Liz Wheadon: General Manager of Normanby Fine Wines on growing retail confidence, launching a business early next year

Retailers appear hopeful their sales numbers will turn around. 

Retail NZ's quarterly survey finds 65% of retailers feel confident or very confident their business will survive the next 12 months. 

It finds 57% expect to meet or exceed their targets for the final quarter, even after 70% failed to meet their last sales targets. 

General Manager of Normanby Fine Wines, Liz Wheadon told Ryan Bridge that they’ve started to see positive signs, and they see it as a good time to look at starting a new business. 

She said that fine wines is a hard market to read, but it feels like there’s some optimism there. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Retailers. This is good news this morning. Retailers are saying
they're seeing some light at the end of the tunnel
as the economic times begin to change. The latest quarterly
survey from Retail ends ED shows sixty five percent of
retailers are confident or very confident that their business will
survive the next twelve months. Still doesn't sound great, but
it's better than the fifty eight percent last quarter. Meanwhile,

(00:21):
fifty seven percent think they will meet or exceed their
targets in quarter of four. That is up from just
thirty two percent in the last survey, so a big
jump there. Liz Whedon is the general manager of Normanby
Fine Wines, a new retail business that's starting up in
February next year. Liz, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Thank you, good morning, good.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Morning, brave time to be starting a business.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, it is. I think you know, as you just said,
of those numbers, there's some positive scientis in the market.
I don't you know. This year has been tough for retail,
but started to see some positive signs and we see

(01:07):
it is a good time to look at starting a
new business.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Have you done this before, been in business before, been
in the fine wine business before. Is this a completely
new venture for you?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
So career career retailer, and I've worked in the wine
industry for the last thirty years, have bat slightly longer,
but last thirty years, so very familiar with the industry.
And you know, it's I don't I think whilst you know,
those steps are shown that there's signs of the market

(01:43):
looking better, it's still not great right now. I think
you know, this period into Christmas is where all retailers
really need a strong trading period, and I think that's
starting starting to come right. But certainly we see by
you know, cep jury next year, which is when we're

(02:07):
all the date we've put down to open normally fine wines,
that we should be seeing a different trading pattern to
what retailers who have endured so far.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, you might actually fingers crossed, you might actually have
time but just right, we might.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
We might have timed it's just right. Maybe a little
bit of experience there, but yeah, I mean it's also
it's a hard market to read in all the conditions
that have put it to where it is. Now. Certainly
a hard market to read. But yeah, very very encouraging. Yeah,
it definitely feels I think right now, there feels like
there's an optimism there, so hopefully we're reading that right

(02:48):
and it's a good time to open a new business.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Best of luck to you, Liz, and as I say this,
the quarterly survey results from retailing z out this morning
should be a sign of some op for you. That's
Liz Weed and the general manager of Normanby Fine Wines.
If you haven't heard of them, it's because they haven't
even started yet. They're kicking off business in February next year,
twenty three minutes after five. I should say that the
survey is good, but it does still mean that the

(03:13):
remaining forty three percent don't think they will meet their
targets for quarter four. For more from Early Edition with
Ryan Bridge, listen live to news talks there'd be from
five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio