Majestic Wine - Today

Today

Headquartered in Watford, Hertfordshire, under the leadership of Tim How (CEO until 2008), Majestic Wine became a public company in 1996, floating on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

Majestic Wine operates as a mixed case retailer, selling a mixture of wine, champagne and spirits with a minimum purchase of six bottles in-store and twelve bottles for delivery and online. Having such a policy has allowed the retailer to offer their customers free tasting, free delivery and free glass hire.

Majestic Wine currently has 156 stores in the UK, owing its expansion and success to a combination of acquisition and development:

• April 2000 - Majestic.co.uk was launched, offering customers an online service. By 2007, online sales had risen to around £15 million per year with over 100,000 orders.
• October 2001 - Majestic acquired Les Celliers de Calais, whose business was based around the British cross-channel trade. Now known as Wine & Beer World there are three stores in Calais, Coquelles and Cherbourg.
• July 2003 - Majestic opened their first temperature controlled fine wine centre at St. John's Wood store. They currently have air conditioning installed at about half of their stores, but the largest amount of fine wine is still housed in the original St John's Wood store.
• October 2005 - Launched Gift Solutions, an online service designed to allow customers to send gifts of less than 12 bottles. The company's 13th consecutive annual rise in turnover was recorded, with profits of £13.2m.
• March 2009 - Majestic acquired the privately owned companies: Lay & Wheeler Ltd, WBI Ltd and Vinotheque Holdings Ltd as the fine wine specialist arm of Majestic Wine Plc.
• June 2009 - Majestic published company report stating that the administrative costs had increased by £6 million from £10 million, head office staffing increased by 10%. Store staffing increased by a little over 1%. The increase in store numbers means that the store staffing increase is actually a real terms decrease.
• September 2009 - Majestic reduced its in-store minimum purchase from 12 bottles to 6 bottles. The minimum purchase for online orders and deliveries remained at 12 bottles until 11 June 2012 when it was reduced to 6 bottles.

In 2007 at the at the International Wine Challenge Awards, Majestic Wine was awarded both High Street Merchant of The Year 2007, and overall Merchant of The Year 2007, on the strength of their "Competitive prices, excellent customer service, impressive range". In the same year, Decanter Magazine awarded them Decanter High Street Chain of The Year 2007.