5. Vikki Bruce on From Royal Guests to Remote Bonfires

In this inspiring episode, Luxe Visionaries hosts Prof. Dr. Phil Klaus, the world’s leading expert on UHNW individuals, and luxury strategist Rebecca Gabbi sit down with Vikki Bruce, Managing Director of McLean & Bruce Ltd, to explore what happens when one bold promise transforms into a legacy.

From hosting His Serene Highness Prince Albert to curating deeply personal journeys across Scotland, Vikki redefines luxury travel, not through extravagance, but through authenticity, emotion, and place.

Hit subscribe to explore more powerful conversations with the leaders defining luxury today.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Lux Visionaries, the talk show where the most influential minds in ultra-high-end living share what truly drives their success. In every episode we sit down with the Trailblazers redefining what bespoke, personal and purposeful luxury truly means. Nothing here is scripted or staged. It's unfiltered, unwarnished, and unlike anything you'll find elsewhere in the world of luxury. What if your best hospitality memory was in a very remote Scottish clan with a very rare whisky in hand and no one else around but those who matter to you? Well, this is the secret of our guests of today. Vicky Bruce is the visionary behind these amazing moments, and she's been curating bispo experiences for ultra-high network individuals for almost two decades now. So join us as we take you to the behind the scenes of premium Scottish Hospitality port one tram at a time. As you know, my name is Rebecca Gabby, and I am passive resident at Lex ⁇ Lux, and I will be your moderator today. You also know that I have a co-host, Professor Dr. Phil Klaus, is co-founder of Lex and Lux and Luxury CX strategist.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, ladies and gentlemen. And thank you so very much for joining us for the latest edition of Lux Visionaries. And this time we have a visionary from Scotland with us, Miss Vicky Proce, which will tell us most likely a lot about tourism, a lot about whiskey, and a lot about everything that makes Scotland so precious and so unique. Thank you, Mrs. Bruce. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Fantastic. Thank you so much for having me, Professor Klaus. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

For those of you, us and our listeners who don't know you, what is it that you can get across something that's very important that you need to know about Vicky Bruce?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Right away. That's a very good question. Um I think one of the things of about probably just about me is that I have this a phrase, uh, I have my finger in a lot of pies. Scotland is a very small country, so it's very easy to be um to be connected in lots of different areas and different industries. And um when when you sort of you work, you live, um uh and and sort of really love the country you're in, and it's got such a small population, it's very it's very useful in business to be connected to lots of people. Um, and so that's probably one of the things that's most important to me. It's all the connections.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Besides being Scottish, of course.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Besides being Scottish, that's quite important to me as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

So for those of you who are not familiar with your business, could you elaborate a little bit what it makes it so special and so unique? Because there are different facets, but I rather have it um that our audience hears it from the horse's mouth rather than from others.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Absolutely. So I think one of the one of the things which I I find um I'm very I'm very single-minded about is I'm very careful with with what we built. We built this um travel company 13 years ago. And my previous experience was in the whiskey industry, and so I built the the travel company with my partners with a view to what we wanted to experience, what we wanted our guests to experience, and not what was already happening in the in the sort of the travel industry. So I'm very very single-mindedly don't look at what other companies are doing in case I'm steered off my my vision, and there are lots of companies in Scotland doing lots of wonderful things. Um, the way that we wanted to uh project our business and to look after our clients was based on our original um the core model, which is very much about extending uh friendship, about being being with the clients that we look after, not arranging it for them and allowing them to be tourists, but making them feel like they're friends, that they're connected, that they're valued. And actually, because we do that, an awful lot of our clients leave as friends and keep in touch with us.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

So, Vicky, what you mentioned was that you were, if I can call you Vicky, is that okay? Oh, please, yes. Oh, thank you. That's very kind of you. That you said you wanted to have a different kind of experience based upon your own experience and what you saw in current offerings that were centered around the things that you love so much. And apparently you were not quite happy with what you've seen, or were you?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Oh, I didn't really know, actually, I didn't really know what I was getting into. And this is for me a case of I think that sometimes ignorance is bliss. So I went into this industry with no preconceptions and really based it on, excuse me, what what I what I felt that we wanted to offer as opposed to what other people would maybe expect or what other companies were doing. So it was very important to me that our guests felt like um excuse me, felt like friends and not felt like I didn't want people to feel like tourists. And our first our first guest, which I come on to, was a very, very high security affair. And it was very private, very discreet, um, and very um uh very unique uh trip. And and we wanted to offer that to other high net worth guests so that they weren't necessarily staying in a hotel, they were staying in a castle. Um, and from me, um, that I would be there as their host or as their friend and not just a somebody who worked for them in the background like a travel agent. I would actually be, you know, with them, with my business partners, being part of that trip in a much more, I think a much more natural and a much more inclusive um sort of way.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

