European Entrepreneur Of The Week
Wine Futures
Vidya Ram, 07.13.09, 11:45 AM EDT
Coming up on 10 years old, Liv-Ex has helped establish a vibrant market for fine wines -- and brought a little transparency to a murky business.
LONDON -- Justin Gibbs and James Miles are a couple of guys the wine industry hates to love.
The London International Vintners Exchange, an Internet- and phone-based exchange they launched nine years ago, has injected some transparency into the infamously opaque fine wine market. For a fee, merchants can buy and sell wines at fair, market-dictated prices -- a move that has encouraged a few investment funds to get into the game. Prices have soared since Liv-Ex launched, in part due to Asian-led demand. Ten years ago, a case of the Bordeaux red Lafite 1982 was worth 2,450 pounds ($3,946); today it’s worth 25,000 pounds ($40,250).
Liv-Ex resembles an old-fashioned stock market with a commodities-exchange twist: Its 240 member merchants and funds can buy and sell wines--sometimes "en primeur," still-in-barrel wines that are effectively a wine future--though the buyer always takes delivery, anonymously via the phone or Web, paying a commission of 2% to 3% for each trade. The trades are settled with Liv-Ex, which receives the wines at its 2,500 square foot warehouse, checks their condition and authenticity and ships them. There aren't any restrictions on what wine the merchants can trade, though around 40% of the business happens on wines from the top five chateaus, Haut Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Margaux and Latour.
It's still a tiny business. Operating in a spacious office in the leafy London suburb of Clapham, Liv-Ex only conducts some 2.5% of the $3 billion of sales done by the global wine industry annually, from around 1% of the market in 2000. But it's starting to have impact. The Liv-Ex 100 Fine Wine Index--comprised of a select list of wines that have scored 95-plus points out of 100 by leading critics--is used by wine funds to value the collection of wines in their fund. So far in 2009, wines appear to be outperforming stocks. The Liv-Ex 100 Fine Wine index (reported monthly) was up 4.6% at the end of June, from the start of the year, while the S&P 500 was still down 1.3% over that period.
The system isn't as efficient as it could be, admit Gibbs and Miles. Though Liv-Ex’s storage system for the wine traded is a step up on what they started with – thanks to a freight business they bought two years ago. The problem is that the wines aren’t kept permanently in the warehouse but shipped from seller to buyer. The result? A crate destined for a neighboring merchant in Bordeaux could end up going all the way to Britain and back again.
Liv-Ex began a decade ago when Miles, now 39, worked as a small cap equity analyst at Banque Paribas (now BNP Paribas), while Gibbs, 40, peddled ideas to fund managers. Striking up a friendship, they discovered a mutual hobby of wine collecting. A determining moment came in 1998 when Miles sold off four cases of Lafite Rothschild 1990 to a British merchant for three times more than he had bought it three years before, even though the market had been very depressed, thanks in part to the Asian economic crisis. "Here was a product that was clearly being traded like a commodity, but it remained a pretty opaque, inefficient and fragmented system," recalls Miles.
While he and Gibbs weren’t the first--there were already a number of fledgling exchanges, such as Uvine--they were determined to cater exclusively to merchants. Internet hype and self-empowerment aside, they were convinced that most trading would still involve middlemen and merchants. Besides, the high cost of attracting enough trade from individuals would put pressure on margins, and require large commissions that could put people off. (Their hunch rang true when Uvine went into administration in 2006; surviving exchanges like Vinfolio in California charges a fee of 15% to 20%.)
By 2000, the duo managed to come up with 15 investors--including Toby Courtauld, chief executive of property management firm Great Portland Estates, and Brian Williamson, the then chairman of derivatives exchange Liffe--to put up a total of 250,000 pounds ($402,500). Persuading wine merchants to sign on proved more challenging. Any system that made pricing a bit more transparent was treated with suspicion and "they suspected margin contraction," says Gibbs.
