Commercial Director – Family Owned Fine Wine Business

About The Role

Our client is looking for a highly competent and focussed person to take on the newly created role of Commercial Director, the ideal candidate possessing many, if not all, of the criteria detailed further below.

Initially, your role will be to take over the day-to-day running of the Sales, Buying and Supply Chain Teams, liaising closely with the Office Manager.

You will be expected to analyse current practices and offer solutions to improve efficiencies across the business. In time your responsibilities will expand as you learn how the business works and within a 12–18-month timeframe be managing the Sales, Buying, Operations and certain Finance functions. This will be done in close collaboration with the two current directors.

In addition to this you will need to have a strong track-record in fine wine sales and continue to run your own book of targeted clients. Evidently you will be in a busy managerial position so your own personal sales contribution will be important yet balanced with your management responsibilities.

Key Skills Required for this Role.

• Strong leadership qualities, able to set clear goals and motivate the team through excellent communication.
• Strategic mindset to help grow the business.
• Sales acumen to lead a sales team with awareness of the market to keep ahead of the curve and drive sales through dynamic strategy.
• Balance modern marketing skill with our traditional values.
• Highly organised and analytical.
• A love of wine and the fine wine industry.

Experience/ Responsibilities

• Fine Wine Sales Experience in a senior commercial position in the fine wine industry with demonstrable experience of having both personally delivered a high level of profitable sales and managed teams that have delivered successful sales performance to HNW and Trade clients.

• Sales Team. You will be managing a growing sales team an will need to familiarise yourself with offers process, responsibilities, clientele profile and undertake a beginning of month review of previous months sales and aims for the following month. You will work closely with the sales team on their ongoing sales targets to form a broader understanding of contributions.

• Buying Team. Managing a team of two buyers, you will familiarise yourself with their roles, contacts, ways of working, buying strategies and logistics from their perspectives.

• Team Leadership Experience will be a key aspect of this role across multiple functions of the business that demonstrate an understanding of the wider company priorities and how to create and support high performing teams that work efficiently. Looking for ways to drive efficiencies will be an important aspect of the role and the ability to keep asking questions about how to achieve this. This role will be to manage the sales & buying logistics & stock management teams. This will be a phased process set out in detail and is anticipated to take place within 12-18 months from starting as Commercial Director.

• Strong Financial Acumen. In time, you will be involved in, but not responsible for, fiscal discussions with the other Directors, so financial acumen will be important to allow you to contribute to some elements of fiscal policy. This will include an understanding of supplier and client ledgers, credit control, cash flow, monthly reporting of sales performance and management accounts.

• Operation and Procedural Experience in the movement of fine wine from a supply chain perspective. You will need to become familiar with our process and procedures from PO to collections, incoming logistics, receipts, and storage process. This will include drilling down into storage costs, nominals, reconciliations, analysis and help review improvements for the future. You will also engage with the UK Logistics/Overseas shipping team and understand the processes, costs, advantages, and limitations of how we currently operate.

• Supplier Relationships – Our client is well respected in the industry, both in the UK and internationally, and have a strong network of loyal suppliers that you will be working with. Your own supplier network will be of value to the company to identify new opportunities in conjunction with the directors, buying and sales teams where you have particularly strong relationships.

Career Progression

As Commercial Director you will be responsible for the successful day-to-day running of the company. For the right candidate there may be further opportunities in the business to take an even more significant leadership position. Discussions on profit share/ equity in the business could be part of that.

Location

The role location is hybrid with typically three days a week in the office as you will be managing a team of people. These days will be Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday. The office is closed on Mondays and Fridays, and all employees work remotely on these days. The Head office is located  c.60 miles Northwest of London on the Oxfordshire border. (c.1 hour by train from London Marylebone)

Package

• Six figure package
• Commission Scheme based on a  % of GP on PC Channel Sales – paid monthly and once pre-agreed GP hurdles have been achieved.
• Employers’ contribution on pension is to match salary sacrifice up to 5%.
• 25 days holiday plus Bank Holidays.