When it comes to the trappings of wealth, few cities can outclass London. Stores in Westminster traffic in superyachts, while plutocrats construct Olympic-sized swimming pools in their Belgravia basements.
Now, thanks to Steve Varsano -- a guy from Hoboken, New Jersey, who made his money in private equity -- they can even impulse-buy a plane. Rather than hunker down in a dingy airport office complex the way most brokers do, Varsano has set up The Jet Business on Hyde Park Corner, Bloomberg Pursuits magazine will report in its Autumn 2013 issue.
There, he’s opened the world’s first retail showroom dealing in used jets, ranging in price from $10 million to $100 million. (Because new jets can take more than a year to deliver, the megawealthy often prefer pre-owned planes they can take possession of sooner.) The ground-floor space, formerly a hedge- fund headquarters, looks like an amusement-park ride for billionaires. It features a 50-foot mock-up of an Airbus ACJ319 business jet cabin, replete with club chairs, a galley and a video-simulated sky with clouds floating by.
Varsano’s staff can track all of the used private planes on the market at any given time from a pod of desks that resembles a cockpit. And when showing available planes, he employs a wall- sized bank of screens to immerse customers in the capabilities and luxe interiors of their very own sky castles. He can even flick a switch and smoke the windows so that his clientele of Arab sheiks, Chinese tycoons and Russian billionaires can’t be seen from the street.
Rock Out At 50,000 Feet
“A lot of them are quite shy,” says Varsano, 57, flashing a Tony Bennett smile.
They’re also quite insistent. Many demand showers, treadmills and drop-down movie screens, while others have requested disco balls, flashing lights and state-of-the-art sound systems so they can rock out at 50,000 feet.
One of Varsano’s Middle Eastern clients even had a system developed that perpetually reorients passenger seats toward Mecca. Such comforts don’t come cheap: While the $30 million asking price for a six-year-old, 14-passenger Dassault Falcon 7X is 40 percent off a new one, it still costs beaucoup bucks to outfit the interior. The club chairs in Varsano’s simulated cabin, for example, go for $40,000 apiece because, according to international air-safety regulations, they must be able to withstand 16 Gs without breaking up.
‘Dead at 6 Gs’
“You’ll be dead at 6 Gs, but rest assured, the chair will be OK,” says the dapper Varsano, who favors Canali suits and Michel Jordi watches.