Me And My Partner: 'We appeal to discerning drinkers'

David Campbell

My introduction to the wine industry was in the late Seventies. I became international sales director for the publishing company Mitchell Beazley, where Hugh Johnson's Wine Atlas and Pocket Wine Book and Michael Broadbent's Great Vintage Wines became bestsellers. I noticed that the French didn't have any significant wine books, so in 1982 I joined the international publisher Hachette in Paris, where I invented the Guide Hachette des Vins, France's number-one selling wine book.

It was when I was living in Paris, which I did for 10 years, that I started to buy wine by ringing vineyards directly. It worked out cheaper than buying it in shops. When the internet became big, it struck me that I could do this online and sell it onto consumers far more cheaply than the prices they pay in shops. Eventually, in 2006, I thought, "Right, I'm going to do it this year." A couple of my friends who knew about my plan said, "You have to meet Esme Johnstone." Esme and I got together for lunch and realised we would make a great team.

Although I've never worked in the wine trade, my experience in wine publishing means I know a lot of wine areas very well, particularly in France. Esme is probably the most innovative wine retailer there has been over the last couple of decades and he's also been a wine grower. The mix of our different perspectives and experience felt right for the new business. Equally important was that we have very much the same taste in wine.

The business didn't feel like a huge risk for either of us. It certainly felt far less risky for me than when I bought Everyman from debt in 1991 and relaunched it. Having to print books and store them in a warehouse is expensive and if you don't sell them, you're in trouble. There aren't the same costs involved in fromvineyardsdirect. There aren't even the same costs for us as for other online wine companies, of which there are many – some of them brilliant. That's because they belong to larger businesses with big overheads. We only exist online, which is why we can sell our wines so cheaply.

We have two employees who work from a corner of my publishing office in London. I'm normally in the office with them three days a week and Esme, who lives in Leicestershire, comes down to be here two days a week. We try to make sure our days overlap, but we have plenty of e-mail and phone contact throughout the days when we're not together. With any internet business, people can order 24 hours a day, so there are times when we need to discuss a work issue quite late at night.

Our roles within the business are the same. We both find the wines, we both write the copy for the website and we both monitor the business on a daily basis. That's worked very smoothly and we haven't had to put in place any rules, except one. If one of us has reservations about a wine – even if the other is wildly enthusiastic about it – it doesn't go on our list. That's a really important rule because we have a very small list.

If you look up, say a Chablis, on a normal wine list, you might find four or five. But we don't think that's useful for the consumer. We think the consumer needs to be told of one wonderful one that we have total confidence in. It seems to be working because we're getting 150 new customers a month and over 80 per cent have come back for repeat orders.

Esme and I have become good friends since starting up the business. I live in London and Scotland and he's visited me in Scotland a few times and both him and his wife visit me in London.

I'd say our personalities are quite similar. We're both energetic and gregarious and we both pay attention to detail. As you might expect, even when we're not working, we both talk a lot about wine.

Esme Johnstone

I've had lots of business partners and I know pretty well straight away whether I can work with someone. It was clear from my first lunch meeting with David that the synergy between us was right for this new business. The wines we sell are not like those in the supermarket. They are more exciting middle-range wines, primarily French, that appeal to the more discerning drinker in the same way that Everyman's books appeal to the more discerning reader. That fits well with my 25 years of experience in the wine business, during which time I've been a retailer, a grower and a merchant.

It helped that from the moment we sat down, we got on extremely well. Almost straightaway, we wrote out a business plan on a sheet of paper. We tore the plan up and wrote it out again about another 50 times. After two months, we had the model we thought would work and we went for it. We are both Scots and roughly the same age. We also both get excited about wine and creating new businesses, especially when that involves selling something that people enjoy. I think that's why the first year of working together has had such a buzz.

My involvement in wine started at an early age when my father gave me a thimble full of wine at dinner with the promise of a full glass if I could get the vintage right. I went down to his cellar and counted what he had most of. It was cheating, but it encouraged a keen interest in both wine and statistics.

After studying at the London School of Economics, qualifying as a chartered accountant and a spell in Hong Kong, I founded Majestic Wine. That was really exciting because Majestic revolutionised wine buying in the UK, with its new format of warehouses with enthusiastic staff and a totally cosmopolitan range of wines. In 1989, I felt ready to sell my interest in Majestic and move to Château de Sours in Bordeaux where I created critically acclaimed wines. More recently, I've been mainly consulting and advising various wine-related companies.

Even though our backgrounds in wine are very different, I think it works well that David and I have the same roles within the business. Two minds work better than one and it's quite dangerous buying wine on your own because it's incredibly subjective. That's why we put in place a firm rule that before buying a wine, we must both like it. So far, anything that one of us has thought is spectacular, the other one of us has too. But there have been borderline cases and we've dropped the wine in those cases. It's the safest way and fairest on our consumers.

If there's one thing that has surprised us both, it's how efficient it is doing business over the internet. You don't need to employ an enormous number of people. We have one guy that runs the admin and another who does our marketing and sales. Another benefit of being a retailer online is that it's incredibly immediate. You know exactly how much you've sold every day. I think that helps keep stress levels down, provided you're doing well, which we are.

There are things we disagree about with regards to work. We're planning to expand into Ireland in 2008, which we did both agree on. But David believes we ought to go to Germany next because he knows the market well because of his publishing experience there. I think Belgium would be better because I know that market from selling wine. We haven't resolved that yet. But in two or three months' time, one of us will be persuaded by the other. Disagreements like this aren't heated, though. We just see them as normal dilemmas to discuss if the business is to grow.

www.fromvineyardsdirect.com

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