Simon Staples, sales and marketing director at Berry Brothers, the London wine merchant, recalls being initially skeptical about Liv-Ex. "In the early days they didn’t know where they wanted to go," he says, adding, you still didn't know whom you were buying from or what the quality was. Like eBay ( EBAY - news - people ), Liv-Ex then only enabled trades without taking on the risk, or checking the quality of the goods being delivered. Berry Brothers became a client only in the past 12 months, and has used the site to acquire the occasional case, picking up wines from other, struggling, merchants at deep discounts.
Back in the early days, Gibbs and Miles had to shell out 12,000 pounds ($19,315) on a stand at London’s International Wine Trade fair – a huge deal for a company used to spending 200 pounds ($322) a month on rent and paying themselves zero salary. They handed out leaflets at a little booth decorated with a funky chair and a borrowed Jeroboam of Mouton Rothschild 1998. A group of ten merchants agreed their exchange for free. On July 19, 2000 the system went live with a bang: 8,320 pounds ($13.400) of trade from nine cases of Gruaud Larose 1982, selling between 925 and 975 pounds ($1,488 and $1,570).
Quickly, though, the business fizzled. Gibbs and Miles discovered that merchants didn't want to take the trouble to dial up for an Internet connection. So they plied the phones, calling up customers to discover what they wanted to buy and sell and at what price--than manually inputted the data into spreadsheets, conducting phone based arbitrage. "If we knew a seller was selling 10 cases at 925 and a buyer had it on their list at 1,100 we’d ring up the buyer," says Gibbs. In those six months 480,000 pounds ($772,650) of trades happened on Liv-Ex--still on their ha'-penny.
The business struggled through the dot-com implosion. Enough revenue trickled in to help fund the next stage: launching a properly anonymous system. New software enabled Liv-Ex to put in place a settlement system of its own, which meant that clients were dealing with Gibbs and Miles alone, while Liv-Ex provided certain guarantees on the time the wine would arrive, and in what condition--effectively taking on the risk of the deal. Revenues rose to 2.6 million pounds ($4.2 million) in 2003, from 1.1 million pounds ($1.8 million) a year earlier.
But since trading revenue proved to be erratic, Gibbs and Miles began to branch out, using the anonymous data they collected on daily trades more effectively, bundling them into services that could be sold to clients. They began to offer the fledgling wine investment funds--which treated fine Bordeaux as a form of asset to invest in--as valuation services. The wines in their collection would be valued based on the latest Liv-Ex data, providing an independent source for valuations.
Interest was strong. On the final trading day of every month, for example, Liv-Ex values the 60 wines in Wine Asset Management's collection, mostly based on the mid point between the buy and sell price of the last trade (unless it was an unusual order where the price was artificially pushed up by a merchant desperate to fulfill an order, in which case the previous order would be used). Funds pay a minimum of 6,000 pounds ($9,700) a year, or 7.5 basis points of their net asset value, which ever is higher. This service, and a separate one giving private collectors access to the trade prices, brought in around 25% of Liv-Ex's revenues last year.
Such diversification into data services helped Liv-Ex finally become profitable in 2005. In 2008, net profits more than doubled to 376,480 pounds ($606,000), from the year before, on an 83% rise in sales. However, administrative costs rose significantly too, up 63% to 1.1 million pounds ($1.8 million). Gibbs and Miles admit their cost base is high, but say they're planning five years ahead when they're hoping to have double their number of clients. Some customers should be attracted by a more streamlined delivery process, allowing wines being moved from merchants in China--for example--to be shipped together rather than individually to the Liv-Ex warehouse capable of storing around 7,500 cases of wine.
Yet even clients are troubled by a lingering problem. Berry Brother's Staples says Liv-Ex can prove a bother when dealing with private collectors who see the data on exchange, and believe it's an accurate gauge of what their wine is worth. However, since they'd have to go through a merchant to sell it on Liv-Ex, the value of their private collections is typically 10% to 20% below the Liv-Ex price, says Staples. In its defense, Peter Lunzer, a client and chief executive of Lunzer Wine Investments, argues that it's rather like FX exchanges which may not be the rate that are available to the person on the street, but still do bear value.