So how can you uh how did you come up to this unique design? Did you experience things that you said, nah, that's not quite up to par? Or were some of your business partners already engaged with that and say, there must be something else, you know, there must be something better, or you just woke up in the morning and said, well, let's just do it differently and see how it goes?

SPEAKER_00 6:45

No, none of those actually. So the what happened was um I was working for a whiskey company uh run by my husband when my children were young. So that gave me a really nice level of flexibility for work. And we went to Monaco to um for a whiskey tasting. And the importer who took his his whiskey into Monaco said to me, Would I well ask me if I would help her organize a trip to Scotland, a whiskey trip. And I'm you know quite good at the sort of the logistics of of sort of organizing things. And um it turned we so we we did this, and it was helicopters and castles and private distillery visits and private chef and everything. And it was for his Serene Highness, Prince Albert. So when we completed this trip, my um my who was then my friend Charles McLean, who's the the world's most famous whiskey expert, um, who gets on very well with his Serene Highness, said to me, I really like what we did here, and I'm quite tired of traveling overseas to give these whiskey tastings. How about we use this as the as a business model, and we invite um guests over from around the world to experience this. So it was very much our product, as opposed to how are other people doing it and can we do it differently. It was here's a here's a really nice model of being able to offer people a very exclusive luxury experience and then roll that out uh to other people. So that's how it started.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

See, I always love that when I give three options and none of them apply. So we learn something every single day. Ah, that that sounds rather marvelous. So, where did you go from here? Did you say, yeah, that should be an idea, and then you looked at the right partners, or was it just that somebody came by recommendation and you're like, okay, now we do it, or what happened next?

SPEAKER_00 8:53

So, what happened next was I thought this'll be brilliant. We'll just because actually it was relatively straightforward. There was a lot of work involved, but it was relatively straightforward to arrange this beautiful experience for um for the the family and their friends. Um and I I suppose it wasn't I wasn't afraid of what we were creating. Um, there were a lot of really steep lessons along the way. So, for an example, even though we are not in Bre in um Europe anymore, Scotland, we are still subject to regulations which are European travel regulations, which are put in place to protect the clients. So suddenly I had to start um learning about the regulations, and obviously we had insurance and all these sort of compliance um things that we had to do. So the the directors were Charlie uh McLean and I, and then we had a third director who joined us who was a lawyer, so he did all our terms and conditions, which was extremely helpful, and he had worked in China for DiAgio, the drinks company, for 13 years. So he connected us to Chinese high net worths. So that became became the major part of our business, actually, was um very uh affluent, whiskey, appreciating, um fairly male, as you might expect, uh, clientele. Um so that that that was really our our main market. And then I suppose what happened organically was that people want to golf, or people want to see castles, or they want to do this. And so you start to pull in all these other activities and experiences. Um, and then we we always try to do things that are a bit off the beaten path or behind the scenes or VIP to make things a more elevated experience, um, and always delivered with um a huge amount of um top quality service. Um, one of the things about Scotland is that everything is is um very, I'd say very authentic. So we don't have necessarily, you know, the grandiose sort of marble and gold chandeliers, that we don't have that sort of luxury. Luxury we have to create in a different uh a different format so that becomes the the authentic, delivered with a very, very high level of service.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

When you speak of authentic, unique experience, how would you personally describe the difference that the Scottish authentic experience makes in comparison to say the Italian, the French, or other experiences?

