Pursuing a passion for bringing premium Italian wine to British consumers with minimal impact on the environment, Stroud-based wine brand When in Rome has gone from selling at a local farmers' market to stocking major supermarket shelves in just six years.
Having first linked up with The Growth Hub on the recommendation of a fellow local entrepreneur at the start of his journey, co-founder and CEO Rob Malin chats to SoGlos about how impressed he's been with the level of expertise and the quality of resources available from the business support network — all fully funded and accessible right here in the county.
Rob, tell us a bit about When in Rome – how did you come to start the business?
When in Rome was founded six years ago by myself and my two Italian co-founders, Andrea Marchesi and Lorenzo Canali. We met in Milan — I walked into their wine shop actually and just loved what they were doing. Several lunches later, we agreed on the terms of starting this business together, so we're a truly Anglo-Italian business.
We looked at the UK wine market and compared it with how in Italy, people go to local wineries in rural areas with refillable bottles and buy wine from their local producers — we thought, 'how do we replicate this in the UK?'. We then came across bag in box, which as a format has been in the UK since the 1980s, but never really got a lot of traction and in fact quite the reverse, it gained quite a bad reputation.
We looked at the market share in different countries and we saw that bag in box was three per cent of the market in the UK; 40 per cent of the market in France; and 65 per cent of the market in Sweden. So we thought, 'right, we're probably missing a trick here'.
France is obviously a wine-producing country and they've come across the idea themselves, but in Sweden, there's a very different reason — they have an alcohol monopoly and they insist upon wine being imported in the most sustainable way possible, which is bag in box.
So we realised that there's a massive eco advantage to starting a business with bag in box — we looked at the carbon footprint of the wine industry and found that 50 per cent of it is in single use glass bottles. So with bag in box wine, it's half the carbon footprint.
We started selling bag in box at Bath Farmers' Market and a year later we started working with Waitrose. In the beginning, our wine was packaged in Italy, but as we've progressed it is now mostly in paper bottles — we are the only wine brand in the UK to list a paper bottle in supermarkets — and we sell wine in cans as well, all of which are filled in the UK now. In Waitrose, we are now the best selling canned wine brand, too.
Canning and filling in the UK was both cheaper and reduced our carbon footprint by about 10 per cent; and we are the only wine brand in the UK that publishes our carbon footprint on the consumer packaging. We also sell through Sainsbury's, Ocado and Asda and we'll launching next year at Tesco and Morrisons.
Why did you decide to make contact with The Growth Hub in the first instance – what kind of help or guidance were you looking for?
It was a local entrepreneur in Stroud who recommended I got in touch with The Growth Hub — I had never heard of it before. We went in to speak to a business navigator about the business and they recommended a programme of grant funding that was available for small local businesses at the time — about £5,000 — from the European Regional Development Fund.
How did The Growth Hub team help you to achieve your goals?
They helped us with the grant application process, which was successful — I was already pleasantly surprised that this kind of assistance was available but my business partners in Italy just could not believe it, because there was no equivalent to that in Italy and there's still not to this day.
Since then we've had much assistance on things like strategy, sales and networking from The Growth Hub, including various one-to-one sessions on commercial and sales strategies, supply chain finance — you name it.
How else has The Growth Hub helped you to grow your business?
It's been a combination of that one-to-one specialist advice and training courses, on how to deal with things like banking and VAT, for example. We have a regular communication flow with The Growth Hub; we're on their mailing list and get notified about B Corp networking and ESG (environmental, social and governance) events, which is right up our street. Our allocated business guide, Andy Kime, has been to our office and worked with us here — he's been kind of like a dedicated resource for us.
Also as we've grown, we're now in a position where we're able to provide a bit of support back — I've been invited to speak there on anything from telling my own story to specialist talks on particular aspects of our business, like ESG and decarbonisation, which of course raises the profile of our business; and I've also had the chance to meet other key local decision makers there as well.
So I guess it's been that sometimes they're supporting
us, sometimes we're supporting them. There
are definitely things that can still help us with — things like exporting, which we have done, but only on a very small scale, while we can provide myself and my colleagues as human resource now and again when needed. That's how I hope the relationship will continue and develop.
What has impressed you most about working with The Growth Hub?
I was quite surprised to find such a high level of expertise within The Growth Hub. They are mostly ex-business people, so they've done your journey — some of them are even exited founders. So they understand what you're going through as a business and they're very well placed to advise. I've also seen people move in and out of The Growth Hub — coming back into business — who've ended up being almost ambassadors for When in Rome, even within their new roles.
I've found them to be really pleasant people to work with and also extremely hands on — when we launched our canned wine into Waitrose, we did a big marketing exercise where we gave out cans at railway stations in London. Some marketing students from the University of Gloucestershire got involved, through The Growth Hub, for work experience. They worked pro bono, we paid their expenses and they got involved in the marketing campaign, which was just fantastic — they were exactly the kind of young, enthusiastic people that you want to be promoting your brand. And The Growth Hub provided us with that.
