European Business Magazine Interviews OenoGroup Founders
Michael Doerr and Daniel Walker
The award winning wine investment group based in the heart of London city about their journey so far and what the major challenges that they have overseen , the industry that they are involved in and how they see the future of their company and their goal to be more transparent in an industry which has been rife with shady firms trying to make a quick buck Let’s start from the beginning. Oeno Group was founded back in 2015 by an Italian wine expert Daniel Carnio. A few years later, you purchased the business and completely adapted the company and successfully increased turnover. Tell us more: why did you both decide to start this company, what vision did you have in mind? And what is the story behind you purchasing the Group? What was the biggest challenge that you had to overcome once you started working here? MD: The company that Daniel Carnio founded in 2015 is not the company that it is today. It was a totally different company. My business partner Daniel Walker and I sat down together and discussed how we love the concept of fine wine and we had an idea of fine wine as an investment. We put together a whole group to incorporate three arms of its service offering to facilitate a higher degree of excellence in each department from trade to investment to consumption. For us, it is the only true full 360-degree circle asset from collector-to-investor-to-consumer. There could be two people in a chain or two thousand people in a chain: as long as someone consumes that wine in the end, you have a wholly ethical investment cycle. DW: Creating Oeno Group as a full service offering was a way for us to bring an esoteric luxury concept like wine investment to the wider masses. If we look back 10 years, wine investment was seen as a luxury investment only for those who knew about wine and had large amounts of wealth. 40 europeanbusinessmagazine.com
MD: With Oeno Group, we made wine investment accessible to the masses. What was once looked upon as only an investment for the elite for people such as Warren Buffet and Alex Ferguson, we revolutionised the very concept of wine investment to make it simple and more accessible for individuals interested in wine. Because both Daniel Walker and I don’t come from a strong wine background, we both brought an untainted view to the industry: introducing wine investment to all walks of life. DW: Although we still maintain that exclusivity, we make wine investment more accessible by opening our doors to those who don’t have the experience or knowledge about wines. We are probably the first company to do this in such a welcoming way. MD: We love the stories behind the wines and the winemakers. We enjoy being storytellers that engage wine investors with the heritage of great wines. The difference between spending £20 on a bottle of wine and spending £20,000 on a bottle of wine can be the story behind the wine. Penfold’s Grange came from a young man who made wine in a unique way and was shunned by his peers. Penfold’s is now widely considered the greatest wine Australia has ever produced and, to some, one of the greatest wines in the world. Today, Oeno Group is known as “the top wine investment firm “. Looking back, was it difficult to gain such status? What was the tipping point for the company, when you knew that things are about to unwind? MD: We were slugging away for years and it was tough. We wanted to make
the greatest rarest fine wine portfolio the world has ever seen. We are trying to offer a near-perfect service whether you are an experienced collector or have just had your first glass of wine, we aim to please all walks of life. We wanted to be an honest, upfront, and approachable company. DW: Our ultimate goal was to take a company that was already good with so many benefits and positive attributes. We saw the flaws and gaps in the business and wanted to turn it around and make all aspects of it as perfect as possible. DW: When we first started this company ourselves, we thought about our own family members and how we could make wine investment as simplistic, streamlined, and approachable as possible. With the greatest things in life, when you take something that’s complicated and make it simple, you know you are doing something well. MD: Oeno Group is the only wine investment firm worldwide that has active exit strategies with clients. Oeno Group has a retail arm that sells wine that is 70% client-owned. We also have a trade arm and we sell wine to some of the top Michelin star restaurants and members clubs in London from Annabel’s, 67 Pall Mall, City Social, Park Chinois, L’Enclume, Cinnamon Club, Guards Polo Club and more. We are one of the only companies that has a dedicated in-house anti-fraud team that has a 60-point anti-fraud checking system. After our team verifies a wine bottle’s authenticity, we adorn the bottles with a hologram label that cannot be removed. DW: If someone comes to us and wants to know why we think Oeno Group is the greatest wine company to exist, they have the absolute