SPEAKER_00 11:42

I think uh it's um it's possibly the same uh ingredients make make the the the experiences real. And it's about it's about using people and places that aren't manufactured or or aren't but but then if you take something like Edinburgh Castle, which is Scotland's most visited tourist attraction, obviously it's a very touristy attraction, because that's what it is, but it's you know it's it's uh an ancient castle that's been there since the Iron Age, and it's you know it's it's an incredible historic site, and it's it's actually a military barracks, so it's operational for the for the for the military as well. So it's a it's very genuine and it's very authentic, but it is part of the the tourist scene in Scotland, it's a huge part of it. So the way we approach that is you know, we're looking at how how can we make that different, how can we make that better? Because it's a shame if people come all the way to Scotland and don't see Edinburgh Castle, but we don't want them to feel part of that tourist trail. So we will do, for an example, either a pre-opening tour so they have the castle to themselves before it's opened to the public, or we'll do an evening event so that they get a private evening, which is really majestic because the castle is beautifully lit, they get to see the crown jewels and the you know bagpipes and flames and things like that, and very very atmospheric. So we we have quite often we'll take things which are pretty established tourist things, but how do we make that, how do we elevate that? How do we make people feel special? And uh, and and so that's what we've I guess that's what we've really honed over the last 13 years.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

13 years, that's quite some time. And if I understand you correctly, all your offerings are almost bespoke, they're completely tailor-made. So, how did do you find out the preferences of your clients? Do you have like a preset interview with them? Do you have longer relationships? So, how long does it take in terms of process actually to get to the final itinerary for the lack of a better word? Or for the final experience design?

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yeah, it's a really good question, and actually it's different for each client. So a lot of our our um guests come through travel agents overseas. Um, so we're what's called a domestic management company. So they have the client and we create the product, and they're in the middle. There's a real problem with that because they are they we aren't speaking directly to the client. And we've done trips for people where the client we we haven't we haven't been able to ascertain, and I use the word vibe because that's what it is, um, and so we've created something according to what the travel agent in it can be anywhere, it can be from any part of the world, uh, what they think the client wants, and they're not necessarily asking the right question, and they're they're protecting themselves from their client going around them and coming direct to us. But actually, we wouldn't do, we wouldn't cut them out. And the client comes to Scotland and they're with us anyway, so it's kind of pointless. If we're talking directly to the client, then we just have a series of phone calls, and we have some clients who want to be very involved in their trip, we have some clients who just want us to do it for them and get on with it. We have we we try to give people uh a sort of a loose plan. So most people have got a starting point would be I do want to do these things and I don't want to do those things. So we we we sort of work on that, and then we have a little bit of expectation management, usually quite near the beginning of the conversation, because people want to do uh an awful lot because Scotland's a tiny country, because you know, not quite as tiny as Monaco, perhaps, but it's uh you know, compared to China or Russia or the States or India, it's you know minuscule. So they think they can do it in three days, and actually you can't because the infrastructure is not really there, unless you're going by helicopter, in which case you can. Um so we we build everything from the ground up. And one of my business partners said to me a few years ago, I don't understand why you don't just reuse itineries, and it's because we can't, because they're all completely different. Um, and but that vibe is very important. So we do have a questionnaire which gets the the sort of the basic um things out of the way, but it is quite difficult to get um to get a real feel for whether people want it to be quite formal, quite adventurous, quite relaxed. Um, we've got a we're doing an itinerary at the moment for a couple who are coming from Asia, and um money's not the an object at all, but they're they're very shy and they don't like a fuss and they don't want to be embarrassed, they want to be sort of um sheltered in a way, I suppose. And that's a really important consideration because we don't want them to feel uncomfortable. So some of the stuff that that I suggested initially, they were like, I think we'd you know, I think we'd feel quite uncomfortable being put in that position. So it's actually very important to try and pick up on those nuances.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

I love the point uh the you highlighted what we call in the MEPA framework the managing expectations part. And you also highlighted that once you have an intermediary, a gatekeeper in between, that doesn't understand the value that you could actually bring to their relationship with the client, then it becomes significantly more difficult to get what you want. But when you have this, do you have anything like an exit interview or you get feedback that you can then go back to the gatekeeper or to the travel agency and say, look, that didn't work out that well, but it was not because of, it was because we didn't know what the client actually wanted. Would you consider in the future for us to speak to them directly?

