Online wine retailer Naked Wines, famous for its Angel subscribers, hasn’t had an easy few years. But with fresh leadership and a new strategy, UK general manager Emma Kamel tells Lucy Britner she is optimistic about the future.

Seven years ago, Emma Kamel swapped a City job at EY for a career at Naked Wines. Over the years, she has risen through the Naked ranks, with roles including commercial and supply chain director and chief operating officer for the UK business. Then, in February 2024, Rodrigo Maza was promoted from UK managing director to group chief executive, overseeing Naked’s operations in the US, Australia and the UK. Kamel was announced as Maza’s successor, in the role of UK general manager.

“I was lucky enough to swap my City job for vineyards,” she starts. “I’ve been on a bit of a journey with the company. I started doing some continuous improvement-type roles, helping the business work out how it could grow.”

Kamel says Naked was at “that transition between being a very small start-up and learning to be a big player” in the industry. “I used some of my corporate knowledge to help it on that journey, and I ended up, luckily, taking on the buying team from there. That was fascinating, because how else do you get to know a business – particularly a business like Naked – other than talking to the winemakers and really understanding where they’re coming from.”

It’s no secret that Naked has had its challenges. In autumn 2022, then-chief executive Nick Devlin said the company had “made mistakes” in pursuit of rapid growth. Around the same time, the business brought back founder and former chief executive Rowan Gormley as an advisor to the board, and he later became chairman. In September 2023, Gormley issued an apology to shareholders for the company’s losses, and in November 2023, Devlin agreed to leave his role after the company warned of reduced revenue expectations. Gormley stepped into the executive chair role while the search for a chief executive – eventually Maza – took place.

By the summer of 2024, Naked had secured a new $60m credit facility with PNC Bank and in its most recent financial results, for the six months to September 30, the company reported narrowing pre-tax losses of £5.6m, down from £9.7m during the same period a year prior. Maza said at the time that Naked was in a “better position, both financially and strategically”.

“It’s been a tough couple of years, and not for Naked alone, for retail generally and particularly in the beverage industry,” says Kamel. “What I can say is, I feel super confident now we have a fantastic leadership team in place, and we’ve really strengthened our financial position.” And she says the company’s Christmas cases sold out in “record time”.

She adds that the big change she has seen is the “focus on customers, unapologetically”.

“We are talking about our customers, researching our customers, listening to our customers like never before, and then using that to inform our strategy, to inform what we buy, to inform how we engage our winemakers in that community we’ve created and really listening to them. I think that’s what makes Naked such a fantastic proposition from here on in – that link between our customers and our winemakers.”

As well as quality and pricing, Kamel says Naked helps take the guess work out of buying wine.

“We have great data on what [customers] buy and what they rate. We now have millions, literally millions, of ratings from customers for wines, and we’re able to use that to help customers identify what they really like.”

That data tells Kamel that France, Italy and South Africa remain popular with consumers, while she also flags a willingness to experiment, with the likes of Greece garnering a mention.

“We have a whole variety of wines that are interesting, that people are willing to try,” she adds. “They’re never going to be the top country, but people are getting quite brave to say, actually, I’ll give that a go and see if that suits my needs.”

CALL OF DUTY

As we progress into 2025, Kamel, like many others in the industry, is mindful of forthcoming duty changes, in which the easement for wines between 11.5% abv and 14.5% abv will be scrapped from February 1.

She highlights the company’s “fantastic relationships with winemakers” and the “community of customers” with whom they can have a conversation about things like duty changes. “We’re in a strong position to weather that storm, and it is a storm, I’ll be honest,” she says. “We can work closely with winemakers to talk about the abv and say, actually, what is appropriate for your wine? We are not just taking a percentage off every wine for the sake of it.”

Kamel says the team is working hard to identify other cost-saving elements, such as lightweight bottles.

There’s also a benefit to having counterparts in different markets. Just as Kamel’s fellow GMs in Australia and the US have taken learnings from the UK’s tasting tour, she is paying close attention to mid-strength in Australia. “On launch, it was super exciting, we had great hits,” she says of the Australian mid-strength initiative. “But actually, do people continue to buy that? And what share of the basket does that make up? Australia is very much our test bed for mid-strength.”

Looking forward, Kamel is excited for the future of Naked, which she believes is in the right position to “deliver for customers and winemakers like never before”.

And would she give it all up to return to the City? “No, I’m very much not going back to the City,” she says. Kamel and the team joked over the festive season that if you’re not having fun at a wine company “you’re doing it all wrong”.