Nice Wines drives strategy with elm’s ready-made insights
The brand: Nice Wines
Nice is a brand of high quality still wine in cans that launched in March 2019. As well as selling at beach bars, horse racing events and at your local Wagamamas, Nice’s off-trade sales channels include Sainsburys, Amazon and Shopify.
Jeremy May, Co-Founder at Nice Wines, explains how elm is buying the company time, turning data to actions and driving its e-comm strategy.
The problem
Not enough time
“When retailers share data with us, it’s not easy to make sense of it. In an average month, I was spending half a day just extracting and consolidating our data, and even then I never got near the level of data reporting I wanted. A single retailer will give you seven different spreadsheets each week – to get value out of every single one would have taken time we didn’t have.”
“I knew that this data could tell me everything, but like a lot of small brands, we didn’t have the expertise to turn it into something useful – something really actionable.”
Getting from data to actions
“I knew this data could tell me everything, but like a lot of small brands, we didn’t have the expertise to turn it into something useful – something really actionable. The data was just too hard to continuously mine and update so that it actually worked for us.”
The solution
Automated insight
“With elm, we get ready-made insight from our data. It’s the difference between just having some numbers and turning it into something which actually teaches you something. Elm completely automates the relationship between data and insight. It provides a really clear window into what’s actually going on at SKU level, store level and customer level.”
Suggested actions
“For bricks and mortar sales, elm sends us weekly reports on our top stores and flags any stores that haven’t sold anything, with a suggestion to give them a call. elm reports on swing stores, too, so I know straight away if a certain store has gone up or down.
“That means I can investigate there and then, to figure out any problems, or double down on what’s worked. For key stores, those are the kinds of insights that can really turn the needle. The fact that elm’s focused on FMCG brands means it will suggest incredibly relevant actions.”
“With elm, we get ready-made insight from our data. It’s the difference between just having some numbers and turning it into something which actually teaches you something.”
The results
Time and headspace
“When you first start a business, and it’s just a couple of founders, you do everything. But what I need to do is I need to plot my way out of that, and focus my time effectively as we scale.
“Elm is saving us time and energy, so we can focus on working on the business rather than in the business. The job of sorting out our data used to loom heavy on a Tuesday morning, but I don’t have to think about that anymore.”
When Covid hit, elm insights steered Nice Wines’ e-comm strategy
“In April, e-comm grew from 3% of the business to 30% almost overnight, and in today’s New Normal, every single challenger brand is now focusing on e-commerce and B2C. E-commerce is literally a numbers game. If you’re not looking at the data at every touchpoint, then you’re behind. And that’s where elm can really drive decisions.
“With elm I can just immediately drill into which SKUs are selling better, what’s our revenue per week, what our retention rate is. Just the knowledge that our Amazon retention rate was sitting at 50% meant that as a business, we knew to focus our energies on acquisition.
“We can actually drive our e-commerce strategy with this data. I used to have to stick my finger in the air to figure out new vs returning customers. And now that’s something I can just look at, in five seconds.”
“Elm is saving us time and energy, so we can focus on working on the business rather than in the business.”
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