Everyone's writing their best of 2013 columns and blogs, but some of the year's most interesting financial advice came from an exiled Russian billionaire. Yevgeny Chichvarkin is the owner of Hedonism Wine in Mayfair, London. His customers are in the money no object category and to him spending £120,000 (HK$1.53 million) on a bottle of wine is not an absurd extravagance. "Why?" He says, adding he knows several people who would happily spend this much on the Penfolds Ampoule of 2004 Australian cabernet sauvignon. This kind of spending is not over the top. It could be a present for someone who's hard to impress, he tells Britain's Guardian newspaper. "For some people who have been rich for a long, long time, it is quite hard to make an impression." It's not decadent. "I know families who spend more than £100m for a yacht," he says. From their perspective, the price is not noteworthy; besides, thrown into the price of the bottle is a promise that the wine maker will fly from Australia to open it with a special knife. Mobile phone entrepreneur Hedonism opened last year and caters to the international super-rich. Chichvarkin is one too. He made his fortune as co-founder of Evroset, a chain of 5,000 mobile phone stores, but lost much of it when he had to flee Moscow in 2008, blaming demands from corrupt officials to pay bribes. He sold up, and the Sunday Times rich list now puts his wealth at £150 million. London seemingly now has more multimillionaire residents than any other city, according to WealthInsight, with more than 4,000 with more than £20m each. Chichvarkin set up his wine business because he needed something to do and was frustrated by slow service from London wine merchants: when he wanted a particular vintage, he was told he would have to wait a week or longer. The staff at Hedonism, just off Berkeley Square in Mayfair, speak between them Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, French, Spanish and Japanese, to serve the international clientele. His customers are wealthy bankers, lawyers and Rich residents, who, he tells The Guardian, would be able to spend £16,777.80 on a bottle of 1882 Chateau d'Yquem. He is shocked at Britain's lack of service culture, particularly with regard to the country's mobile phone network, and can't understand that Brits recoil from wrecking the landscape to install the base stations every seven to eight miles to ensure perfect 3G coverage. He is irritated by things Brits take for granted: that you can't get a plumber at the weekend, even if you're prepared to pay extra. "They charge crazy money, very lazy people, they can't come Saturday evenings. Why? They are in service industries. Why? I think I will become very old and never understand that," he laments. His views on what makes a business successful are interesting. Before deciding on the wine shop, he considered starting a fast-turnover, cheap, high-fashion chain, but dismissed it. "I went to Primark, and thought: 'When I become poor again, I will start to work for lower middle classes the way I did in Russia.' If he ceases to be wealthy, he will downgrade his target market accordingly, which is certainly a singular approach. "If I spend all my money, or lose it, I will work for lower middle classes, because it's the biggest class. If you want to be rich, work for the poorest people. Twelve years I worked for middle and lower middle class in Russia. I had 5,000 shops – I know how it works. But life is not only the money. " Funny how often rich people say that. So, to make big money you need to be mass market, he thinks. Most people just look at the price "If I was more ambitious or greedy, of course the best thing to do in the wine business is to buy Australian dehydrated wine, and add water here, and sell it at £2.99. People make money out of that – 90% of people really don't care, they just look at the price." The customers at Hedonism do not look at the price, and that's what he likes about it – that people will walk in and possibly spend £98,000 on a bottle of Chateau d'Yquem. But then he has the luxury of having made his fortune already, selling a commodity product to the masses.
