The new art auction
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-the-auction-world-is-moving-online-is-it-paying-off
From the classical representation of an auction house, the well-dressed, wealthy individuals sitting in rows of lawn chairs seated outside, the auctioneer slurring his words at a rapid speed while banging his gavel at every final sale, three big auctioneer companies rose as the frontrunner: Phillips, Sotheby’s, and Christie’s. As the world is becoming more digitized, these companies will find it the most advantageous to adapt to a more Internet-friendly model with addition to their traditional brick-and-mortar auctions. Each company has been accepting the change with strides. Phillips and Sotheby’s at around the same speed. Both began investing a lot of money into their technology developments in 2015, resulting in already promising results. Phillips now has a digital saleroom (stream real life auctions) that can be accessed through web or through its native iOS app, and they have listed six items on eBay with plans on increasing that number. Phillips has already seen $9 millions of sales through their digital saleroom, and 41% of online participants were new to Phillips. Sotheby also has set up its own digital saleroom, eBay listings, and is the first auctioneer company to have bidding available through Apple TV. However, these two companies are molasses when compared to Christie’s which launched its digital marketplace in 2009. In 2015 alone, it hosted 80 online-only auctions, compared to zero for both Phillips and Sotheby. Christie’s has also been selling high-end items, a goal that the other two companies are working towards. Christie’s does not consider this enough as it announced that the company will be investing $20 million into further developing their digital services. So far in Networks, we’ve been viewing the consumer aspect of auctions, and this article shows us a more behind the scene view of the workings of an auctioneer company. With these huge numbers the article listed, it really shows how popular auctions are and it’d only be in the bidders’ best interest to learn the most effective way to approach these auctions, which we did in Networks. This article showed the overall connection between one of the modules we were learning about (auctions) to the bigger picture. The world is becoming a much more connected place and in order to reach the most people, these auctioneer companies must expand their graph of nodes (people) that can be reached in order to maximize their profit.