Founded in 2020 by Jamie Wynne-Griffiths, a longtime member of the wine trade, Propeller Wine was initially touted as a breath of fresh air in the UK wholesaling sector.
Four years later, and one former supplier has appointed solicitors to file a winding-up petition against Propeller’s parent company Wild Ferment.
The hearing is due to be heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in London today (28 August), with the creditor (who has asked not to be named) chasing for unpaid dues that they claim amount to more than £30,000.
Decanter is aware of several other former suppliers who also claim to be owed money by Propeller, but the exact number of creditors and how much they are owed is, as yet, unclear.
High ambitions
Propeller’s aim was to be a more equitable business model that offered ‘distribution as a service’.
Decanter understands that despite quickly attracting a number of suppliers, including some high-profile names, relations eventually turned sour with many.
Former suppliers have complained of slow sales, the absence of a stable, long-term sales representative in Greater London, and the fact that while payments were forthcoming at first, they soon became irregular.
Despite receiving confirmation of sales, numerous suppliers Decanter has spoken to claim they have been waiting on unpaid invoices for extended periods. Many say they have not been paid since the summer or autumn of last year.
The suppliers claim that Wynne-Griffiths made repeated promises about their payments but often became ‘increasingly evasive’ as they chased him for updates and confirmation.
Furthermore, London City Bond froze the Propeller account in November 2023 over late duty payments, with the account still partly in arrears.
Frustrated suppliers
One former supplier who spoke to Decanter about their experience is Chris Archer, CEO of Joiy – a canned wine company in New Zealand.
He told Decanter that, when they first met, Wynne-Griffiths was ‘likeable’ and ‘persistent’ and had ‘worked hard on the business plan and model’, which convinced him to get on board.
Archer said that his first shipments went out and ‘we received the first invoices from Propeller for warehousing, which we paid’.
The initial sales payment Archer received ‘was not a lot of money but it was a start’, added Archer.
However, several subsequent invoices – around September 2023 – were ‘not at the agreed prices’. There was ‘constant back and forth’ over several weeks but ‘no payment’.
Wynne-Griffiths’ excuses mounted as enquiries about follow-up payments continued, said Archer: ‘We were getting very frustrated because we had not been paid a cent [from these later invoices]. We had paid the warehouse invoices, and sales had been made as we were seeing our brand out in the UK market. Phone calls were made, the agreement to pay was made. But no money [was] received.
‘After a few months of this we realised that this situation didn’t smell right. We stopped warehouse payments as the agreed business plan was not being followed.
‘During this time we had: Jamie on holiday, Jamie with kids, Jamie crashed his bike, Jamie is uncontactable, Jamie doesn’t lie, per se, Jamie has had a breakdown, Jamie has a recovery plan.
‘On the day of the agreed part-payment, a so-called investor pulled out again and no money was received.’
Snowballing
Jamie Wynne-Griffiths
A bottle shop and bar called The Drinksmith, that Wynne-Griffiths opened in his home town of Sherborne, Dorset, has been trading since August 2023. Much of the wine sold there was stock consigned with Propeller.
Archer continued: ‘We see our stock in Jamie’s new bottle shop business and our brand images used online. Jamie has not paid a single cent to us [since the initial payment], and won’t, but he is happy to sell our product for his gain.’
For his part, Wynne-Griffiths told Decanter that keeping track of invoices and informing customers was ‘not always as perfect’ as it could have been, admitting that payments to suppliers had been an issue, and on more than one occasion, ‘we were behind the curve’.
Cashflow was another persistent problem. ‘We’d have a big, big splurge, catch-up, then we would potentially miss a month. It was stop-start,’ he said.
He said he had been carried along by the momentum of the business. ‘[It’s] The snowball analogy,’ he explained, ‘with no time to plot where that snowball was going to go.’
After a while, he said, ‘our service and finances got creakier and creakier’.
He told Decanter that, in late 2023 and early 2024, an investor reneging on a deal and a ‘charlatan’ falsifying a major wholesale deal with an (unnamed) airline proved the company’s final undoing.
He said the whole episode left him ‘floored’ and that he suffered a ‘breakdown’ during which he was ‘borderline suicidal’.
Decanter has identified the investor, however they could not be reached for comment. It has no evidence of the other deal.
No place to hide
Many questions still remain about the state of Propeller’s business practices and finances, however. These will be explored in a longer article to be published on Decanter.com soon.
In the meantime, Propeller and its creditors await the outcome of the winding-up order.
Donal Blaney, principal at Griffin Law which brought the winding-up petition, said that Wynne-Griffiths was mistaken if he thought he could hide behind limited liability to excuse the company’s collapse.
Blaney told Decanter: ‘Time is running out for Jamie Wynne-Griffiths. He should either do the right thing by his creditors or, as inevitably as a hangover follows drinking a bottle of cheap plonk, he deservedly faces professional and financial ruin that will follow his company’s liquidation.
‘This mess is nobody’s fault but his own,’ added Blaney. ‘It’s time this “whine merchant” stopped blaming others for his mess and does the right thing at last.’