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah, absolutely, and I love that I'm getting advice on this because it really it's a really we we we always have uh a sort of an exit and um uh email. So we it's very important to us to find out what we could have done better, is how we phrase it, um, what we did well, um, what we could change next time, um, and to get a testimonial and to ask, because we we're a word of mouth business, so we we really is it's and going back to your earlier point, it's it's incredibly important to us that our clients go away happy, happy with us, and happy with their travel agent as well. It's you know, this has to be a win-win situation. So we do go back to them for follow-up. Um and and we have we have highlighted this in the past. We had a a group from Poland in the summer um last year, and it came through two agents. So there was an agent in Poland who'd contacted an agent in London, and so it was it was an incredibly painful process. And actually, when the group arrived, and it was about 10 people who were probably in their 30s, and that's we we designed a much more, yeah, much more formal trip for them, and they were like, Yeah, let's go white water rafting. And we actually then, once they were here, we had to change what we'd booked for them, which was really frustrating, and it doesn't make the travel agent look very good at all. It you know, because they they didn't really get that from their clients, and and so that was a really good example of where we do go back to clients uh to to the agents and say, had we spoken to them directly, because actually we we uh we all ended up taking a bit of a hit on on um on the financial side because we had to cancel things and then rebook things, and and that's not ideal for anybody.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

No, I can imagine, but it sounds more like a Chinese whisper congregation when they took their place. That's hopeless. But see, this is uh something that we encounter very often when you have somebody in between the one that will at the end of the day deliver the experience and the one that will experience it, because people have often, for the lack of a better word, but preconceived ideas of what they value or not. And uh I believe that's a shout out to all the travel agents who are listening today in on this. You should go and get in touch with Wiki so your customers are going to be more happy and get the experience that they're actually looking for, which makes you much better looking too, you know, because your client will be happy, because at the end of the day, if your client is not happy, they won't blame anyone else than the point of contact. And especially in a business like yours, which is based upon word of mouth, as you so highlighted correctly. So is it then much easier for you if you have um, how shall I say, repeat customers, people coming back that you already know, and they say, Oh, Vicky, it was marvelous, but this time I'll take my son, or I'll take my daughter, or I'll take my business friend with us, and we would like to play on St. Andrews, you know, because we always wanted to have that experience or whatever it is. So, does it make life easier for you?

SPEAKER_00 21:29

We do have repeat business, we have a lot of um a lot of referrals. We have uh a fair number of clients who are fairly um open that they will do Scotland once, but um actually once they've done it, we find that they do come back with. So, for an example, we work uh closely with I don't know if you know the YPO, but we work with the YPOs. We have a lot of YPO groups come over, and then they will then go back and and come back as as. As a family or as a group of female friends or a group of golfers. That's a really good example of when people come back because they only come with their YPO groups. They're coming for a very specific time slot, and the what they do is always very sort of kind of a set formula, almost, if you like. So they want to come back and have a looser, more uh broad experience with us. So that's a good example of a client that comes back because they have a taster, um, and then think, oh, there's so much more. We had actually we had two YPO guys here last year who were here for three weeks and they still didn't see about half of the stuff on their hit list, so they're coming back, they're here for three weeks.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Good for you. You know, it shows that you're delivering exceptional experiences, exceptionally tailor-made experiences. But I also love the fact that uh it seems to me like when if I if you permit me to read between the lines, that also being Scottish and working with the people there is very important to you too.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

It was actually really when I set the business up, it was the first key metric that I had never anticipated was that I could bring foreign money and you know, not just sort of a little bit of money, but actually quite significant money into rural areas where the economy is quite poor to friends of mine who work very hard in not just the travel industry. So we use people, we bring in people to enhance guests' experiences. So an example of that would be um there's somebody on the west coast or off one of the islands, it's quite remote, and he's a kelp farmer, a seaweed farmer, um, and that's his livelihood is selling um seaweed to UK restaurants. So he's out in a wetsuit or dry suit, actually, um, harvesting seaweed in the North Sea, which is not it's not exactly Mauritius, it's not, you know, it's not a very easy job. Um, and if we can take him people, they have this is going back to what I was saying about authentic experiences. This is not a tourist attraction. Um, and this guy is gorgeously sort of rugged, and um it you know, it's a really amazing experience to be sort of around him. And uh it's not a manufactured experience, it's completely genuine and it's not on the tourist trail, but it's giving it's giving him an extra sort of revenue stream, and it's it's fairly infrequent, but that's a really nice example of of how you get a really good feel-good factor when you're giving money, not necessarily to Edinburgh Castle, but actually to to somebody on a really remote Scottish island who works hard and who's got a tough, tough gig, and and the clients get so much more for it. So I think having having a win-win-win situation in in everything that we do is is really desirable. It doesn't always happen. Um, but it happens a lot, and that's just tremendous to me. I can't remember what your original question was, but we've got it for a bit of a time.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

