13 12 2024
Challenge
The Sporting Wine Club is a wine gifting and subscription service established in 2017 by ex-England rugby international, Simon Halliday and his business partner Chris Mariner.
It’s a unique wine club with a focus on sporting connections – sourcing an impressive portfolio of wines and spirits from around the world, all related to well-known sporting internationals or vineyards with a commitment to supporting local sporting communities and charities.
In June 2022, the Sporting Wine Club joined The Pack Smart Group after running into problems with their previous fulfilment partner. They found that products were often damaged in transit and struggled to ensure that the wine arrived safely and securely. The problem seemed to be that while the gifting packaging looked good, due to the nature of the products, they were easily breakable.
We assured the team that we could navigate this issue and find a packaging solution that would both delight the recipient of the gift and ensure that everything arrived in one piece.
Solution
As soon as the Sporting Wine Club was onboard with us, we sent them multiple samples of potential packaging to try out. We worked closely with them to test a variety of gift packaging options, including adding their branded literature to go with the bottles and applying branded tape to the boxes to ensure the products looked and felt high-end when the customer received them.
One of the benefits of our Drinks Smart fulfilment solutions is that we’ve dedicated time to drop-testing our alcohol shipments with DPD – with packaged bottles dropped from building height to demonstrate that they can be shipped through their network with minimal risk of damage. This meant that any packaging options we shared with the team had already been approved by DPD to be of the highest standard for alcohol delivery.
As the success of the Sporting Wine Club grew, they decided to expand their operating model and try new things. Towards the end of 2023, we supported them with rolling out a monthly wine subscription, offering both a red and white wine for customers to try. This has now been on-going for a year, with great success.
In addition, we’ve also been able to provide them with ad hoc services, such as a large shipment of Christmas wine gifts for a specific client, that had to include a variation on their usual literature. As we work so closely with our partners, this wasn’t a problem, and the order was fulfilled on time and in excellent condition.
Testimonial
We had long found our wine gifting delivery and fulfilment channel inherently difficult for the obvious reasons of weight and smashability until we partnered with The Pack Smart Group, who have an exceptional team who care a lot about how a gift is received by any given customer.
The work done in the warehouse is what sets them apart and means we can trust any given third party courier when it’s their turn to fulfil.
And the myPacksmart portal for orders is exceptional.
Highly recommend!