“We are definitely the main pricing standard,” said Gibbs. Perhaps one day they’ll be the main market too.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/13/livex-wines-futures-markets-equity-entrepreneur.html
Wine Futures
Vidya Ram, 07.13.09, 11:45 AM EDT
Coming up on 10 years old, Liv-Ex has helped establish a vibrant market for fine wines -- and brought a little transparency to a murky business.
LONDON -- Justin Gibbs and James Miles are a couple of guys the wine industry hates to love.
The London International Vintners Exchange, an Internet- and phone-based exchange they launched nine years ago, has injected some transparency into the infamously opaque fine wine market. For a fee, merchants can buy and sell wines at fair, market-dictated prices -- a move that has encouraged a few investment funds to get into the game. Prices have soared since Liv-Ex launched, in part due to Asian-led demand. Ten years ago, a case of the Bordeaux red Lafite 1982 was worth 2,450 pounds ($3,946); today it’s worth 25,000 pounds ($40,250).
Liv-Ex resembles an old-fashioned stock market with a commodities-exchange twist: Its 240 member merchants and funds can buy and sell wines--sometimes "en primeur," still-in-barrel wines that are effectively a wine future--though the buyer always takes delivery, anonymously via the phone or Web, paying a commission of 2% to 3% for each trade. The trades are settled with Liv-Ex, which receives the wines at its 2,500 square foot warehouse, checks their condition and authenticity and ships them. There aren't any restrictions on what wine the merchants can trade, though around 40% of the business happens on wines from the top five chateaus, Haut Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Margaux and Latour.
It's still a tiny business. Operating in a spacious office in the leafy London suburb of Clapham, Liv-Ex only conducts some 2.5% of the $3 billion of sales done by the global wine industry annually, from around 1% of the market in 2000. But it's starting to have impact. The Liv-Ex 100 Fine Wine Index--comprised of a select list of wines that have scored 95-plus points out of 100 by leading critics--is used by wine funds to value the collection of wines in their fund. So far in 2009, wines appear to be outperforming stocks. The Liv-Ex 100 Fine Wine index (reported monthly) was up 4.6% at the end of June, from the start of the year, while the S&P 500 was still down 1.3% over that period.
The system isn't as efficient as it could be, admit Gibbs and Miles. Though Liv-Ex’s storage system for the wine traded is a step up on what they started with – thanks to a freight business they bought two years ago. The problem is that the wines aren’t kept permanently in the warehouse but shipped from seller to buyer. The result? A crate destined for a neighboring merchant in Bordeaux could end up going all the way to Britain and back again.
Liv-Ex began a decade ago when Miles, now 39, worked as a small cap equity analyst at Banque Paribas (now BNP Paribas), while Gibbs, 40, peddled ideas to fund managers. Striking up a friendship, they discovered a mutual hobby of wine collecting. A determining moment came in 1998 when Miles sold off four cases of Lafite Rothschild 1990 to a British merchant for three times more than he had bought it three years before, even though the market had been very depressed, thanks in part to the Asian economic crisis. "Here was a product that was clearly being traded like a commodity, but it remained a pretty opaque, inefficient and fragmented system," recalls Miles.
While he and Gibbs weren’t the first--there were already a number of fledgling exchanges, such as Uvine--they were determined to cater exclusively to merchants. Internet hype and self-empowerment aside, they were convinced that most trading would still involve middlemen and merchants. Besides, the high cost of attracting enough trade from individuals would put pressure on margins, and require large commissions that could put people off. (Their hunch rang true when Uvine went into administration in 2006; surviving exchanges like Vinfolio in California charges a fee of 15% to 20%.)
By 2000, the duo managed to come up with 15 investors--including Toby Courtauld, chief executive of property management firm Great Portland Estates, and Brian Williamson, the then chairman of derivatives exchange Liffe--to put up a total of 250,000 pounds ($402,500). Persuading wine merchants to sign on proved more challenging. Any system that made pricing a bit more transparent was treated with suspicion and "they suspected margin contraction," says Gibbs.