Don't worry, it's marvelous to hear what you're sharing with our audience because I really love what you're saying. And uh a lot of our research points are people talk a lot about off the beaten path. And I said, off the beaten path alone is not good enough. It needs to be what you just described, it needs to be unique, valued, and authentic. Just off the beaten path is not good enough. And I believe the example that you just gave honed down completely what it actually could do, while at the same side, doing something that everybody has a benefit from and can enjoy. That's an extra example.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

I think so. One of my um my sort of guiding principles was formed right at the beginning of my um when I started the business, and I can't tell you how many times I've told this story, but it's so important to me, is that I was introduced to a travel agent in New York when I started the business. And she said, There is nothing that Vicky in Scotland can organize that I can't organize from New York, and that was such a shock to me. And, you know, of course, she can book, you know, a lovely hotel that's available to book online and experiences that are available to look online, book online. But I've lived here my whole life, and you know, we have all these connections that of course she doesn't have because she doesn't live here. So, how can you do that? And it really came into play with um with a client that we had really, really um early on in the in the business's life uh lifetime, um, and she was a very, very elegant Chinese lady, and uh she wanted to she wanted to go scallop diving, and um so had this lady in New York known, um, there's a little pier somewhere, secret place in Scotland, where all of the fishermen throw their baby scallops off into about 30 feet of beautiful crystal clear waters. But you know, she we weren't going to put her into the water because it's quite cold, it's the North Sea, it's quite cold. Um, so we we got a actually a scallop diving friend of ours who's got a little boat, and in between the Isle of Sky and the the mainland, a place called Glen Elg, is a stretch of water called the Sound of Sleet, and it's just beautiful. And it was about this time of year, and we get real uh actually, we're just chatting to Rebecca about this, we get real heat waves at this time of year. We had a beautiful, beautiful day, and we went out on his boat that he'd cleaned for us, and he'd caught some fresh scallops, and he is this this chap, his his name is Neely, and um and he lit a little bucket barbecue on his boat, which was quite alarming. I've never seen anybody light a barbecue on a boat before, but anyway, it was fine. And um and he and he'd made some garlic butter and he opened the scallops and he put them on the bucket barbecue and put the garlic butter in a little sprinkle of sea salt, and he pulled out from over the edge of the boat a bottle of Shabley that had been chilling, and he gave this beautiful, elegant guest, her name is Jasmine, uh, a fishing rod, and she caught a uh she caught a coley cod type of cod, coli fish, and and then he started playing the guitar, and it was just it was just like so magical, and and it, you know, when you talk about luxury, this didn't cost very much money. I think we gave Neely a bottle of whiskey, and that was it. It's not about what you're spending, and it's not about buying expensive things online or what you know or what I don't know. It's all it's about that real creativity, about knowing the fact that Neely up in the Kyle of Loch Elge and he can do this, and so it's it's yeah, it's about creativity, and that for me has become where we because the word luxury, as as you you'll be well used to, is is is so overused now, it's used and abused. How do we add value? Is really the way we're looking at it. How do we add value when we're dealing with high-net earth clients from around the world? They can have all these amazing experiences, they can travel in luxury transport and stay in luxury hotels. So, what what is it that we can give them they don't normally have? And actually, a lot of that is really elemental. It's to do with putting your feet into the icy cold water and feeling the stones and smelling the bonfire and drinking the whiskey, and you know, it's it's it's it's quite elemental because we live in such a sterile air-conditioned world. So that's kind of how we we we try and approach it to make people to make really, really brilliant memories for people.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Vicky, because I have this conversation all the time with my clients and also with my children when we reflect upon what's important, and at the end of the day, people don't buy products, people don't buy services, they buy something to have an experience. And the memorable experience that you just described, it was stays with our memories and with our beloved ones forever. And this is literally priceless.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

It is priceless, and the travel agent in New York, she couldn't do that.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

No, hell no, pardon me. No, of course she couldn't, but again, you know, let them be, you know.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

