1. Home
2. News

Naked sales soar 68%

In a trading update released today, the online retailer said it had seen a “strong performance” across all three geographies, but particularly the US where sales grew by more than 75%, surpassing £150m in transactions and representing almost half of group sales.

The overall group growth was driven by a “significant increase” in demand for its direct-to-consumer wine subscription model, and from an accelerated shift in consumer behaviour toward online wine purchases due to the pandemic, said Naked Wines.

The sales results were better than expected, after initially being forecast to grow by no more than 65%.

“Our significant growth is a testament to the customer demand for a disruptive online wine model that offers direct connection to the world’s top winemakers,” said CEO Nick Devlin.

“I’d like to thank all our colleagues for their continued dedication throughout a challenging year. We end this year not just as a bigger business, but a better one, benefitting from scale economies that have reinforced our competitive position and enhanced our appeal to both customers and top winemaking talent,” he said. 

Looking forward, he said Naked Wines was committed to further strengthening its proposition and had identified “multiple areas” to invest in enhancing its customer and wine proposition in the year ahead. 

“The past twelve months have been exceptionally challenging for winemakers the world over and I’m delighted we have been able to use our platform to support over 235 extremely talented independent winemakers to not just survive but grow with us.”

Full-year results for the 52 weeks ended 29 March 2021 will be announced on 11 June 2021.  

Yesterday, Naked Wines announced that Darryl Rawlings will join the Board as an independent non-executive director with immediate effect, before succeeding Ian Harding as chairman at the forthcoming annual general meeting in August 2021.