Vin Lee and the Luxurious Lifestyle

Integrity comes in many shapes and sizes, like a garment in the armoire of integrity worn with pride but not pomposity. Vin Lee, CEO at Grand Metropolitan worked hard to achieve his success, and does not take for granted the lifestyle he enjoys. There is a difference between one who understands how to market oneself and one who flaunts one’s success. Vin Lee has found the recipe for success, and mixes his ingredients with panache.

Luxuryalive.com had the honor of interviewing Mr. Lee at a time when luxury exists alongside a pandemic.

LA: When did you first get the entrepreneurial spirit, and how did that first play out?

VL: I started my career very young in life. At the age of 15 I was given a grant to study animation under a director of the Hanna Barbera Studios. I created a 3-minute hand-drawn animated film that became a treatment for a Saturday morning cartoon. A year later I was contracted by a production company in Toronto to create designs for merchandise to be printed for the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics.

While studying business at the University of Michigan, I began tinkering with inventions and designs. Developing out dozens of ideas on my own dime. Certainly, at this time my career and life looked pretty messy and made my parents nervous and concerned that I might not find a solid path. My mother once told me she felt what I did was too risky. She wasn’t wrong.

By the mid 90s, my assets under management had ballooned to about $30 million, but cash flow was very tight. I began working with the Winkleman family in a deal to merge specialty retailers Gantos, Jacobsons, and Winklemans into one entity using my jewelry company to supply all the accessories. Unable to navigate all three bankruptcy courts simultaneously, I cashed out of Winklemans leaving my CEO post to the grandson of the founders.

Because of my work with Grand Traverse Resort, I was introduced to executives at CalPERS and was asked if I wanted to sit in on some of the conversations taking place around the bankruptcies of legendary retailers Montgomery Wards, Service Merchandise, and Heilig-Meyers Furniture. My initial interest was in buying Wards and rebranding it as a service company for home repair and installation kind of like Geek Squad but for appliances and electronics. Plus, the rights to Rudolph the red nosed reindeer were included in the package which could be a lucrative licensing opportunity.

Service Merchandise was ideal as one of the largest jewelers in the country earning over $1 billion a year, but its losses were too excessive and its reputation had tarnished. I had little interest in Heilig-Meyers until I found out that the company had used its credit facilities to sell jewelry through counters inside of their furniture stores. Over $400 million a year in jewelry putting it secretly in the Top 5 Jewelers across North America.

Heilig-Meyers Furniture had become too top heavy with all the merger & acquisition debt burdening the operation. As the largest furniture retailer in the world, the brand had $975 million in receivables and $825 million in payables at the time of its receivership. There was a lot to work with including an enormous retail footprint followed by intellectual properties spanning over a century.

Over the next decade we would work with the Qatari Investment Fund selling them Mayhoola. As well as selling the Diamond Standard to an affiliate of $50 billion JAB Holdings/Labelux, owners of Jimmy Choo, Bally, and Zagliani. All of which are complex relationships and corporate structures that took years to complete and fed the growth of Grand Metropolitan.

LA: How did you develop the idea of Grand Metropolitan?

VL: I was born during the heyday of the American conglomerate and the beginning of the boom time of the worldwide luxury industry. Grand Metropolitan had been around since the 1950s as one of the largest producers of wines and spirits in the world, that also included substantial hospitality and tobacco assets. By the late 90s, when we purchased the brand as a holding company, it had already resided over a mega billion dollar empire and was instrumental in the merging of Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennessey with Bernard Arnault in 1987. That same period luxury goods contemporaries Kering (PPR) and Richemont were also formed using similar financial structures.

We were very small and struggling to find our footing through the 1990s. I had just signed a $50 million consulting contract with the City of Detroit Pension Fund to turn around the Grand Traverse Resort and its $80 million losses. I had invested in my first jewelry company and done a deal netting $26 million in precious stones. At the same time I had been awarded patents for my illuminated mechanical billboard designs that were created for Blockbuster Entertainment and several movie theatre chains.

These circumstances put me at the feet of some of the business world’s most accomplished personalities like billionaires Sumner Redstone, CEO of National Amusements, holding company for ViacomCBS. He introduced me to leveraged buyouts. H. Wayne Huizenga, CEO of Blockbuster, Auto Nation, and Waste Management, along with his right hand man at the time Scott Beck, CEO of Boston Market who taught me how to create industry rollups to dominate a market. In addition, A. Alfred Taubman, CEO of Sotheby’s, who had his offices up the street from mine, would help to ignite my passion for fine art and introduce me to collecting.

The most important lesson I learned from all these men is that they treated me as if I was already on their level. Even though I was only in my 20s and hadn’t made my mark in the world, they were very gracious and generous with their time and knowledge.

LA: How do you define "the luxurious life?"

VL: Often “luxury” is equated with money or price. But opportunity and experience are also major contributing factors. Someone traveling through the Middle East might find an ice-cold glass of water a welcomed luxury. While someone in the wilds of Russia during winter may dream of high and dry temperatures. I suggest that a luxurious lifestyle depends on where you are starting from.

My personal journey has been very challenging and for many years involved great stress and uncertainty. My mother was correct it has been risky, and it certainly wasn’t a straight shot up. Not everyone can do what I do. There is no amount of money you could offer me to either buy me out of Grand Metropolitan or get me to work for someone else. It’s never been about money but creating something no one has ever seen before. In this case our multitude of iconic aspirational brands have assembled to create a true American luxury conglomerate.

For most of my career, I have had a very comfortable life. I have never taken any money out of Grand Metropolitan for my personal use and completely refuse to borrow for expansion. In my youth I did surround myself with a lot of the trappings of wealth. Multiple estates, private jets, and a fleet of exotic cars. The monthly overhead was exorbitant and embarrassing to admit too now. Living in Bel-Air, Holmby Hills more specifically is a hypersonic race to keep up with the Joneses. Only the Joneses are the wealthiest families assembled from around the world and generations deep. Many with billion-dollar trust funds or $20-$50 million annual allowances.

Being first-generation and only in my 40s, I couldn’t keep up the pace and continue to effectively grow privately held Grand Metropolitan debt-free. With our acquisition targets growing bigger and bigger in recent years. I also needed perspective; the stress was overwhelming. Fortunately, I had several upcoming international trips that allowed me to see another side of life. At the same time deals we were working on finally closed loosening up the purse strings to a new life for me. Now I have eliminated most of the stress from my life with the reduction of massive amounts of overhead. I generally get a good night sleep and spend my waking hours working on deals and projects that I am excited and passionate about, a true luxury.

LA: Considering the current challenges across so many industries, what is your best advice for maintaining that luxurious life?

VL: It helps if you are born into great wealth, or perhaps marry into it! One of the primary elements of my life is that all my personal passions and interests have become businesses under Grand Metropolitan. I get to occupy my time with fine art (Gallery Rodeo), exotic cars (Beverly Hills Sports Car), and socializing with the rich and famous (Beverly Hills Cigar Club).

The pandemic has changed so much of how the world works today. I never really appreciated my lifestyle until I was forced to lock down with family for the last two years. With the wild swing in the stock market this last year, the introduction of SPACS, Crypto, and MEME stocks, significant wealth has been created minting a whole new generation of millionaires and billionaires. They all will spend their money buying diamonds, home furnishings, cigars, and caviar and that helps me sleep soundly.