie will have overall responsibility for guiding Slurp’s technological development as the company enters a critical phase in its development. Debbie has already been working with Slurp for much of 2009, and has been the architect of a number of important developments: including a complete re-build of our product pages, a comprehensive security overhaul, the new pivot table navigation bar and development of our ground-breaking Online Sommelier system. Managing Director Jeremy Howard said:
“Debbie has truly earned promotion to this critical role. As a cutting edge online company, there…...
Slurp.co.uk Launches UK’s First Online Sommelier
‘Simon’, Slurp’s new Online Sommelier, is a step towards revolutionising the wine buying experience. Slurp’s research has shown that a trip to the wine shop can be an intimidating experience. Bewildered by a range of products (which often give little clue as to what is inside) customers often grab a bottle on the basis of the label alone. Fear of mispronouncing a name or exposing their own ignorance often precludes them for asking for help. We think we can make things better by starting to combine the help and advice of a knowledgeable…...
BMA Must not be Allowed to Demonise Wine Drinking – It Makes no Sense
Like the BMA, we believe that the wine and spirits industry has a duty to promote sensible and moderate consumption of alcohol. We do this in a number of ways, from supporting the DrinkAware campaign through to promoting (quite heavily) very low alcohol wines like our best selling Arca Nova White 2008.
But what we cannot allow is the BMA to start to push the wine industry down the same path as the tobacco industry, through restrictions on advertising and marketing. Wine is nothing like tobacco for one simple reason: there have been numerous studies which show that moderate consumption…...
Majestic Sees the Light (Well ... Almost)!
It has taken Majestic Wines fifteen years to realise that people do not necessarily want to buy 12 bottles of wine at a time. The fact that it has taken this long to change their policy speaks volumes about the attitude of the wine industry to new ideas and to innovation generally. But the comic part of the company’s bold and groundbreaking decision to allow customers to buy (wait for it) six bottles at a time is that it doesn’t extend to their online offering. Online you will still have to buy 12! This makes no sense to us,…...