Simon Staples, sales and marketing director at Berry Brothers, the London wine merchant, recalls being initially skeptical about Liv-Ex. "In the early days they didn’t know where they wanted to go," he says, adding, you still didn't know whom you were buying from or what the quality was. Like eBay ( EBAY - news - people ), Liv-Ex then only enabled trades without taking on the risk, or checking the quality of the goods being delivered. Berry Brothers became a client only in the past 12 months, and has used the site to acquire the occasional case, picking up wines from other, struggling, merchants at deep discounts.
Back in the early days, Gibbs and Miles had to shell out 12,000 pounds ($19,315) on a stand at London’s International Wine Trade fair – a huge deal for a company used to spending 200 pounds ($322) a month on rent and paying themselves zero salary. They handed out leaflets at a little booth decorated with a funky chair and a borrowed Jeroboam of Mouton Rothschild 1998. A group of ten merchants agreed their exchange for free. On July 19, 2000 the system went live with a bang: 8,320 pounds ($13.400) of trade from nine cases of Gruaud Larose 1982, selling between 925 and 975 pounds ($1,488 and $1,570).
Quickly, though, the business fizzled. Gibbs and Miles discovered that merchants didn't want to take the trouble to dial up for an Internet connection. So they plied the phones, calling up customers to discover what they wanted to buy and sell and at what price--than manually inputted the data into spreadsheets, conducting phone based arbitrage. "If we knew a seller was selling 10 cases at 925 and a buyer had it on their list at 1,100 we’d ring up the buyer," says Gibbs. In those six months 480,000 pounds ($772,650) of trades happened on Liv-Ex--still on their ha'-penny.
The business struggled through the dot-com implosion. Enough revenue trickled in to help fund the next stage: launching a properly anonymous system. New software enabled Liv-Ex to put in place a settlement system of its own, which meant that clients were dealing with Gibbs and Miles alone, while Liv-Ex provided certain guarantees on the time the wine would arrive, and in what condition--effectively taking on the risk of the deal. Revenues rose to 2.6 million pounds ($4.2 million) in 2003, from 1.1 million pounds ($1.8 million) a year earlier.
But since trading revenue proved to be erratic, Gibbs and Miles began to branch out, using the anonymous data they collected on daily trades more effectively, bundling them into services that could be sold to clients. They began to offer the fledgling wine investment funds--which treated fine Bordeaux as a form of asset to invest in--as valuation services. The wines in their collection would be valued based on the latest Liv-Ex data, providing an independent source for valuations.
Interest was strong. On the final trading day of every month, for example, Liv-Ex values the 60 wines in Wine Asset Management's collection, mostly based on the mid point between the buy and sell price of the last trade (unless it was an unusual order where the price was artificially pushed up by a merchant desperate to fulfill an order, in which case the previous order would be used). Funds pay a minimum of 6,000 pounds ($9,700) a year, or 7.5 basis points of their net asset value, which ever is higher. This service, and a separate one giving private collectors access to the trade prices, brought in around 25% of Liv-Ex's revenues last year.
Such diversification into data services helped Liv-Ex finally become profitable in 2005. In 2008, net profits more than doubled to 376,480 pounds ($606,000), from the year before, on an 83% rise in sales. However, administrative costs rose significantly too, up 63% to 1.1 million pounds ($1.8 million). Gibbs and Miles admit their cost base is high, but say they're planning five years ahead when they're hoping to have double their number of clients. Some customers should be attracted by a more streamlined delivery process, allowing wines being moved from merchants in China--for example--to be shipped together rather than individually to the Liv-Ex warehouse capable of storing around 7,500 cases of wine.
Yet even clients are troubled by a lingering problem. Berry Brother's Staples says Liv-Ex can prove a bother when dealing with private collectors who see the data on exchange, and believe it's an accurate gauge of what their wine is worth. However, since they'd have to go through a merchant to sell it on Liv-Ex, the value of their private collections is typically 10% to 20% below the Liv-Ex price, says Staples. In its defense, Peter Lunzer, a client and chief executive of Lunzer Wine Investments, argues that it's rather like FX exchanges which may not be the rate that are available to the person on the street, but still do bear value.
