Fine wine investment visitor Cult Wines has laid off its unshortened sales team in Singapore, the drinks business has learnt.
Five staff from sales and operations were made redundant with firsthand effect in early August, equal to multiple sources tropical to the company. These include three relationship sales managers and two Asia operations personnel, leaving just three senior staff members in the Singapore office, including Nicolas Monroy, director of Southeast Asia, one of the sources said.When contacted by db, Monroy said the layoffs were "part of restructuring" the Singapore office and attributed the redundancies to stuff in line with the"evolution of business".He said: "Over the last two years, the visitor has invested super heavily in tech, and that tech is now in place. So, you don't need those many hands anymore."The visitor completed a new round of fundraising in June to fuel growth and support its tech infrastructure. Former Moët-Hennessy CEO Christophe Navarre supported the funding round, and has joined the Cult Wines workbench as a strategic advisor. Formula 1 suburbanite Valtteri Bottas and Reda Bedjaoui, founder of luxury fintech Privat 3 Money, were moreover named among the high-profile investors.The funding momentum follows the launch of its digital trading platform CultX in May 2022, which is backed by blockchain technology and powered by Wine-Searcher, and will indulge the visitor to scale this up in the coming months as well as invest in increasingly data, the visitor said at the time.Monroy personal that the new platform is worldly-wise to write 99% of the company's needs. He said: "A lot of people's normal queries can now be solved through tech solutions.""I think the visitor evolved to a point where we are ready to take on the next challenge, and we don't need as many heads."Cult Wine has built its investment business, where the minimum portfolio value has risen from US$10,000 to US$50,000 in the last decade, on "high-touch engagement", offering clients the benefits of an investment management team, resources, and personal relationship managers.Most Singapore clients will now be asked to contact relationship managers via their new user interface. Others - the highest tier - will goody from the 'personal touch'. However, Monroy would not specify what qualifies as the highest tier.The Singapore office serves as the regional headquarters for Southeast Asia. Equal to Monroy, no other regional offices, including Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo, were unauthentic by staff redundancies. He said there are no plans to rent new staff, yoyo that “we are currently at the right size".A UK-based company, Cult Wines, was launched in 2007 by Tom Gearing. The visitor manages £290 million in resources and runs regional offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Dubai, New York and Toronto.Speaking exclusively with Asia editor Eloise Feilden, Gearing said that the visitor is prioritising "having staff that are worldly-wise to support consumer needs cross-regionally" in Asia. "Now we've got one consolidated team in unit, that works cross-regionally wideness all those areas, but we still have staff locally based in Shanghai, we still have staff locally based in Hong Kong and we still have our office and our staff locally based in Singapore. We finger that that's now going to requite us a increasingly operationally efficient structure to enable us to support our existing businesses and still be worldly-wise to support our partners and grow our merchantry going forward."Gearing said of the whole company: “As a merchantry we've taken the visualization to right size, the organisation in line with current market conditions, but moreover in line with the investments we've made."The Cult Wines CEO confirmed that not all of the company's teams in Asia have been reduced. "There has been an overall reduction in sales-facing staff," he said. "We've reconsolidated down, but not all three units were reduced."
Five staff from sales and operations were made redundant with firsthand effect in early August, equal to multiple sources tropical to the company. These include three relationship sales managers and two Asia operations personnel, leaving just three senior staff members in the Singapore office, including Nicolas Monroy, director of Southeast Asia, one of the sources said.When contacted by db, Monroy said the layoffs were "part of restructuring" the Singapore office and attributed the redundancies to stuff in line with the"evolution of business".He said: "Over the last two years, the visitor has invested super heavily in tech, and that tech is now in place. So, you don't need those many hands anymore."The visitor completed a new round of fundraising in June to fuel growth and support its tech infrastructure. Former Moët-Hennessy CEO Christophe Navarre supported the funding round, and has joined the Cult Wines workbench as a strategic advisor. Formula 1 suburbanite Valtteri Bottas and Reda Bedjaoui, founder of luxury fintech Privat 3 Money, were moreover named among the high-profile investors.The funding momentum follows the launch of its digital trading platform CultX in May 2022, which is backed by blockchain technology and powered by Wine-Searcher, and will indulge the visitor to scale this up in the coming months as well as invest in increasingly data, the visitor said at the time.Monroy personal that the new platform is worldly-wise to write 99% of the company's needs. He said: "A lot of people's normal queries can now be solved through tech solutions.""I think the visitor evolved to a point where we are ready to take on the next challenge, and we don't need as many heads."Cult Wine has built its investment business, where the minimum portfolio value has risen from US$10,000 to US$50,000 in the last decade, on "high-touch engagement", offering clients the benefits of an investment management team, resources, and personal relationship managers.Most Singapore clients will now be asked to contact relationship managers via their new user interface. Others - the highest tier - will goody from the 'personal touch'. However, Monroy would not specify what qualifies as the highest tier.The Singapore office serves as the regional headquarters for Southeast Asia. Equal to Monroy, no other regional offices, including Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo, were unauthentic by staff redundancies. He said there are no plans to rent new staff, yoyo that “we are currently at the right size".A UK-based company, Cult Wines, was launched in 2007 by Tom Gearing. The visitor manages £290 million in resources and runs regional offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Dubai, New York and Toronto.Speaking exclusively with Asia editor Eloise Feilden, Gearing said that the visitor is prioritising "having staff that are worldly-wise to support consumer needs cross-regionally" in Asia. "Now we've got one consolidated team in unit, that works cross-regionally wideness all those areas, but we still have staff locally based in Shanghai, we still have staff locally based in Hong Kong and we still have our office and our staff locally based in Singapore. We finger that that's now going to requite us a increasingly operationally efficient structure to enable us to support our existing businesses and still be worldly-wise to support our partners and grow our merchantry going forward."Gearing said of the whole company: “As a merchantry we've taken the visualization to right size, the organisation in line with current market conditions, but moreover in line with the investments we've made."The Cult Wines CEO confirmed that not all of the company's teams in Asia have been reduced. "There has been an overall reduction in sales-facing staff," he said. "We've reconsolidated down, but not all three units were reduced."
