New Zealand Cellar exceeds crowdfunding target within a week

By Arabella Mileham

Published: 13 April, 2015

Online retailer The New Zealand Cellar has exceeded its crowdfunding target within five days of launching the project, enabling it to open its first retail outlet in London this summer.

The boutique wine e-commerce business, which was launched last June by New Zealand wine expert Melanie Brown, was looking to raise £35,000 through crowd-funding platform Kickstarter to fund the new shop in Brixton.

Brown had only two weeks to raise the money, and a further fortnight to transform the shell of the new development into a retail space, and said she was delighted to achieve 103% of the target - £37,421 - within five days of launching the campaign.

"This has been due to the very generous backing of customers here in the UK as well as supporters and wineries in New Zealand. The team at The New Zealand Cellar have been humbled by the positive press, support and social media coverage received," she said.

Although the retailer has achieved its target and is guaranteed to receive the funds, its Kickstarter campaign will be open for a further six days.

"We are still gratefully receiving every addition pledge and promise to keep our backers updated with information on what we plan to spend the extra funds on. Every pledge over our target enables us to do bigger and better things for New Zealand wine here in the UK," Brown added.

The retailer is offering investors "rewards" for pledges, and investors can pledges anything from £10 to £1,000.

The New Zealand Shop, which is likely to open in May, will stock over 200 wines from New Zealand Wines and customers can order wines by the glass or carafe in the outside seating area. It will also hold tastings and meet the winemaker event within the development's event space and participate in the development's community training scheme, offering talks and tastings through Lambeth College.

"The next challenge is opening," she told Harpers.co.uk. "We want to be able to create the most inspiring atmosphere and build things naturally and ethically, to showcase the most diverse range we can."

She added that online sales in the last year had been very good and she had been "blown away" by the response to the business.