Everyone’s talking about Independent wine retailers, which is music to our ears because it’s an area of the trade that is long overdue some time in the limelight. Harpers Wine & Spirit magazine have paved the way with their Top Merchant initiative which has facilitated the platform for these very important players to voice some of the frustrations and limitations they are faced with by their suppliers.

We applaud Harpers for raising the issue that surrounds the Independent/ Supplier debate and for using its voice to draw up a set of Best Practice Guidelines concerning transparency in the trade. We take pride in the relationships we have with our customers and the honesty and openness we show in developing business with them which is why we’re really pleased to commit ourselves to the Harpers Best Practice Guidelines and officially be part of this way of working!

Here are the Best Practice Guidelines that you can hold us too when dealing with us as laid out by Harpers with input and agreement from both sides of the trade.

It’s how we’ve always worked, it’s how we’ll continue to work, but it feels good to get it down on screen!

1 Suppliers that want to publicly endorse the Harpers Best Practice Guidelines should commit themselves to these principles and conduct a transparent relationship with their customers in the independent sector
2 That these suppliers commit to a transparent independent merchant strategy which makes clear which channels of distribution they are trading in. This should be made available on request to individual wine merchants
3 Independent merchants can request information from these suppliers on an individual basis about which channel of distribution the wines and spirits they are interested in stocking are distributed in
4 Sales representatives of these suppliers must be made aware of their distribution strategy covering independent wine merchants
5 These suppliers should, on request from an independent wine merchant, be able to set out how this strategy is managed within their company and understood by their own sales staff
6 That training and information is being provided on these suppliers’ distribution management strategy to sales staff
7 That these suppliers should inform affected independent merchants if the distribution management strategy for a particular wine or spirit changes