What Luxury Means to Me: Stuart McNeill, founder of Knightsbridge Circle

‘I used to run this personal service for American Express – the elite tier, which I launched – where we looked after just 50 clients, the top card members,’ says Stuart McNeill, explaining how he got the idea for Knightsbridge Circle. It turns out that the American Express division, which he created and where he allocated one manager to only 10 customers, was so successful that it ended up forcing him to move on. ‘I was asked to roll it out to many, many more people, at which point I realised that what made it so good in the first place was the level of service we could offer because we only dealt with a select few.’

McNeill sees J Craft as analogous to that original concept – a company that limits its production to only two or three boats a year, meaning that each owner gets one-to-one service throughout the build. This is so much the case that Johan Hallén, J Craft’s master builder, has personally worked on each production vessel since the firm began in 1999, including the very first yacht, which was made for the king of Sweden.

For McNeill, there was a clear opportunity to use his experience dealing with the highly specific and personal requests of a very small group of clients to start his own firm, and so Knightsbridge Circle was born in 2012. The name comes from the idea of a circle of friends or contacts – an inner circle, if you like – and Knightsbridge in London, which was the location of the first office. McNeill explains though that his team, who handle only five or fewer clients each, are now situated ‘all over the place’.

‘The idea of Knightsbridge Circle is for us to be an extension of a PA, or series of PAs, for a family office,’ he says. The requests he and his colleagues deal with, however, go way beyond booking flights and restaurants or arranging transport. Though they do that too: ‘We have transported people’s boats across continents,’ explains McNeill. But more typically his team will help with a whole range of things, from renting villas, private jets and supercars, to sourcing items from around the world and hiring staff.

But even this is what he calls ‘the usual stuff’. What makes Knightsbridge Circle different, he explains, is that this is entry level. For example, there was the client who wanted to give his wife a special birthday present: ‘We have a family in North America and the man’s wife is half Italian and it's her 50th this year. And he instructed us to buy an estate in Tuscany which she can just give some love to. They wanted somewhere that currently produces a small amount of wine so they can try and improve that with some consultation, and then they would have the house, the villa would be theirs.’ Knightsbridge Circle sourced and purchased the estate and the birthday present was then gifted to a very happy spouse.

There is also an opportunity for quite extraordinary experiences to be arranged. He has secured Lady Gaga and Bruce Springsteen for private performances, and in November, McNeill is facilitating an audience with Pope Leo. ‘We're going to take a group of clients to meet the new Pope in the Vatican, and we’re having dinner in the Sistine Chapel the night before. In this case, we don't make a penny. Any money that's made goes to the Vatican.’

Then there’s the client who lives in a country where the temperature is usually around 40 degrees and wants to go to Antarctica.

‘So we're having to do training sessions for him,’ says McNeill. ‘He's going to do Greenland and Norway and then he'll fly over to Ushuaia. He'll be on board an ice-cutting yacht for a week and then he'll trek for 10 days to the south pole, which is an unbelievable experience, a life-changing event.’

McNeill says that because of his approach, Knightsbridge Circle is a very unusual set-up. ‘That’s why I call us a lifestyle manager rather than use the C word,’ he explains.

“Concierge” is what he’s referring to, an idea that he feels was once fresh but has been devalued over time because of the erosion of personal service. ‘What J Craft does, making so few boats, by hand with a small team of craftsmen, means you’ll understand the importance of the human touch.’ He says that recently a lot of firms offering concierge services have decided to become more automated.

‘Post Covid, my industry all went call-centre and app… And we went completely the other way. We're about personal service. My team are “gold” on face-to-face.’ The relationship is so personal that they’ve had some very intimate invitations: ‘We've been invited to their birthday parties and weddings,’ says McNeill. It is, he says, a question of really getting to know his clients so he and his people can advise and help them in the most appropriate way.

Rather like the circle of J Craft owners, who occasionally get together with their boats, Knightsbridge Circle, which has only around 80 subscriber members, also encourages occasional interaction. ‘We do have events,’ says McNeill, ‘and we’ve created a type of marketplace called KC Rare where we put offers, and members can trade with each other too and avoid brokers’ fees.’ J Craft fits the bill for this perfectly, he says, particularly because a prospective owner can visit the shipyard in Gotland in Sweden and meet the carpenters and engineers who will physically build their vessel. That kind of personal service is surely a definition of modern luxury.

knightsbridgecircle.com