The wish granters

Andrei Voronin has two types of clients: time-starved businessmen and ”people who no longer need to work and want to [enjoy themselves]”. The latter group is summed up by one man who told Voronin: “I’m 45 and have made a lot of money. I’ve had no life for 15 years. I want to have fun now.”

Voronin, a 39-year old graduate of Moscow State University and Insead, is the director of Red Spot, a Moscow-based concierge service that will fix anything from hiring a private jet or a 60-foot yacht in Rio de Janeiro to sourcing a hard-to-find perfume for affluent, well-travelled Russians willing to pay an annual fee of up to €25,000 ($36,000). Yet the Roman Abramoviches of this world are not his target audience. “Real oligarchs have their own teams,” he says. “We cater to ‘mini-oligarchs’ – people who have about $100m in assets. There are many more of those than Abramoviches.” He explains that many of his clients are in oil, banking and natural resources. “One owns several milk factories, another is the biggest toy distributor in Russia,” he says.

The company is one of a new breed of small, luxury concierge services including Lifestyle Boutique, whose members have assets of $30m each, and Addidi, which describes itself as a “boutique lifestyle and wealth management service, targeted at wealthy women”. All market themselves on providing, in Voronin’s words, “a very personalised service”. They do so by restricting the number of customers to no more than 50 members.

These services are seeking to differentiate themselves from larger lifestyle management companies, the benchmark being the one attached to American Express’s black credit card. Launched in 1999, the black card is available to invited members who spend £100,000 a year on their existing Amex cards, have a perfect credit record and travel extensively.

When the service launched almost 10 years ago, concierge services were relatively new and membership of the prestigious black-card club was select. But over the years the black card brand has become less prestigious. When the US teen hip-hop star Bow-Wow rapped: “I ain’t got to act hard/I’m under 21 with a black card,” some of the sheen had already rubbed off.

Just as rappers from Jay-Z to Kanye West have name-checked black cards into our vernacular, so concierge services have become more ubiquitous than ever. Once the preserve of the wealthy, they are now the mainstream. When Ted Baker, the UK retailer, recently opened a concept store in the City of London it sold concierge services alongside its jeans. The shop included Baker’s Butler, a pay-as-you-go concierge service that pledged to help customers do anything from finding a reputable dog groomer to organising a party.

Lifestyle managers are also a part of some blue-chips employee benefits packages. Deutsche Bank, law-firm Linklaters and Bacardi-Martini are just a few. Kimberley O’Callaghan who runs The Fixer, a lifestyle management service for clients in Yorkshire and Glasgow, says most of her clients work in financial services but tells of one student who “refuses to clean for herself now. She sacrifices other items so she can keep up her membership.”

The new breed of niche lifestyle managers market their services on providing bespoke luxury services and trading on their wide network of upscale contacts. Even a company such as Quintessentially, which has been running since 2000, is transforming itself into a luxury lifestyle brand, creating sister companies such as Quintessentially Art which will take clients on tours of artists studios before advising on a purchase.

These concierge companies follow trends in the broader luxury market that the Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani has summed up as: “The move towards personalisation and customisation, which is a direct consequence of the massification of luxury. The notion that everyone around the world would be carrying a so-called ‘luxury bag of the season’ to the extent that several women could arrive at the same party with exactly the same bag, has de-valued the sense of luxury. The reaction has been an increasing desire for true exclusivity.”

Alex Cheatle, chief executive of TenUK, which provides white label concierge services for companies such as Coutts (bank customers get a concierge as part of their package), says that while luxury is an important way of differentiating concierge services, there is also room for others. “Luxury can be a great market but we also want to help people save time,” he says. “We’re useful as well as luxury. We have 80,000 members in the UK and 100,000 worldwide. We’re seeing the market continually growing. Our industry didn’t exist 10 years ago, and the continued improvements in service quality will drive market growth even in the tough times of the [credit crunch].”

By contrast, Red Spot is determined to retain an elitist edge. It recruits most of its clients through recommendations and interviews potential customers to ensure they are the right fit. “We don’t want to be embarrassed by our clients,” says Voronin. “We had one guy who couldn’t get on a plane as he was too drunk, so we didn’t think he’d fit with us.” He adds that some Russians don’t quite grasp the fact that a lifestyle manager acts as a fixer. “There is often an attitude in Russia that money can solve anything. If there aren’t any free tables at a function, some Russians will pay people thousands of euros to vacate the table.” Voronin says his role is to step in and get a table so that such behaviour is not necessary.

Like Red Spot, Lifestyle Boutique also targets members via word of mouth. They do this through “ambassadors” working in luxury markets, such as fashion, art or private banking.

Most clients of concierge services targeting the affluent, such as Lifestyle Boutique and Red Spot, are necessarily men. Addidi spotted a gap in the market and is solely for women. Created as a lifestyle wealth management service, its focus is on assisting clients with their financial affairs.

For £10,000 a year, women who have £1m in liquid assets, can get all their financial mail directed to the company which deals with its contents as well as advising them on investments.

On top of this they can get the full range of concierge services such as restaurant and holiday bookings.

Anne Sofat said she set it up because she “wanted to make wealth an enjoyable feature for women. It is often the case that the more successful and wealthy they become, the less time they have to themselves. Our service tries to help them.”

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The concierge: Lifestyle Boutique

A clutch of immaculately dressed women talk excitedly over Tattinger and croissants in an office overlooking Hyde Park that is dipped in hazy morning sun. The 30-something professionals come from a mixture of backgrounds – contemporary art, accountancy and magazine publishing. But they all have one thing in common: they work or socialise with the super-rich and their breakfast host, Lifestyle Boutique, hopes that they will become ambassadors for the company.

