The numbers that should make retailers uncomfortable
Everyday Wine, a small independent specialising in organic and natural wines, posted 96% revenue growth in the 2026 financial year, on the back of 55% growth the year before. It sold more than one million bottles nationwide in 2025 and founder Dan Gillett says it is on track to shift two million in the current year.
The striking part is how it got there. About three years ago Gillett closed the company’s physical store and moved the business entirely online. He walked away from foot traffic and grew faster than almost any physical wine shop could dream of.
Growth is not dead, it just moved channels
Set Everyday Wine’s numbers against the wider market and the lesson gets sharper. Stats NZ reported retail sales volume up just 0.9%, or $232 million, in the March 2026 quarter, following 1.9% growth in the September 2025 quarter. Aggregate retail is inching along. A near-doubling of revenue against that backdrop is not a recovery story, it is a channel-shift story.
The NZ Post e-commerce report makes the structural point in hard figures. Online spending in New Zealand hit $12.7 billion in 2025, up roughly $1.1 billion or about 10% on the year before. Nearly one in four retail dollars is now spent online, with consumers making nearly six million more online transactions than in 2024. For a retailer still treating its website as a brochure, the arithmetic is unforgiving. The market is migrating to exactly where Everyday Wine already lives.
Local operators are winning, and not on price
The encouraging news for domestic business is that Kiwi retailers are taking the spoils. Local operators held 79.6% of all online spending in 2025, and their share grew at more than double the rate of international competitors. The average online transaction climbed to $120.
Crucially, they are not winning by being the cheapest. NZ Post’s analysis concluded that domestic retailers are competing through “their trusted local status” and differentiating “on factors like quality, service, experience and convenience, rather than trying to take on global players on price”. For a curated specialist selling natural and organic wine, that is the whole game.
Trust is now the currency
Chris Wong, GM Business at NZ Post, argues the buying decision has changed shape. “Trust and transparency have emerged as factors in purchasing decisions amid cost-of-living pressures, international competition, online scams and the growth of AI,” he says. “More than half of shoppers search for independent reviews, external ratings, or real shopper feedback before purchasing,” also looking for signals of legitimacy like a physical address and a named delivery partner.
The online customer is more demanding than the one who wanders into a shop. 66% hunt for discounts and 41% compare and switch between products and retailers. But once converted, that customer buys at a higher basket value and transacts more often. Convert them, and the economics improve.
The self-selecting national customer
Everyday Wine’s roots explain why the model fits. Gillett founded importer Wine Diamonds in 2015 and opened Everyday Wine as a retail outlet on Auckland’s Karangahape Rd in 2019. Back in 2021, when the business was expanding into physical stores, Gillett told Rural News Group that natural wine had gone mainstream, with “absolutely everyone drinking these wines” across all ages.
Going online removed the geographic ceiling that a K Rd shopfront imposed. Instead of relying on who walks past, the brand now reaches a national audience that self-selects for precisely what it sells. That is the difference between a store waiting for customers and a business that went to where its customers already were.
Wong’s forward look tells retailers where to point next. “Retailers that are visible to AI tools, easy to find, trusted by consumers and able to deliver consistently will be positioned for growth when consumer confidence returns,” he says. The market is not flat. It is moving. The question for every retailer is whether they are moving with it.
Sources
- Everyday Wine doubles sales as shift online pays off for New Zealand retailer (2026-07-19)
- Online now accounts for one in four dollars spent on retail – NZ Post report (2026-06-11)
- Growth shifts, favouring local retailers in 2025 (2026-06-10)
- Domestic retailers win bigger share as online spending jumps 10% in 2025 (2026-06-11)
- Retail activity up in the March 2026 quarter (2026-03-19)
- Retail activity increases by 1.9 percent (2025-11-13)
- Everyday Wine (2021-08-10)