“We are definitely the main pricing standard,” said Gibbs. Perhaps one day they’ll be the main market too.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/13/livex-wines-futures-markets-equity-entrepreneur.html
(한글 번역)
저스틴 기브스와 제임스 마일스는 와인 산업이 사랑하면서도 싫어하는 두 남자로 알려져 있습니다. 9년 전에 론칭한 런던 인터내셔널 빈터너스 익스체인지(Liv-Ex)는 악명 높은 고급 와인 시장에 몇몇의 투명성을 불어넣었습니다. 상인들은 수수료를 내고 공정한 시장 기준 가격에 따라 와인을 사고 팔 수 있으며, 몇몇 투자 펀드들이 이 게임에 참여하도록 독려했습니다. Liv-Ex 론칭 이후 가격은 아시아 주도의 수요 증가와 관련이 있어 상승했습니다. 10년 전에는 보르도 레드 와인인 라피트 1982의 한 케이스가 2,450 파운드(약 3,946 달러)에 팔렸는데, 오늘날에는 25,000 파운드(약 40,250 달러)에 이르고 있습니다.
Liv-Ex는 옛날 주식 시장과 상품 거래의 특징을 지닌 고전적인 모습을 가지고 있습니다. 240명의 회원 상인과 펀드는 와인을 사고 팔 수 있으며, 때로는 "앙 프리무르"로 불리는 아직 술통 안에 있는 와인을 거래합니다. 거래는 항상 구매자가 전화나 웹을 통해 익명으로 수령하면서 이루어지며, 각 거래에 대해 2%에서 3%의 수수료가 부과됩니다. 거래는 Liv-Ex로 해결되며, Liv-Ex는 자체 창고에서 와인을 받아 조건과 신뢰성을 확인하고 발송합니다. 상인들이 거래할 수 있는 와인에는 제한이 없지만, 비즈니스의 약 40%는 상위 다섯 샤또(Haut Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Margaux 및 Latour)의 와인에 중점을 두고 있습니다.
아직은 작은 비즈니스입니다. 클래프럼의 초록 나뭇잎이 우거진 런던 교외에서 넓은 사무실에서 운영되는 Liv-Ex는 전 세계 와인 산업에서 연간 약 30억 달러의 거래 중 2.5%만을 처리하고 있습니다. 2000년에는 시장의 1%에 불과했습니다. 그러나 이제 영향을 미치기 시작하고 있습니다. Liv-Ex 100 Fine Wine Index는 선도적인 평론가들이 100점 만점에 95점 이상을 받은 일부 와인들로 구성된 지수로, 와인 펀드가 자산 소유 와인을 가치 평가하는 데 사용됩니다. 2009년 현재까지 주식을 능가하는 모습을 보이고 있습니다. Liv-Ex 100 Fine Wine Index(월간 보고서)는 6월 말까지 올해 초와 비교하여 4.6% 상승했으며, 이 기간 동안 S&P 500은 여전히 1.3% 하락했습니다.
하지만 Gibbs와 Miles는 시스템이 최적이 아니라고 인정합니다. Liv-Ex의 와인 보관 시스템은 그들이 2년 전에 인수한 화물 사업 덕분에 개선되었지만, 와인은 창고에 영구적으로 저장되지 않고 판매자에서 구매자로 배송됩니다. 결과적으로, 보르도에 있는 이웃 상인에게로 가는 상자가 영국으로 가고 다시 되돌아갈 수 있습니다. Liv-Ex는 10년 전에 시작되었는데, 당시 39세인 마일스는 바누아 파리바스(현 BNP 파리바스)의 소형 시가 자본 분석가로 일하고 있었고, 40세인 기브스는 펀드 매니저들에게 아이디어를 팔고 있었습니다. 그들은 와인 수집이라는 공통된 취미를 발견하고 친구가 되었습니다. 결정적인 순간은 1998년이었는데, 그해에 마일스는 라피트 로스쉴드 1990 4케이스를 영국 상인에게 팔아 세 년 전에 구매했던 가격의 세 배 이상을 받았습니다. 당시 시장은 아시아 경제 위기의 영향으로 매우 침체되어 있었습니다. "여기에는 분명히 상품처럼 거래되는 제품이 있었지만 여전히 상당히 불투명하고 비효율적이며 조각난 시스템이었습니다,"라고 마일스는 회고했습니다.
