Sessions West Brunswick opens for trade next week, the second retail store as part of the new banner group from Paramount Liquor. The retail business is just one of the ways in which the family business has reinvented itself, steadfastly committed to emerging stronger from a year that saw the income of the business drop by 90% when Covid first hit.
At that time, Paramount’s revenue streamed from the on-premise business sector across three states: New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The first thing the family business did was to take $5 million in stock back from their hospitality partners, to assist their crippled cashflow brought about by lockdown.
Then, said Director Nathan Rowe (pictured below left), Paramount Liquor took a breath and re-framed the pandemic as an opportunity for reinvention, rebranding, expansion and innovation.
“We took the opportunity to reinvest in the business and we are now coming out the other side a very different organisation. We have hired an additional 30 staff, acquired new premises and scaled up our capabilities to better service our customers and supplier partners coming into what we hope to be a busy Christmas period. We are well resourced, technically sound and set up for success on the other side of this,” said Rowe.
Extending into the retail space, Sessions Sandringham opened earlier this month and the second, Sessions West Brunswick, will open next week. The two pilot stores have been spearheaded by former ALM team: Jon Fernandes and Fergus Collins, along with Paramount’s Mark Rowe.
Sessions stores are designed to fill a gap in the market for the more discerning consumer who wants to buy and drink local.
“Today customers want to know the story behind their drinks,” said Jon Fernandes, GM Retail at Paramount Liquor (pictured below right), “They want to know about the artisanal collaborations or know the origins of their favourite hazy IPA.”
This means that each Sessions store will be unique, designed as it is and stocked to meet the consumer demands of its locality.
“Where Sandringham might have a reasonable collection of wine, it will really specialise in unique glass bottle spirits. Whereas West Brunswick will have a strong stockpile of craft beer and wine,” said Fernandes.
In the first instance, the Sessions banner will extend interstate from its home ground in Victoria to retail sites in New South Wales and South Australia, markets where Paramount already has strongly established business relationships. Fernandes has ambitions to establish 60-80 stores in New South Wales and Victoria over the next two years.
“When I talk about Sessions, we have almost universal support from our suppliers, even in these early stages. It shows we are on track in targeting a real gap in the market,” he said.
Rowe acknowledges just how important the support from their suppliers has been.
“Our supplier partners have continued to support our business during this time, as they always have throughout our 28 year history,” he said.
Paramount has also shifted its warehousing facilities in New South Wales, having moved to a 12,000 sqm warehouse in Yennora over the weekend. This expansion takes Paramount’s distribution footprint to more than 30,000 sqm across Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.
Rowe said that the distribution facility will provide “Paramount with the capability for growth, not just in its core on-premise customer base, but also to support its growth into the retail space with its Sessions retail offer. The facility will also allow Paramount Liquor the capability to offer contract distribution for other marketing groups in the New South Wales and ACT markets.”
Fernandes said, “The new warehouse facility will support our push into the retail space, providing the group with a competitive cost structure, combined with an ever-expanding range, that will more than complement the Sessions retail offer.”
Innovation is a significant strategic investment being made by Paramount with the business acquiring the Melbourne based web development agency, Visualr. And, staying in Victoria, the business has just finished construction of new marketing offices designed to house a marketing team of ten people.
“We have a huge appetite as a business to revolutionise the way that we go to market as a wholesaler. The future of our business relies heavily on the technology that we deploy to market, which will improve our overall customer and supplier engagement.
“We felt that the acquisition of the tech development firm will allow us to focus our attention on this area of our business and enable us to innovate quickly and be nimble enough to adapt to the continual evolution of the liquor market,” said Rowe.
Paramount is in the process of building a best in class e-commerce ordering portal for customers and suppliers with launch set for January 2021. It is symbolic of their commitment to innovation, customer solutions and digital marketing initiatives.
“We have been working on the e-commerce platform for over 12 months with Visualr. Our current web portal is quite dated and with the launch of our new brand, we felt it was time to overhaul our website and ordering portal to truly reflect who we are as a business.
“There will be many positive additional features on this website for our customers and suppliers, in turn providing what we believe to be a superior e-commerce experience to any other wholesaler in the Australian marketplace,” said Rowe.
As Melbourne opens up, Nathan says, “We are hoping that we can get people running sooner rather than later.”
And with such significant reinvestment, there is little doubt that the team at Paramount will be working harder, stronger and more determinedly than ever.
