Interview with Elisabeth GROMAND
Elisabeth GROMAND
Elisabeth Gromand has has been living in Shanghai for several years and has just launched her own business offering fine wine collection for future drinking or as an investment to private individuals around the world.
Elisabeth Gromand has attended EMLYON Business School from 2007 to 2009. She has been living in Shanghai for several years and has just launched her own business offering fine wine collection for future drinking or as an investment to private individuals around the world. Since May 2013, her business has reached a turnover of 150 000 euros, quite impressive for a brand new firm! We interviewed her and invited her to share with us her entrepreneurial experience.
Would you please describe your experience in EMLYON?
I was admitted at EMLYON after a master degree in corporate law. There I had the opportunity not only to build strong marketing and sales knowledge but also to acquire financial knowledge. I thought selling financial products would be interesting and challenging and would allow me to combine my enthusiasm for sale and my interest for investment. I did my first internship at Financière de l’Echiquier. The internship was such a great experience that after finishing all my courses, I fought for a second internship in a bank as a sales-assistant in exotic structured products. That was a disaster! I was not passionate at all about the products that I barely understood (and that didn’t seem to be an issue for anyone at all!). Three months later, I resigned, determined to follow a path where the underlying of the job would be a passion for me!
Then you decided to come to Asia? Why?
My family has had a vineyard in Bordeaux since 1841, Chateau de Lamarque, Haut-Médoc. China has been one of our commercial focuses for more than 20 years, longtime before Shanghai became a world neuralgic center, and that Chateau Lafite became amongst the most preferred luxury brand in China! Knowing that I always had a great passion for wine, my parents suggested I travelled to Asia and do a market research for the family business. So I came in 2009. I fell in love with Shanghai and never left the city!
Chateau de Lamarque, Haut-Médoc
That’s amazing! So you found a job in Shanghai instead of working for your parents?
Yes. I have always been encouraged to gain as much experience as I can. Immersed in wine since I was born, I knew already a lot about the wine industry. I found a job in an online fine wine and gourmet food shop. Although I quitted the job three years later as the company needed to be shut down due to contentious relationship between the founders and their shareholders, I developed well my selling skills and a very strong network of clients, which turned out to be a great asset for my entrepreneurial initiative later.
Now you have set up your own company?
Yes, I have registered my company “The Wine Cellar Club, Ltd.” in Hong Kong this year. Its main business is to build offshore fine wine collections for private customers around the world. The wines are stored in Bordeaux free trade zone ready to be re-sold or shipped around the world to my clients.I buy fine wines, on behalf of my clients that present great value for money and capital appreciation potential. My clients mainly build a fine wine collection for two reasons: either for future drinking or solely as an investment with the idea of securing fine wines in advance at affordable prices now, then they will mature with time and provide exceptional drinking and capital appreciation. I can develop this business thanks to my family’s close relationships with many top chateaux and wine merchants in Bordeaux. You know it would be very difficult for outsiders to get access to this close circle. Also, I am in the sweet spot of currently being virtually alone with this offer in China!
Who are your clients and how do you find them?
Before deciding to start my own company, I had conducted a market research that yielded positive results. Now I have clients everywhere: the US, England, France, Chinese top tier cities, Hong Kong, Australia...and even one client based in Fidji islands! My first client is British, when she first contacted me through my website, my company was not launched yet and I had not even finished drafting our company contract with our lawyers! But you can image how thrilled I was! My business develops mostly through word of mouth and through very active online marketing campaigns. If today most of my clients are international expatriates, I also have more and more Chinese clients, very interested by our wine investment cellars. Closing Chinese clients tends to be a much longer process. They are much more cautious on the formality of the agreement and need more time to be educated to this very new concept. But every hour spent in lecture, presentation, tasting, is worth it… the commercial potential is limitless!
What are the challenges you have met with your company?
When I set up the company, I of course had a huge amount of work, nothing near what I would have expected and certainly nothing comparable to any of what I had achieved before! Dealing with suppliers, selecting logistic subcontractors in Europe while starting to introduce my company activity in Shanghai, building my website and my communication kit, designing the architecture of my back office system, negotiating international trade fitted solutions with bankers … my days were growing longer day after day, but it allowed me to start on healthy basis!
It is always difficult to start one’s own business. Luckily, the commercial and financial knowledge and techniques I got from school and from my different experiences have greatly helped me. The EMLYON network has proven to be very useful too. My husband, Hervé Galichon, who also graduated from EMLYON Business School, has helped me a lot especially with the accounting and tax part.
Next challenge for me is to pick the right individuals to help me develop the business in other cities in China and abroad!
It seems that you have great confidence in your future business?
Yes, very positive. The family chateau owns a history of about 200 years, which gives much confidence and credit to the clients. The price of wines also grows by an annualized average of 12.5% (in the last decade) and the market has much less volatility than stock market. Moreover, I feel a growing distrust for traditional investments, and wine, as a passion investment, tangible and asset-backed, meets a very strong global interest.
As per our future drinking offer, I believe that expats abroad for a few years with significant disposal incomes, are glad to have found a way of keeping on collecting wines for their future drinking or for their children, with the idea that purchasing young wines cost much less than already mature wines!
Since I always manage to offer my clients with lower prices than current market prices, it gives me a significant competitive advantage and referrals from existing clients has become an important business stream.
What are your objectives in terms of the development of the company?
My short-term objective is to make the company become more international so that even if I leave Shanghai in several years, it will not affect the business. I want to keep a light structure and work mainly with commission-based business developers. On the long run, I intend to develop a “pyramid structure” and my collaborators can be all over the world. Talking fact and figures my targets are to triple my sales every year for the next 3 years.
What are your suggestions for the students of EMLYON who also hope to start their own business in China?
The young French students coming to China should respect the culture and rules here. They should take advantage of the energy of the Chinese market and approach it with a lot of humility.
A lot of French entrepreneurs are in China and a lot of them are very open to share their experiences, don’t hesitate! It is an understatement saying that China is a very particular market and it takes time on the ground to really understand how specific it is. I think the French have a special positive place in the heart of the Chinese and we should be thankful for that!