그들이 처음이 아니었지만(이미 Uvine와 같은 새싹 교환소가 있었습니다), 그들은 주로 상인에게 중점을 둔 서비스를 제공하려고 했습니다. 인터넷 혹은 자기 계발 외에도 대부분의 거래가 여전히 중개인과 상인을 포함할 것이라고 확신했습니다. 게다가 개인으로부터 충분한 거래를 유치하기 위한 높은 비용은 마진에 압력을 가하고 사람들을 겁내게 할 수 있었습니다. (2006년 Uvine이 경영 어려움에 처해 망한 것은 그들의 직감이 맞았음을 보여줍니다. 생존한 교환소 중 하나인 Vinfolio는 수수료를 15%에서 20%로 부과합니다.) 2000년에 이 듀오는 글렛 포틀랜드 이스테이츠의 최고 경영자인 토비 쿠르토, 파리바스 파리바스의 최고 경영자인 브라이언 윌리엄슨을 비롯해 15명의 투자자를 찾아 25만 파운드(약 40만 달러)를 조달했습니다. 와인 상인들을 등록하려는 시도는 더 어려웠습니다. 가격을 조금 더 투명하게 만드는 어떤 시스템이든 의심을 받았고 "마진 수축"을 의심했다고 기브스는 말합니다.
런던 와인 상인인 베리 브라더스의 영업 및 마케팅 이사인 사이몬 스테이플스는 Liv-Ex에 대해 처음에는 회의적이었다고 기억합니다. "초창기에는 어디로 향하려는지 알지 못했다"라고 그는 말하며, 여전히 누구에게서 무엇을 사고 팔았는지나 품질을 알 수 없었다고 덧붙였습니다. eBay처럼 Liv-Ex는 거래에 참여하지만 리스크를 감당하지 않았습니다. 베리 브라더스는 작년에야 클라이언트가 되었으며, 다른 어려움에 처한 상인들로부터 심각한 할인된 가격으로 와인을 얻는 데에 사이트를 사용했다고 합니다.
초창기에는 기브스와 마일스는 런던의 인터내셔널 와인 무역 박람회에서 12,000 파운드(약 19,315 달러)을 지불해야 했습니다. 이 회사는 월세에 200 파운드(약 322 달러)를 지불하고 급여를 받지 않던 시절이었습니다. 그들은 펑키한 의자와 빌린 무뚝뚝한 모튼 로스쉴드 1998의 큰 와인병으로 장식된 작은 부스에서 전단지를 나눠주었습니다. 열 명의 상인이 그들의 교환소를 무료로 사용하기로 동의했습니다. 2000년 7월 19일, 시스템이 화려하게 가동되었습니다. 9케이스의 그루오 라로즈 1982가 925에서 975 파운드(1,488에서 1,570 달러) 사이로 팔렸습니다.
그러나 비즈니스는 빠르게 쇠락했습니다. 기브스와 마일스는 상인들이 인터넷 연결을 위해 전화를 거는 일에 귀찮아하지 않는다는 것을 발견했습니다. 따라서 그들은 전화를 동원하여 고객에게 어떤 가격에 어떤 와인을 사고 팔고 싶은지 조사한 다음 데이터를 수동으로 스프레드시트에 입력하여 전화 기반의 아비트라주를 진행했습니다. "판매자가 925에 10케이스를 팔고 구매자가 목록에 1,100에 있을 때 우리는 구매자에게 전화를 걸었다"고 기브스는 말합니다. 그 6개월 동안 Liv-Ex에서는 여전히 작은 규모의 48만 파운드(약 77만 2650 달러) 거래가 이루어졌습니다.
