Insight
Leaning into Strengths: An Interview with Majestic Wine CEO John Colley
January 11, 2022
With Josh Pack, Managing Partner and Co-CIO of Credit Funds
Retail still forms the foundation of economies around the world. Yet rapid fluctuations in real estate and online shopping, not to mention the COVID pandemic, have thrown much of the industry into turmoil. Retail has always required leaders with deep strategic vision, and now even more so. In 2019 we acquired British retailer Majestic Wine, after seeing the opportunity for this online and brick-and-mortar brand that had a core following but was experiencing stagnant growth after its 2015 merger with Naked Wines.
John Colley, Majestic's CEO, sat down with me to talk about how he brought the company back to its roots and beat new financial projections. For a glimpse into the company's comeback, in 2020 -- during the middle of a global pandemic -- Majestic hired over 250 new employees, opened five new stores, and saw record breaking online growth. On top of that, for the first time in the company's forty-year history, Majestic became responsible for five percent of total wine sales in the UK.