With consolidated global sales of over US$900 million, and more than 30 million cases sold in over 135 countries, Viña Concha y Toro is undeniably one of world’s most important wine companies. Steeped in history going back 130 years, it was recently voted the world’s most admired wine brand by Drinks International.
The British arm, Concha y Toro UK, has enjoyed a meteoric rise in growth since its inception just 12 years ago. It’s now the second most successful entity in this global business behind that of the home market, Chile, and can boast the majority share of the UK’s South American branded wine business.
But expansion on such a scale wasn’t without organisational challenges, ensuring the evolution of the company matched the rapid growth of the business.
The UK General Manager and the HR Director invited Cesium Group to partner them in sourcing key personnel to embrace this rapid expansion, and optimise the company’s performance as the opportunities arose.
The process started with a number of key board recruitments for the UK business, including a Sales Director, Supply Chain Director and Finance Director.
With the board in place, we turned our focus on a number of head of roles including Head of Category & Insight, Head of Customer Marketing and Head of Brand.
Before finally adding a significant number of Brand Managers, Marketing Managers, Finance Managers, Revenue Managers, and a Demand & Supply Manager.
The whole process proving to be a textbook case, if you like, of staffing up from the board down.
Since nothing succeeds like success, following Cesium Group’s performance in the UK, we were tasked with helping set-up a number of small in market organisations for Concha y Toro in the Nordics, Germany and Russia. Typically a Country Manager, a Customer Marketing Manager and a Category & Insight Lead.
Cesium Group was also commissioned to design and deliver a bespoke, multi-module leadership development programme globally for the export division (ie regions CyT do not have a wholly owned RTM) delivering sessions at HQ in Santiago Chile and including a session delivered in partnership with Manchester United ‘Legends’ (ex-player’s) exploring what high performing commercial teams can learn from high performing sports teams.
Simon Doyle General Manager“We have enjoyed a fruitful relationship with the Cesium Group to enhance our FMCG capability, with many new recruits coming from established brand leaders outside of the industry, to complement the great experience of those that have helped us to build our business over many years – it’s proved to be a winning formula.”
