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Quintessentially Print E-mail
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You Rang, Sir?

This world-class concierge service is at your command—for a price

By Henry Shukman

quintessentially1.jpg
Photo courtesy of Quintessentially Yours
So you want to get something really special for your wife’s birthday. You’ve decided you have to have the actual Aston Martin DB5 that Bond drove in Goldfinger. You’ve had it tracked down to Valencia, Spain. The owner is reluctant to sell, but $13 million settles it, and the car is shipped back to London in time for the big day. But hold on: You also need a bottle of rare-vintage Pol Roger and a picnic basket of beluga malossol and blueberries from Patagonia. In said Aston Martin with said basket, you plan to drive into the countryside near London for a picnic, then on down to Southampton Airport, where a hired jet will take you both to Milan for opening night at La Scala, then to Sardinia, where you’ll play tennis with, say, Ivanisevic and Kournikova. Then you’ll tell your wife that a star has been named after her in the Milky Way.

Enough daydreaming—except it’s not. All of this really can and has been organized by Quintessentially, a London-based global lifestyle-management team. Located in 25 cities around the world, the Q team is ready to fulfill nearly any request you (and, more important, your checking account) can muster.

But wait, something goes wrong. At the end of the sumptuous picnic, when you’re about to climb back into the Aston Martin, you can’t find the car keys. You’re in a ten-acre field, a plane is waiting, curtain’s up at La Scala in two hours, and you’ve lost the damn keys. Bond would call Q, of course—as should you. Within half an hour, Quintessentially has arrived with a metal detector and picked up the signal, you’ve slid the key into the walnut dash, and you’re on your way.

Quintessentially was established six years ago to “service members” who have all the money but none of the time. “We set it up because we needed it ourselves,” says CEO Aaron Simpson, who cofounded the company. “We cut through the dross and get the inside track. We’re an aggregator of brilliant information. Some people say, ‘Why do I need this? I do it myself.’ If you have the time to do it yourself, you’re probably not a client of ours.”

There are three levels of membership: general, dedicated, and elite. The latter pay around $45,000 a year, for which they get a fixer at the end of the phone any time of day or night anywhere in the world. General and dedicated members (who pay $1,500 and $5,000, respectively) get that too, but without the same personal attention. Inevitably, Quintessentially caters to a lot of famous clients—the roster is rumored to include Mick Jagger, Sophie Dahl, Kate Moss, Gwyneth Paltrow, Coldplay, and P. Diddy. The company also counts plenty of members who are extremely wealthy but under the radar, including an impressive number of names from the Forbes 500 and the (London) Sunday Times Rich List.
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