Southern Skies announced today the acquisition of innovative online drinks club specialist The Space Between Drinks to deliver "club capability" on scale within Southern Skies consolidation of wine e-tail businesses.
Southern Skies group managing director Andrew Douglas says: "We are delighted to welcome The Space Between Drinks into the Southern Skies fold. This acquisition will not only provide a golden opportunity to create operational efficiencies and resources to fuel the scale of a trusted, established business but introduce an invaluable club competency and capability to our own E-commerce businesses."
Recognised beverage industry innovator and co-founder of The Space Between Drinks Rob Heyns says: "We have long felt that drinks club landscape needs to be challenged and ultimately reimagined with customer-centricity placed back at the core. This acquisition will not only provide funding, resources and a launch pad for us to accelerate our plans but will also provide Southern Skies with the ability to add club capability to its existing beverage e-tail stores including CyberCellar.com, wine.co.za, and Oorskotwyn.co.za."
The Space Between Drinks flagship brand is The Beverage Club, a curated drinks club offering, and also includes beer industry stalwart The League of Beers. The League of Beers was founded by Heyns and Nzeka Biyela in 2012 and later acquired by renowned culinary lifestyle specialists Yuppiechef. Heyns subsequently transitioned to Yuppiechef where he launched "Beer of the Month" and led League of Beers to 10x growth.
The acquisition of Yuppiechef by JSE listed homeware giant Mr Price brought about changes in strategy for Yuppiechef and, with it, a golden opportunity for Heyns to buy League of Beers back on favourable terms in 2020. The League of Beers was subsequently restructured within The Beverage Club’s offering in 2021.
Douglas finishes by saying, "Subscription-based products and services have been on our roadmap since the beginning. They provide an opportunity to better understand and service the needs of our customers more consistently. They also bring operational efficiencies and benefits to planning and obviously highly desirable annuity revenues."
Get in touch with Rob Heyns via email at rob@spacebetweendrinks.com for more information.
About The Space Between Drinks
The Space Between Drinks is a collaboration between Rob Heyns, Nzeka Biyela, Matt Schaal and Jonathan Cherry and includes flagship brand The Beverage Club, a curated drinks club offering, and beer industry stalwart The League of Beers.
Visit thebeverageclub.co.za for more information.
About Southern Skies
Southern Skies’ primary objective is to enable South African wine producers to sell wine Direct-to-Customer. E-commerce technology, marketing, business intelligence, and logistics are at the heart of Southern Skies’ core DtC capability.
Southern Skies has acquired and/or founded a number of complementary businesses to support its DtC objective including wine.co.za, cellardirect.co.za, wineshow.co.za, cybercellar.co.za, oorskotwyn.co.za, thebeverageclub.co.za, and vintelligence.co.za.
Visit www.ssih.co.za for more information.
About Rob Heyns
Rob Heyns is an innovations expert and entrepreneur within the South African beverage industry.
Heyns co-founded League of Beers in 2012 which he later sold to Yuppiechef. Heyns went on to lead the rapid scale of Yuppiechef’s beverage category peaking at over 300,000 customers p.a.
In 2017 Heyns launched Sugarbird Gin, breaking SA's crowdfunding record in the process, before expanding to provide a range of new drinks innovations to some of South Africa's top retailers.
Heyns co-founded Tiny Keg in 2019. Tiny Keg is one of SA’s largest independent canning businesses servicing nearly 80% of SA’s wine-in-can market.
In 2021 Heyns and partners launched The Beverage Club to reimagine the drinks club customer journey. Heyns later capitalised on an opportunity to buy League of Beers back during a restructure that followed the acquisition of Yuppiechef by Mr Price.