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Let's talk about cars right now.
Rolls Royce sells arguably the world's most luxurious motor cars, but they don't want to sell more of them, just higher priced versions of each one. In order to do that, the Goodwood based manufacturer has opened up a private office right here in New York City for its highest network clients in America to help design increasingly individual masterpieces.
As the CEO refers.
To them, let's bring him in to talk about lifting luxury margins and contributing those to parent company BMW. Chris Brownridge runs the company now, and he joins us from the private office down in the meatpacking district. Chris, great to have you on the program. Thanks so much for joining us. I wonder if you could start by telling us what your goals are in terms of your contributions to BMW, in terms of growing margins. What do you want to achieve in your say, first couple of years as CEO.
Oh, good morning, Matt, and it's great to be here in New York. I'm sitting in our private office and that's a great place to start. The whole business at Rolls Royce is about creating value for our clients. And what we're seeing is increasing demand from our clients for
more and more bespoke and personal motor cars. And the whole private office network that we're setting up is designed to really create environment where we can engage them directly with our design team and so we see a great opportunity and our client feedback about the private office is extremely encouraging.
So you have I believe you have setups like this in other hubs in Dubai for example, in Shanghai for example, how strong are they in terms of contributing to margin growth?
Well, the New York Private Office is of a network, and as you say, we have a number around the world. We started with the home of Ross Rice in Goodwood, where our clients would come to us and so they could meet the team and we could work with them to create their own bespoke rolls RoCE and this is a growing aspect of our business. For example, in Shanghai, in the first six months of the private office being open, we had engagements with more than two hundred clients. So
it's clearly something that resonates with our target audience. It creates a unique experience for them and Chris, I.
Want to talk about global demand, and but I particularly want to talk about Chinese demand because, of course, you think about what we've seen out of China this week, a big bang of stimulus measures and wildly different industries here. But we were talking to the CEO of Pandora, for example, who said that they're strong everywhere except in China.
What are you.
Seeing when it comes to China when it comes to Rolls Royce specifically, well.
It's clear at the moment in China the luxury industry is on some experiencing some more challenging times. But the Chinese market is very important to Rolls Royce and that's we've invested in it. In fact, we've opened a private office in Shanghai because we see a growing number of ultra high networth individuals and certainly what we've seen since that private office has been open is more profound engagements
for our clients. You know, It's always been an important reason for us, and it will continue to be for the future, even.
If you're looking at the long term in China, Chris, what does that mean for a more immediate demand? And wondering if this bigger push into the US with this New New York office starts to offset any weaknesses you might be seeing across the globe.
Well, Ros Rice is a brand which with a great heritage and history, and of course we have clients all around the world, and we've seen over many years fluctuations in demand in every region of the world. And that's the great thing about our business. We're super flexible, super agile, and of course we've got clients all over the world, so if one region is up, there's always another one that may be down. But overall we can balance our business really effectively because we're so very agile.
It does seem like, you know, within luxury, we see the lower end kind of struggling the higher end. We talk to, for example, executives at Lamborghini and Ferrari and they continue to do Gangbuster's business.
Do you notice a.
Growth in high net worth individuals? Is that what's powering this drive at the top end of luxury, Yeah, very much so.
And in response to the growing demand for our clients, we're opening these private offices, but we're also investing in the home of Ross Royce. We're expanding our facility there, not so we can build more motor cars, but so we can build more precious and special motor cars for our clients. We need more space for these bespoke commissions, and we're certainly seeing over the last years a real growth in demand for more personalized and more specific requests
from our clients. But also what they particularly value is the experience that we deliver them, and that's why when our clients can't come to Goodwood, Goodwood comes to the clients, and that's why we have our private offices. So where I'm sitting here in New York, this is a little bit of Goodwood. It's like an outpost to where our client we'll.
Talk about some of your new models. Of course, I'm thinking about Stepter. It's your new all electric model in its first year of deliveries. A little bit of a setback here, of course, some recalls in place. What measures are you putting in place to deal with that recall?
So Specter we launched this year and it's been a great success for us. Our clients feedback about Specters. They absolutely love the way the motorcar drives. It's a super coupe. It's absolutely stunning to look at, and it's a great palette our canvas for personalization we had this topic in terms of the recall. But what we're doing is we're handling that as efficiently as possible to make sure that
our clients are not inconvenience. And our team have done a really good job of that, and we're making sure that we're quick to respond and we give all our clients the reassurance that they deserve.
Which BMW, Which Rolls Royce vehicles are affected by this recall? Of course, we saw their profit warning out by your parent company, BMW. Can you give a sense of kind of where else the issue lies.
The topic that we're discussing right now specifically affects Specter and only Specter, and in the North America area there are six hundred vehicles affected, and we have a pan of action for each and every one of them.
I wonder what new models we can expect in the future, Chris, you have, you know on your ice cars twin turbocharged V twelve, you know, six point seven liter engine that just makes me salivate. Is it possible that that is married with electric power?
Could we see a hybrid in the future for Rolls Royce.
Well, one of the things that's always true about Rolls Rice is that we don't compromise, and with our V twelve power plant today in our model range, it's a fabulous piece of engineering. And also with spect we've delivered a motor car using electrification and again our pliant feedback is it's a perfect Rolls Rice. We'll never compromise. We always deliver the best possible power train for our clients.
As for future motor car as well, I wouldn't want to give any secrets away right now, but what I can tell you is as a very exciting future for Rolls Rice, a.
Very exciting future. You're not going to give away secrets right now, but I'm still going to try our clients asking for a hybrid. When you think about the Rules Royce customer base, are they asking for hybrids?
Our clients, they tell us they love the V twelve and they also tell us that they love Spectrum as well. The thing that they love is the way a Rolls Royce drives. It's that waftability, that ease of driving and absolute silence when they're driving, and both power trains that we have deliver that. In space, driving a Rolls Rice is always a special occasion or indeed being driven in one and that will always be the case with every Rolls Royce that we make.
In terms of what you're doing down there, do you envision a time when Rolls Royce is putting out more one off models? I mean, right now you've got you know, Ghost and Culinen and Phantom Inspector. But are you going to be doing really individual pieces high networth individuals.
Well, we already today produce in very small numbers coach built motor cars for our most demanding clients, and these real show pieces of the possibilities of our crafts people and artists who work in Goodwood. But I'd argue today every Rolls Rice is a bespoke work of art, and that is our mission is to increase the specific content for each specific client in every Rolls Rice because ultimately
they are a masterpiece for our clients. They really do represent the best of craftsmanship and the most special specific content for our clients. And that's what we're very, very proud of at Rolls Rice.
All Right, when I listed the models, I left our Wraith, which is one of my favorites.
I have to say as well, a power coupe.
Chris, thanks so much for joining us, Chris Brownridge, there of Rolls Royce Motor Cars at his new private office in downtown New York. Be sure to listen by the way to my podcast Hot Pursuit. You can get it on Apple or Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hannah Elliott and.
I she's the luxury reporters of Reporter for Pursuits.
We spent an hour with Chris yesterday and I think you'll find it interesting. That episode comes out on Friday.