비즈니스는 닷컴 붕괴를 통해 겪은 어려움을 극복했습니다. 충분한 수익이 흘러들어왔고 다음 단계를 시작하기에 충분했습니다. 적절한 익명 시스템을 론칭하는 것입니다. 새로운 소프트웨어를 사용하여 Liv-Ex는 자체 결제 시스템을 도입했으며, 결과적으로 고객은 기브스와 마일스와만 거래하게 되었으며, Liv-Ex는 와인이 도착할 시간과 상태에 대한 특정 보장을 제공했습니다. 사실상 거래의 리스크를 감수했습니다. 2003년에는 매출이 110만 파운드(180만 달러)에서 260만 파운드(420만 달러)로 증가했습니다.
그러나 거래 수익이 불안정하게 나타났기 때문에, 기브스와 마일스는 익명으로 수집한 일일 거래 데이터를 효과적으로 활용하여 서비스로 번들링하여 고객에게 판매할 수 있도록 사업을 확장하기 시작했습니다. 그들은 미래의 투자 대상으로 미처라 된 보르도 고급 와인을 대우하는 새로운 와인 투자 펀드에 가치 평가 서비스를 제공하기 시작했습니다. 그들의 컬렉션에 있는 와인은 최신 Liv-Ex 데이터를 기반으로 가치를 산정하여 독립적인 가치평가의 소스를 제공했습니다.
관심은 높았습니다. 매월 마지막 거래일에 Liv-Ex는 예를 들어 Wine Asset Management의 컬렉션에 있는 60가지 와인의 가치를 결정하며, 이는 주로 지난 거래의 매입가와 매각가 사이의 중간 지점을 기준으로 합니다(특이한 주문이었던 경우, 상인이 주문을 충족하기 위해 가격이 인위적으로 끌려올려진 경우 이전 주문이 사용됩니다). 자금은 연간 최소 6,000 파운드(9,700 달러) 또는 자산 가치의 7.5 기준 포인트 중 높은 쪽을 지불합니다. 이 서비스와 개별적으로 개인 수집가들에게 거래 가격에 액세스할 수 있는 별도의 서비스는 지난 해 Liv-Ex 매출의 약 25%를 차지했습니다.
데이터 서비스로의 다각화가 Liv-Ex가 2005년에 드디어 이익을 창출하는 데 도움이 되었습니다. 2008년에는 순이익이 전년 대비 83% 증가한 376,480 파운드(606,000 달러)로 두 배 이상 증가했습니다. 그러나 행정 비용도 상당히 증가하여 1.1 백만 파운드(1.8 백만 달러)로 늘었습니다. 기브스와 마일스는 비용 기반이 높다고 인정하지만, 5년 후에 고객 수를 두 배로 늘리기를 희망하며 계획 중이라고 말합니다. 중국의 상인들로부터 이동 중인 와인이 Liv-Ex 창고에 개별적으로 발송되는 대신 함께 발송되는 더 효율적인 배송 과정에 끌리는 고객도 있을 것입니다. 이 창고는 약 7,500 케이스의 와인을 저장할 수 있습니다.
그러나 심각한 문제로 고객들도 고민하고 있습니다. Berry Brother의 스테이플스는 Liv-Ex가 거래소의 데이터를 본 개인 수집가와 거래할 때 문제가 될 수 있다고 말하며, 그들은 자신의 와인이 얼마나 가치가 있는지 정확히 측정되었다고 믿고 있습니다. 그러나 Liv-Ex를 통해 판매하려면 여전히 상인을 통과해야 하므로 그들의 개인 컬렉션의 가치는 일반적으로 Liv-Ex 가격의 10%에서 20% 정도 낮다고 말합니다. 그러나 Peter Lunzer라는 고객이자 Lunzer Wine Investments의 최고 경영자는 이것이 거리에서 이용 가능한 환율이 아닐지라도 여전히 가치가 있는 외환 거래와 유사하다고 주장합니다.
"우리는 분명히 주요 가격 기준입니다,"라고 기브스는 말했습니다. 어쩌면 언젠가 그들이 주요 시장이 될지도 모릅니다.
댓글 쓰기