Prospecting for white gold in Aspen
Burgess is set to open a new office in Aspen, Colorado.
He knew he was on to a good thing when one of his brokers got chatting to someone in a restaurant while waiting to pick up a takeaway pizza for his kids.
“I didn’t know Burgess was in Aspen,” said the “very well known” individual, nodding to the turquoise logo on the broker’s jacket. The man wasn’t a Burgess client, but he happened to own a very large yacht, and the pair began talking. When Tim Davis, Burgess’ chief marketing officer, heard the tale, he knew the idea had legs.
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“It’s about being in the room,” he tells us of Burgess’ new winter home in the Colorado ski resort to the stars. “The conversations can happen once you’re in the room and that can be at Nobu’s or in the gondola going up to the ski slopes or wherever. If someone wants to talk yachting, we’re very happy to talk yachting but if they want to talk real estate or wine or art, we’re also very happy to have that conversation.”
Calibre of people
Davis’ hunch began with a partnership with apparel and experiential company AspenX in a swanky beach-club pop-up at the top of Aspen Mountain. It has evolved into a permanent premises from December to April on Mill Street in the centre of Aspen, where celebrities and business moguls live, rest and play.
“Ultimately, it’s shoring up existing business and creating new business but also tapping into the community in Aspen in a respectful way,” he says.
The pop-up ventures over a couple of seasons generated “hand-on-heart, significant revenue” and a “good volume of business”, according to Davis. The activity was skewed towards charter because of the appeal to a younger clientele, but there was also direct brokerage business and wider yacht management enquiries from captains who were skiing with principals. “I was pleasantly surprised,” he says.
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It confirmed the proposition that the concentration of high-net-worth individuals in Aspen is a legitimate location for Burgess to put down “some proper roots”.
“Having been to Aspen a couple of times, one thing I’ve been surprised by is the calibre of people wandering around the streets,” says Davis. “You can get off a ski lift and bump into one of the richest people in the world. It’s a community, environment and atmosphere where a lot of very wealthy people are very happy to walk around because they feel safe, they feel they’re not going to get bombarded.
“It is a community that is very protective of that, and it is one of those places where if you turn up with a foghorn and shout about yourself, you’ll get pushed out pretty quickly. You have to appear in Aspen organically.”
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Educated in luxury
The new 500sqft premises will double as an office and hospitality space, with apres-ski events, cocktails and other pop-up parties. While some prospects are likely to have their favourite yacht brokers already on speed dial, Davis reckons the venue will “definitely get walk-ins”.
“But I think a lot of it will be just about word of mouth: ‘Burgess is in town’,” says Davis. The company’s staff will also have a presence around the resort, “ready to talk about anything”.
“As a luxury salesperson you need to be educated in all things luxury because actually a yacht charter or a sale might come in a year’s time or six months’ time or a week’s time, but your point of entry to the conversation might be about an art collection or a car collection or a sneaker collection and it’s being able to hold the appropriate conversation with the right prospective client,” he adds.
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Superyacht brands appearing in ski resorts is nothing new, given the obvious synergies with wealth and lifestyle; indeed the Superyacht Design Festival 2025 is in Kitzbühel, Austria.
But the move to a bricks-and-mortar presence in Aspen begs the question as to whether Burgess is targeting other top-notch resorts for the super-rich, such as Gstaad or St Moritz in Switzerland or Courchevel in France, once the haven of Russian oligarchs and now a melting pot of wealth from the Middle East, Brazil, Europe, some Russians still and increasingly the US.
Courchevel, where the ESF ski instructors sport the Only Yachts insurance logo on their uniform and where real estate agent Leggett currently has two chalets for sale for north of €32m, is also where British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, serial Feadship owner, forked out €19m to fund a new hospitality venue and sports clubhouse.
“LVMH has a massive presence in Courchevel, from hotels to almost an entire street of its luxury retail brands,” says Richard Lumb, director of ski company Kaluma, which operates high-end chalets in Courchevel and St Anton, Austria.
“With LVMH buying Riva, I fully expect to see that pop up there at some stage.”
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Pockets of wealth
Despite the allure, a “prudent” approach is key, but Davis is keeping an open mind.
“We need to give Aspen a few more years but I think the opportunity to engage with our clients when they’re in that space of relaxation or escape is huge and I wouldn’t rule it out,” he says. “We need to think intelligently about where our clients go, whether it is Mustique or Aspen or St Barts – we need to think what the journey is our clients go on and how we can appear in those places but in a credible way.”
Davis acknowledges Burgess is targeting “pockets of wealth” and the move into Aspen is just part of the company’s recent expansion in the US, alongside offices in New York, Beverly Hills and Miami.
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“Without casting too many aspersions, I think the US market is probably much more open to sitting next to someone on a gondola and starting a conversation, it’s just the way they are built, whereas in Europe it’s a bit harder to open up a conversation,” he adds of the Aspen experiment.
But it throws up another interesting debate: are the usual prospecting pipelines drying up?
“Those areas are still there and generating revenue,” says Davis. “And the traditional boat show model has its place, but we have to develop the brand and evolve.”
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