But it's really she's she's very she's still very successful, but that this is going back to what you were asking earlier about how we do things differently. I don't know what she does, I don't know what other what other people do, I know what we do, I know what we're we're very good at it, we've been doing it for 13 years. We we've we've made all mistakes, and you know, it doesn't mean that we don't still make the occasional mistake, but we tend to tend to be pretty rare. Um, and we you know we look after different groups of different sizes, we look after corporates and families and uh all sorts of different uh people who want different things, who have different expectations, different needs, and we've learned to be um pretty intuitive on how they look how we look after them. And a lot of it is is very much cotton wool. They want to feel they want to have that authentic experience and they don't want to be on the truest trail, but at the same time, they want to be really well looked after. So we have a really careful like handover process when we've got the driver with them who's taking them to the hotel or the castle or the you know, we work with butlers. So there's always somebody, if we're not there in person, there's always somebody with them looking after them and feeding back to us anything that um that we they feel that we need to know. So it's about that giving them that really high level of service.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

That makes sense, Vicky, because uh you remind me of when I start my research in the luxury field, even if it's overused. And one thing I always find out people like you, you're not competing against, you're competing for the clients, and this is what makes you so successful and stand out. You couldn't care less what the lady is doing in New York, because all you focus on, and what you clearly described, is like what's the next person that's gonna enjoy my services really after? What do they value? What kind of experiences are I looking for? And I love that, Vicky.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

You gotta find and then that goes back to what you said earlier about really trying to have that conversation early on with what your client wants, the more information you have from them, it doesn't matter. We had clients once, and I said, and they came through an agent, and I said to the agent, we really want to know more about these clients. Um, is there anything could you ask them to like tell us a little bit about themselves? Um, and one of the reasons we asked that is that we have uh a beautiful state family stately home and it's full of amazing artifacts. So I married into um the the family of Bruce, who's uh so descendants of Robert the King Robert the Bruce. And so there's lots and lots of historic artifacts in the house, and um my brother-in-law, who's fantastic, um he he gives wonderful sort of personalized chats to people who we take to the home, the family home. And so he likes to try and find out what their interests are so that he can bring out things which might interest them. And so I asked this travel agent to give us a bit of background about the the family, the the couple, and he said that they spend their time, uh, they were from somewhere in America, uh horseback riding, bareback, and shooting at targets while they're while they're galloping on their horses. We'll try really hard to see what we can do that will will interest them, but uh I'm not sure we did terribly well. I think we brought out some old weapons for them, but that was quite niche.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

I can imagine, but hey, uh um you know, horses for courses, literally. No, uh uh I love that, you know, Vicky. Vicky, you definitely have a fan. And for those of us in our audience who do not know you yet, and now they get to know you. The next thing they're gonna ask, how do I get more information? Is there any way how people should contact you or get in touch with you if they are interested in that kind of experiences? I mean, I I I would be asking, so uh Vicky, where do we go from here now? You know, how will you want to have us come to Scotland? Because you should don't want to come to Monaco. You make it very clear.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

But after you go to Monaco, come to Scotland. Um, and actually, his Serene Highness loves Monaco. Uh, loves uh loves, hopefully loves Monaco. Loves Scotland, and he's he's a relatively frequent visitor, and he loves his whiskey and he loves Scotland. Um we have obviously we have a lovely website which is McLean and Bruce. So Charlie McLean is the the whiskey side, and we're the I'm the Bruce side. Um, so everything's on the website. Um, I'm fairly visible, I'm on LinkedIn, and uh yeah, you you open anything, you're you're probably gonna find me bleating about how gorgeous Scotland is in the spring, uh, which it is at the moment, just gorgeous. Um, or have some whiskey, or uh yeah, come to Scotland.

SPEAKER_02 35:50

Um marvelous. Is there anything on your mind that you would like to share or wrap it up something? Um there is time.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

There is.