The purpose of the champagne breakfast is to explain the concept of Lifestyle Boutique, a concierge service open only to people with assets worth more than $30m. The elite concierge company hopes that, as ambassadors, the breakfasters will bring new super-rich members onboard. Maddy Platt, the membership secretary, tells the gathering that Lifestyle Boutique’s membership recruitment strategy is all about discrete invites rather than a mass advertising blitz. “It’s word of mouth. You can’t cold call these people. It would be completely inappropriate”, she explains.

In any case, membership is limited. The maximum number of members they will have in London is 50. Platt says, “It’s very exclusive. We want to create a bespoke service so it’s important to keep [membership] small.” Lifestyle Boutique will not disclose how many members have signed up so far, but Platt says they have been “satisfied” with the progress.

Lifestyle Boutique is owned by the SBS World Service, a Russian financial services company specialising in the credit, debit, pre-paid and charge card market. The concierge service was started 12 years ago in Moscow as part of the package its clients received. But the continuing expansion of the super-rich, despite the credit crunch, convinced the financial services group there was a good business case for launching the service as a standalone company. So in June this year, Lifestyle Boutique opened in London. It has plans for further offices in Dubai, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro.

Platt explains why they chose to launch in the UK. “London is a very international city – it reaches out to the rest of the world.” The majority of the concierge service members are, so far, Russian but there are also Brits and clients from the Middle East. It is no surprise, considering the financial qualification to join, that most members are men, the majority aged between 40 and 65. Platt says they are a mixed bunch who do anything from “running countries to running banks. Some have inherited wealth, some are in shipping”.

At £50,000 a year, membership does not come cheap. “It’s not that much if you consider that a good PA costs £70,000,” Platt hastily points out. The breakfasting women nod in agreement. “If you are worth more than $30m, £50,000 is not going to trouble your finances too much,” observes one.

Platt rattles through some statistics to back this up. For example, a sample of 30 SBS-WS card holders, showed a taste for luxury brands: between November 2006 and January 2007, these clients spent £582,081 at Hermes, £464,620 at Louis Vuitton, £300,953 at Bottega Veneta and £267,710 at Chanel. Some 80 per cent of Lifestyle Boutique’s members travel at least 12 times a year, 62 per cent spend money on art and antiques, 70 per cent spend more than £100,000 every year on watches and jewellery and 85 per cent spent at least £250,000 on fashion and accessories.

When members sign up, they are assigned a dedicated concierge who, in theory, is available all the time, though late-night calls and weekend requests might be diverted to a concierge working out of hours. The concierge will meet with the member and go through their requirements as well as likes and dislikes. They may even go through the client’s spending history with them, so that they can build up a more detailed profile. Most requests are travel and entertainment bookings. One member, Platt says, solely uses his concierge to source vintage Patek Philippe watches from all over the world.

But it is not all shopping and holidaying, Platt observes. A recent request was to rescue an injured monkey from a bathroom at a private residence in Mumbai. The mission went to plan. “The monkey was named ‘Sunny’, given a shot of antibiotics and let out into the wild,” says Platt.

The client: George Boateng

Money is an obvious perk of playing premiership football. But George Boateng, the 32-year old Dutch midfielder who this summer moved from Middlesborough to English Premier League newcomer Hull City, doesn’t take it for granted. After all, the player who spent his childhood in Ghana and the Netherlands, earns considerably more at £20,000 a week than his mother, who worked as a hairdresser in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, did in a year. “I wasn’t brought up with a silver spoon in my mouth,” he says. “It’s taken hard work to get here. So I really appreciate the level of comfort and service that money can buy.”

The downside to his job is the pace of life during the football season. “Everything goes fast, your itinerary changes every minute,” he says. “Last night we were told we were training in the morning. Then today we were told it was the afternoon.”

Four years ago, his fellow Dutch footballer Mario Melchiot, who plays for Wigan, suggested Boateng join the Quintessentially concierge service to help organise his life. “I did it really to keep him happy,” Boateng laughs. “But now I love it. I wouldn’t give it up.”

He said that at first he would sit around with friends thinking up silly requests to test the limits of the service. But after the novelty wore off, he began using the service for routine arrangements, particularly travel.

“We all get frustrated waiting on the phone for travel agents to pick up but a good concierge service looks after everything for you.” He says it is particularly useful for foreign players and those who play international football.

“They might need to fly back from an overseas game in time for training at their club.” But he insists concierges are not just the preserve of international football players: “It doesn’t matter if you want to fly EasyJet or get first-class tickets, it’s up to you, they’ll fix both for you”.

He says most of his requests are during the summer when the football season is over. “I use it for family holidays, arrange everything with my wife and daughters [Eliana, 5, and Elisha, 4]. In fact I get them to sort out all my family. They fix travel for my family who come over from Ghana and Holland.”

Boateng believes that many more people use such services than admit to it: “I think lots of footballers use concierge services. Probably they are more popular among the bigger clubs because they have to do everything at a faster pace, so they are most popular among Manchester United and Chelsea players.”

Boateng concedes that using a concierge service can mark him out as flash to some of his old friends from Holland. “Sometimes I’ll just tell them: ‘Don’t worry my concierge will sort that out.’ And they don’t know what I’m talking about. When I explain what a concierge is they think I’m a show-off.” But once his friends see what concierges do, “it kind of makes sense to them”.

Boateng says having a lifestyle manager is part of his day-to-day life, though this sometimes worries him. “You can get used to this level of service, so I do sometimes think how will I manage if my circumstances change?” But, he reasons: “I wasn’t brought up like this, so I imagine I’d adjust.”