Oddbins is understood to have been saying it with wine and love letters – in an attempt to poach up to 30 key staff from rival Naked Wines.
The off-licence chain, which was bought out of administration by Raj Chatha’s European Food Brokers in 2011, is thought to be attempting to build up its social marketing and e-commerce teams to help it fight back against Naked.
Until recently, Oddbins has struggled against heavy competition from supermarkets and convenience stores as well as online specialist Naked, which has a far superior digital presence. The company’s online marketing skills have secured it more than 25,000 followers on Twitter and 37,000 likes on Facebook, compared with Oddbins’ 2,900 and 1,261 respectively.
Naked also uses social media techniques on its own website where around 300,000 subscribers help fund more than 130 independent winemakers in exchange for access to exclusive wines at preferential prices.
Majestic Wine, the bulk-order off-licence, bought Naked Wines for £70m in April and installed the online specialist’s founder, Rowan Gormley as chief executive. The tie-up sets Naked in more direct competition with Oddbins - particularly as it plans to ditch Majestic’s rule that customers must buy at least half a case of wine, or six bottles, per visit.
Oddbins, which now has 55 stores, increased sales by 10% in the year to the end of January to £11.4m in England but the company made an operating loss of £496,610, according to accounts filed at Companies House.
Ayo Akintola, managing director of Oddbins, refused to comment on whether the company was behind the approach to Naked’s staff.
He said: “I will not comment on rumours or speculations, however I can say that our ambition is to make Oddbins the very best independent drinks retailer in the UK and to achieve this we have a multi-faceted recruitment strategy to hire the very best in class people across all areas of the business.”
Lewis Cole, a Naked Wines employee, posted a picture of his bottle of wine on Instagram revealing the message “Love your Work Lewis, Your skills are renowned throughout the kingdom, Be our prince!”
Jen Kinnear, managing director of Profiles Creative, a recruitment firm specialising in Marketing & e-commerce, creative and PR, admitted her business was behind the campaign, but refused to confirm the client was Oddbins. She said: “This is a campaign carefully designed for a specific company looking to attract the best talent in a market that is highly competitive.” She said it could be difficult to approach specialists in digital marketing in traditional ways and so new ideas were required.
Eamon FitzGerald, Naked Wines managing director UK, said: “It’s quite flattering that others are interested in Naked’s talented staff.
“If I was running a rival company I’d want them too. Naked’s future has never been brighter, so I’m not feeling threatened by these approaches.”
A Twitter account under the name @LoveYourWorkUK, the same as the motto on Cole’s bottle, has followed several Naked Wine employees.
The Guardian has also seen a letter sent out to staff which reads: “You are special. From the deepest and truest depths, we confess we’ve been following your career and decided we need you.” The letter doesn’t reveal which company is trying to poach staff but it is understood to be Oddbins.