SPEAKER_02 36:03

I'm not surprised. Go for it.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Um, so during COVID, which was obviously very difficult for anybody in well, pretty much any business, but obviously we were in the the inbound luxury global travel uh business. It was it was pretty tough going. Um, we pivoted into selling casks of whiskey, which is it it happened in a slightly lengthy organic process, but now we have a separate arm to the business, which is selling casks of Scotch whiskey. Um, and I can I could bore you at great length uh about that, but we have a lot of a lot of our travel clients have and do buy casks of Scotch whiskey. Um they buy them for lots of different reasons. Some people buy them to sort of commemorate the birth of a child or a grandchild so that the whiskey ages with the child and then they can drink it at some stage. Some people are buying it for investment purposes. So this has become a huge part of the business. And we sell everything from uh before whiskey becomes whiskey. For the first three years it's in a cask, it's new make spirit. So that's it when it's fresh off the stills. Um so we sell everything from New Make Spirit right up to, I think the oldest cask we're selling at the moment is from 1969, it's a McAllen, um, to a client in Asia. So um that's a that's a separate part of our business, but I thought it might be it might be interesting to you guys because a lot of our buyers are luxury buyers, and it's um it's an alternative asset, investment asset for a lot of people. So that's something that's uh slightly uh um slightly different to the travel side of the business, but actually the two are really symbiotic, and we got into it partly because we we've been taking our our clients to distilleries behind-the-scenes visits for the last 13 years, so it was kind of a natural, and and I'm married to a distiller, and whiskey is very much part of our DNA.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

I can see that because my question would be it uh on your LinkedIn profile it says responsible Scotch whiskey cask sales. So I was wondering which part is responsible, that it's Scotch, that it's cask, or the sales, or all of the sales.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

We are we are very, very compliant in helping uh our cask buyers to protect themselves uh because it is unfortunately an industry that's rife with fraud. Um it's uh it's a it's a difficult industry at the moment, it's it's not regulated. Um, so there are some very easy things that people must do to protect themselves. And we have um uh an authoritative body called the Scotch Whiskey Association who've got an advisory piece on their website saying this is what you need to do if you're going to buy a cask of whiskey. Um, so the people who have been sadly defrauded didn't do what they should have done. Um, so we can't control in any industry. It's you know, we we have bad players in in all industries, but it's up to us to educate the people who are buying them on what they need to do to protect themselves against the fraud. So we behave very responsibly.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

Marvelous. Well, thank you for highlighting that because I was wondering what it referred to. Huh.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Yes, I know I hadn't really thought about people, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

To me, it's to me I understand. Because when I read it, I'm like, hmm, which part of it, all of it? All of it. But I didn't know, yeah, I didn't know there was fraud in this. So uh so in case if somebody wants to invest in a flask, I mean, either ask the Scottish Whiskey Association, which as you highlighted, has uh um the how shall I say, almost like the a list of people they can contact?

SPEAKER_00 40:01

No, they're not involved in it at all. Um, but they have an ad uh a sort of a document which advises cask buyers on what they need to do in order to protect themselves. So that's just the advice. Um there isn't really a list, but we can certainly help with obviously that's you know that's a big part of our business now with casks of sculpture.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

If anyone is in doubt, please contact Wiki and she will help you out there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

I was gonna say, particularly if anybody has got a cask, and there was there was a television programme made by the BBC, uh it was aired a couple of weeks ago, and it highlighted a couple of um really bad companies. And what that's done is it's it's made a lot of people who own casks wonder if their purchase is safe. We're happy to to have a conversation if anybody does have a cask that they are worried about. And we we after the programme was aired, we had a lot of people coming to us and saying, What should we do? So, you know, that's that's that's free advice. We're we're happy to have conversations with people if they're wanting to.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

Well, that's very kind of you. So if somebody's uh not quite sure what kind of cask they have, they can get in touch with you and you somehow, for the lack of a better word, can authenticate if that's the right thing or if there might be a challenge regarding the absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

We can just help them if they need if they need to just check where their cask is or if they are definitely the owners if the cask exists.

SPEAKER_02 41:32

We're very marvelous. Marvelous. So thank you so very much for sharing that. And ladies and gentlemen, I don't know what your perception is of WikiPruce, but I love her, you know, and I love that she shared all her insight about the authentic, value-driven customer experience she delivers day in and day out. Uh, while I before knew about her, now I know what she stands for, and we we are so grateful that you took the time out of your busy schedule to not only share what you're doing, but more importantly, why you're doing it and for whom you are doing it. And I consider you a truly visionary because visionaries is not about having something fancy, new, or AI or whatsoever. It's what you deliver. The right things at the right place for the right people and giving back, really giving back. And I cannot thank you enough for joining us on the program. It was a delight, a pleasure, and an honor.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Thank you. Thank you so much, Professor. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

And that's a wrap on today's Lux Visionaries. If this conversation inspired you or gave you something to think about, please do us a favor. Follow, subscribe, and share it with those who appreciate real insight. The future of luxury isn't coming, it's already here. And we're giving you the front row seat. So until next time, stay bold, stay curious, stay visionary.