How The Whisky Exchange became the ‘mothership’ of Pernod Ricard’s D2C strategy - Consumer Intel

How The Whisky Exchange became the ‘mothership’ of Pernod Ricard’s D2C strategy – Consumer Intel

Last updated: 18/12/2024 at 12:33 PM

30 August 2024

11 Min Read

At the time, Pernod Ricard’s acquisition of The Whisky Exchange in 2021 was a curious move, but the CEO of the group’s direct-to-consumer business unit, Nicolas Oudinot, says keeping the business independently managed has earned the trust of competing brand owners.

The news of Pernod Ricard’s acquisition of spirits specialist retailer The Whisky Exchange (TWE) in September 2021 was one of the more surprising examples of M&A activity in the recent history of the beverage alcohol industry. After all, brothers Sukhinder and Rajbir Singh, who founded TWE in 1999, had spurned many approaches in the past. In the end, however, they concluded that if the business was to fulfil its global potential, deeper pockets were required.For Pernod Ricard, the transaction - financial details of which were not disclosed - was the logical next step in the digital tra