Hackstons bringing liquidity to Knightsbridge
Luxury goods business Hackstons is building a community around its drinks store in London that represents an extension beyond the company’s original business model of managing investments in a wide variety of luxury goods including whiskey casks, wine and spirits – as well as gold coins, classic cars and designer handbags.
The Knightsbridge outlet – that opened in August 2024 – is more focused on selling bottles for collection and consumption as well as hosting tasting events. Sam Wilson, buying and partnerships manager at Hackstons, says the physical outlet aims to “use language that helps customers with all their drinks needs”. He adds: “Bricks and mortar is one way to do this. People can speak to us and we can dispel some of the myths around buying [and investing in] luxury assets.”
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The space has been designed to enable customers to linger and learn and includes a tasting library that is lined with walnut panelling, marble and antique brass while downstairs is the vaults housing rare and collectible bottles along with a private consultation room where customers can talk to the team about building a collection, selecting gifts, or understanding the long-term potential of a particular release.
Wilson very much regards the store as operating a concierge-type service with hospitality woven into the retail offering. He says much of what he is involved with is effectively brokering whereby he is leveraging relationships to access the products his customers want. “In London you can turn things around pretty quickly,” he says.
When the store launched he says it was a very different landscape to what had gone before. “You could sell any whiskey to anyone and it was similar with wine. The secondary market was flourishing,” he adds, but then the market took a fall and people got burnt in the downturn. So when Hackstons opened “we were lucky with the prices we could then pay”.
“There was an element of luck when we came into the market and we were buying stock. It was a buyers’ market for sure. But the [downside is the] market we’re selling into is not as buoyant,” explains Wilson.
The wines are stored in a wine warehouse that holds stock for the store and the business’s e-commerce division while the whiskey casks – that Hackstons buys ahead of bottling – are stored separately in a warehouse in Scotland.
Evolving offering
The Hackstons store is not seeking to outplay Hedonism Wines in Mayfair – with its “stocking of everything on the planet” – but is instead guarding against the potential of overwhelming customers and so stocks a curated 1,000 SKUs across wine, whiskey and other spirits that it buys in modest volumes thereby ensuring a constantly evolving offering.
He is also not seeking to compete with nearby Harrods nor Berry Brothers & Rudd and Jeroboams. “We’re very ambitious and we want our store to be the best in the world but we’ll not disrespect these older places,” says Wilson, adding that London must have some of the best wine and whiskey stores in the world.
Such respected, long-established retailers make it difficult for Hackstons to expand in London so Wilson says the company has its sights set on opening stores in major global financial centres such as New York and Paris where the high net worth individuals (HNWIs) can be found: “We’re not sure how quickly this will happen. It depends on how the Knightsbridge store goes. We’re excited about the future and the owners have big ambitions.”
Focusing on the capital
For now the focus is on the capital and trading at the physical store currently outplays the online proposition – that launched at the same time as the physical space. Wilson also reveals that wine beats whiskey on volume in the store, accounting for 62% of sales, although whiskey represents 60% by value.
“We’re still building the e-commerce business and need to understand what products to promote. We do well but we’re still building it,” he says, highlighting the fact online specialists such as Master of Malt will likely spend “millions on SEO”.
Across the two channels the pricing for wine ranges from £25 per bottle up to the revered names including Petrus and Screaming Eagle where bottles can hit £10,000-15,000. The customer base buys across the range and is split evenly between tourists (who are directed to the store by concierges at the smart hotels nearby), full-time locals who might frequently drop in for a single bottle for the evening, and the wealthy international grouping that spends part of their time in London.
Some of these individuals might well have met each other if they have taken part in any of the tastings and dining events that the store runs throughout the year. These cover a variety of themes and enable the team – and partner suppliers – to highlight regions and styles of drinks.
