Growing wine specialist looks forward to vintage years

Curious Wines is an importer, wholesaler and retailer that began life in 2008 as an online business. The firm opened its first warehouse in Cork in 2010 and added a second one in Naas, Co Kildare, last year. It employs eight people.

What distinguishes your business from competitors? Bar a couple of ports we don't buy anything off Irish importers, so we're bringing something new to the market.

Our main goal is to take customers from supermarkets who are a little bit bored of getting the same old stuff or are annoyed by the disingenuous discounting offered. We don’t give false prices but still work hard to offer real value.

What has been the biggest challenge you have had to face? Where do I start? I was a blue- chip company guy before I started Curious Wines. I had all the theory and had good admin and managerial experience, having previously been at Texaco and GE, but nothing prepares you for setting up your own business. We learned everything on the fly and the first 12 to 18 months in particular were tough because we were learning to import, how to retail properly, sell online and do digital marketing for the first time. Things have eased since then but you're always learning something new.

A big challenge for us over the last 18 months of so has been in terms of managing cash flow as we took the step to open our second warehouse in Naas. You can’t go from one store to 1.1 stores, you have to double it and that’s a difficult thing to manage.

What is the biggest mistake you've made in business? I've not made any catastrophic mistakes but have certainly made hundreds if not thousands of small ones. I think that if you don't learn from your mistakes you quickly go out of business, so if you can manage to take something from the experience you've a decent chance of surviving.

And your major success to date? In our first 12 months of trading we delivered wine to all of the 26 counties, which is something I'm very proud of given that at that time we were pretty much an anonymous start-up company in west Cork.

In the last year, I’m proud of us getting our second warehouse up and running, because that was a significant step for us and took an awful lot of time and energy to do it.

What business advice would you give to would-be entrepreneurs? The single most important piece of advice I'd offer to anyone starting out is to make sure you get a bookkeeper right from the beginning. I caused myself enormous pain by trying to do it all on my own early on and the experience taught me that unless you actually want to be a bookkeeper you should hire one instead. I realised you should focus only on the jobs that will add most value to the business, because there's only so much you can do yourself.

Who do you most admire in business and why? It might be a little trite but it would have to be Michael O'Leary. His approach to marketing and PR and his abrasive and confrontational attitude has never held the brand back. He's shown that just by having sheer will and determination, you can get stuff done. Honestly, I'd have him run the country if he'd do it. He'd upset a lot of people but things would be well run.

Do you think the banks are open for business at the moment? I'd love it if the Government made the effort to sort out the banks, as they are a disgrace. Every one of us has bailed those guys out and they are still not lending money. Every time I see an ad claiming that they are I get upset, because it is just PR lies and rubbish.

It is frustrating because it is very difficult to add jobs when you don’t have the cash. Our growth is permanently held back because the banks won’t play ball and support SMEs.

What about alternative sources for funding? We used Linked Finance last year and intend to use them again. I've been a lender as well through them, so I'm a massive fan of the concept and think peer-to-peer lending is the future.

What was really effective was that we could use Linked Finance to really engage our customers. We have what I think is still the lowest loan rate ever achieved on the platform because we went to our own customers and offered them a VIP card if they came on board and lent us money. That worked really well for us. We were able to borrow competitively without going to banks and could tie in our customer base.

How do you see the short- term future for your business? We're launching a brand extension called Curious Emporium, which will offer a mix of gourmet food and wine-related accessories. We've seen international orders increase in the last couple of years with Irish people living overseas buying cases of wine for loved ones back here and think there's an opportunity to do more in this space.

What is your business worth and would you sell it? The business is priceless to me. I was a very miserable but successful blue-chip executive and have never looked back since I started up the business. It provides an income for the family and a great work/life balance, so I'm happy as things are. In conversation with Charlie Taylor