In Pursuit of Excellence
In Pursuit of Excellence
The Uk’s Importer of
Grenada’s Westerhall Rum
A
fter selling his company in the UK Nick Kingsman was looking
for a new challenge, and he thought the Caribbean might be
the answer. His immediate thoughts were Barbados but upon
realizing that country was now hugely overdeveloped and
it was no longer the charming island that he knew from
years past, serendipity played its part and he decided to
take a look at Grenada. realized they had no representation in the UK. So I decided to give
it a go and become the UK importer and shipped a hundred cases
of various rums to test the market.
Whilst looking online for suitable places to invest he
came across an Ad featuring a property which looked very
smart and had won numerous architectural awards. “All you have to do is get your product, stick it on one of the Geest
boats which arrive every 2 weeks in Grenada and within another 10
days its back in the UK. Once it arrives in the UK that is when the
interesting bit starts…
Landing in Grenada, he fell in love with the place and
bought one of the 5 bedroom “Lawn houses” off plan at
Prickly Bay Waterside and the rest as they say is history.
Being a sociable chap it didn’t take long before he
was introduced to Graham and Wendy Williams of
Westerhall Estate Rums.
“I very much enjoyed the Rums and soon
The devious strategy was that if it didn’t sell …then he’d just have to
drink it himself! How could he lose?
Nick soon discovered exporting to the UK is very easy
To hold Liquor in a bond in the UK, which means that you do not have
to pay the excise duties until you sell it requires a lot of licensing and
getting those licenses is quite difficult.
“The first shipment we had delivered to the UK we could not get all
the licenses required from Her Majesties Royal Customs HMRC, so I
had to pay the duty upfront as soon as it arrived which is approximate
8 pounds a bottle in duty plus VAT which is 20% in the UK, so it all
adds up to about 10 pounds of tax per bottle. If a bottle
sells for 20 pounds 10 pounds of that is tax.
“There is not a lot of margin per bottle in low end
spirits” Kingsman observes “but if the bottle sells for
50 pounds then customers still only pay the 10 pounds
per bottle duty, so obviously there are better margins in
the aged premium rums.
However having said that, Kingsman illustrates “the
greater part of our market is for pouring rums and
rum for cocktails, which you wouldn’t necessarily use
an aged 10 year old rum for when someone wants a
Rum and Coke.
“
I very much enjoyed the Rums
and soon realized they had no
representation in the UK.
So I decided to give it a go
How do you break into the market with a new product like this?
“
- Nick Kingsman
“Thats the difficult thing. When you speak to various people about
how the other brands do it, all the feedback tells you that it all
depends on how much you want to spend and how quickly you want
to achieve that.
Big brands that are funded by large organizations quite easily
spend millions of pounds a year on marketing and promotion.
We do not have the luxury of this kind of budget so we tailor
our spend to opportunities we see which is how we came to
be the Cowes Sailing Week sponsor. This evolved out of a
connection we had with the RORC. (Royal Ocean Racing
Club) out of the UK.
Officers of the club, the Commodore and Chief
Executive were here in Grenada visiting the
Government finalizing the details of their
first transatlantic race from Lanzarote
to Grenada which arrives here just
before Christmas, I happened to
be at the Aquarium restaurant
having lunch and we started
PHOTO BY TONY MCQUILKIN
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