An Interview With Ben Elliot

Ben Elliot

Image: Djamilla Rosa Cochran/WireImage

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In 2000, British aristocrat Ben Elliot and his partners started Quintessentially, which they conceived as a luxury concierge service for their posh friends in London. On the corporate website, Quintessentially.com, they sell themselves less as a for-profit business than "first and foremost a club, a club for those who believe that life is too short to waste time on the mundane or second best."

Business, nevertheless, has boomed, and eight years later, Quintessentially is a global giant with 3,000 employees in 45 countries, dedicated to the proposition that no excess is too wretched for the rich, the very rich, and those who merely want to be perceived as such.
            
Elliot's company—which counts Harvey Weinstein, Gwyneth Paltrow, and several royals among its clients—has branched out into every conceivable service (well, nearly every conceivable service) that members of the moneyed class might like to consume, including real estate, cuisine, exotic travel, and security. Their success is largely due to the 31-year-old Elliot, whose seething ambition is masked by an understated charm and a knack for attracting press as one of Britain's more eligible bachelors. It doesn't hurt that he has dated a glittering array of models and starlets, and that his aunt is Camilla Parker-Bowles, otherwise known as the future Queen of England.

Lloyd Grove: Mr. Elliot, I've read in some of your interviews that punctuality is very important to you, even though you're 10 minutes late for our appointment.
 
Ben Elliot: Well, I said 10 a.m., but we did go back and forth. I know what you're saying. I am usually very punctual. I thought we did agree to 10:15. Forgive me. And so therefore I'm not late.
 
L.G.: I wasn't party to the agreement, but you're forgiven. You have a place in New York, right?
 
B.E.: Yes, it's been three years. I live in Chelsea. I rent, but I'm looking to buy now. There are three neighborhoods that I'm looking in. Where I am is a great building actually, in Chelsea. I like the West Village, and a friend of mine just bought something in the East Village, which I love.
 
L.G.: So let me ask you this: How much of your business is in America?

B.E.: It's growing massively. We're now in 45 countries, but in terms of America, we have offices in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Washington. We just opened San Francisco, and we're about to do Chicago and Houston. And we have partners in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Barbados—so I think that Pan America will actually be our largest market.
 
L.G: In terms of the United States, do you have a sense of ballpark percentage of market share?
 
B.E.: Of the whole business, it counts for about 40 percent. My business partner and I actually think it will be the majority of our business for the next three years, and I know everyone's terrified by something which could be branded as a kind of breakfast cereal, which is credit crunch. But for what we do, I think for the individuals that are our members, we are not oblivious to it, but we've become, I hope, so ingrained in how they do things that it doesn't affect the business. I was actually in a board meeting earlier today. I'm on the board of Phillips de Pury, the art auctioneers, and we're about to do an event in Moscow with them. And if you're looking at what they're doing—everyone said, the real estate market, the financial market, the art market will be next. At the moment, that seems to be not true.

L.G.: It's not true? I mean, a lot of people on Wall Street have lost their jobs.
 
B.E.: And more people will lose their jobs.
 
L.G.: More people will lose their jobs, and there have been massive write-downs. You've obviously paid close attention to all that. That's not totally off mark, is it?

B.E.: No, it's not totally off mark. And the people that we look after, some are employed by those institutions, and some people have money at those institutions. Everybody is a bit like a startled rabbit to an extent, but I don't think in terms of what we do—which is looking after peoples' lives—I don't see any trouble facing us. And actually, no bullshit, April was the best month we've ever had in New York since we've started.
 
L.G.: Really? What are your metrics? What kind of volume are we talking about?
 
B.E.: We're talking about people coming to New York, so that's from the rest of the U.S. and that's from our members internationally, and secondly, people who have recommended other people to become members of Quintessentially.

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