To get Wine2laydown.com off the ground earlier this year, Ben Stephens spent £50,000 on web development and buying in the vino, but the hidden costs of retailing wine online came as a shock.
“The fact that we’re selling alcohol is a major issue. I had to apply to nine different government bodies before I could become licensed,” says Stephens. “If you’re selling alcohol in the UK, you have to have both an individual alcohol sales licence and a premises licence from your local authority, and you have to attend a separate course for each.
“The latter set me back £1000, and the personal licence course was an additional £300. Not only that, it took two months to get qualified.”
If this already sounds like more trouble than it’s worth, avert your eyes now. “International distribution brings yet more red tape,” says Stephens. “I still can’t take orders from the US. The law is different over there: you need a special wine importer’s certificate to do business.”
Anything else?
“Yes. If you’re buying wine wholesale from UK distributors, you can order by the crate – 12 bottles. But if you buy direct from the vineyard, they deal in pallets – up to 600 bottles. You have to be more selective about the wines you buy, but you save time and money on excise duty in the long run.”
In vino veritas? More like in vino difficultas.