Personally, I’ve heard this sentiment echoed by merchants.
One told me: “There is no consumer crisis. There is a debt crisis.”
Another said: “High-street banks have basically become too difficult and expensive to deal with. They have zero appetite for risk and no interest in developing meaningful relationships with start-ups and SMEs. This means start-ups rely on friends and family, crowdfunding and seed investors, and larger and later-stage businesses also look to the diverse world of private credit.”
In other words, a new ecosystem is emerging — one that could end up being better tailored to each business’s needs.
Lily Feng is the CEO of Jera Wine, the financing arm of Coterie Holding. Jera specialises in lending against blue-chip wine collections, giving restaurants, merchants and private collectors a way to unlock capital without immediately selling stock.
Jera is far from the only company offering this — and in this video, Lily explains the dynamics of wine-backed lending: how they value wine as collateral, what they will and won’t lend against, how they think about risk in a softer market, and where wine-backed finance might sit in the industry over the next few years.
Happy listening! If you prefer reading instead, here is the transcript.
Thank you as always for being here!
Sara
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