Right now it’s possible to click on Christies.com
and bid on a Warhol drawing, a Helmut Newton photograph and an ostrich
Hermès Birkin bag. Often there is a selection of rare wines to be
purchased there, too.
And last year, the auction house introduced a buy-it-now feature echoing eBay
that offers a head-spinning variety of watches that can be snapped up
instantly. “The main objective here is the acquisition of new clients,”
said Steven P. Murphy, Christie’s chief executive. “We’re building our online business the old-fashioned way, brick by brick.”
So
far the auction house says it has invested $50 million in hiring
experts and building its own infrastructure. It dipped its toes in
online-only auctions in 2011 with a sale of Elizabeth Taylor’s clothes
and jewelry. That effort ramped up considerably last year when
Christie’s held 51 online-only sales. Officials there said that number
was increasing by 50 percent this year.
Both Christie’s and its rival Sotheby’s
introduced online bidding during their live auctions about four years
ago. Their success, coupled with the realization that a new population
of online shoppers is waiting to be tapped around the world, is what is
driving their focus on online-only sales.
While
Christie’s is promoting its homegrown e-commerce business, Sotheby’s is
taking a different route. In July it announced a partnership with eBay.
In the next few months Sotheby’s plans to broadcast most of its live
auctions on a new area of eBay’s website. And over time Sotheby’s and
eBay will add more options for shoppers, including online-only sales.
Sotheby’s hopes to lure eBay’s nearly 150 million customers into being
as comfortable buying a 19th-century dining room table or Damien Hirst
print as they are a new suitcase or a pair of sneakers.
“Both
auction houses are racing to catch up with luxury retailing that has
been a huge success online,” said Josh Baer, an art adviser who
publishes the Baerfaxt, an industry newsletter, and who was hired by
eBay last year to help shape its art programs. “It is now clear to
everyone in the art business that it is no longer if online sales of art
can happen, but who executes them best.”
He
added: “Just like the brick-and-mortar world, they start with content,
inventory and buyer experience. Categories like cars and fashion — both
of which are called emotional categories — are among the most popular
areas for eBay, and for that reason it is banking on its own brand and
that of partners like Sotheby’s to move customers into regularly buying
fine art and objects.”
Christie’s,
however, is starting out small and going it alone. Noting the success
of luxury retailers like Net-a-Porter, 1stdibs and Gilt, which entice
shoppers by showing merchandise in the context of an alluring online
environment, Christie’s has hired experts from some of these sites to
shape its initiative.
John
Auerbach, 36, joined the auction house last year from Gilt to lead its
e-commerce efforts. He has watched shoppers spend larger and larger
amounts of money at Christie’s online-only sales. Right now, he said,
the average price on its site is about $11,000, but in May a buyer
purchased a drawing by Richard Serra for $905,000, making it the most
expensive online-only purchase for the auction house to date.
Competition was stiff. Eight bidders competed for the 2009 abstract
drawing, according to Mr. Auerbach.
“People
are becoming more comfortable online and buying art from digital
images,” he said. “This was a well-known drawing by a famous artist.”
For
those who wonder what Christie’s online business is all about, Mr.
Auerbach answered some questions about his world, trying to demystify
how it works and talking about what its goals are.
Q. Why
does a successful company like Christie’s that is so well known for its
live auctions feel the need to go into the online-only sales business?
How does one avenue for selling feed off the other?
A.
It’s a way of serving customers — existing and new — where they want,
when they want and how they want. It’s also about capturing a younger
consumer. When you consider that about 71 percent of our e-commerce
traffic has come from visitors who are new to Christies.com, and of them
11 percent have gone on to register in regular auctions and 39 percent
of these clients bid on pricier merchandise, it’s a pretty compelling
picture.
Our
research shows that about 53 percent of those who register to bid
online are under the age of 45. As for the most popular categories of
our online auctions, they are postwar and contemporary art, fashion and
photographs, followed by wine and jewelry.
How do you get the material for the online sales?
Everything
is sourced through our specialist departments. So if you think about
it, Christie’s as a company has three channels: live auctions, private
sales and e-commerce. The sourcing for all three is the same. The
specialists work with their clients to figure out where they will get
the best results.
What makes a work of art or an object better for an online sale rather than a live auction or private sale?
Private
sales have a value threshold, depending on the department. Live
auctions have a more broad value as does e-commerce. If someone calls
and says, ‘I have X to sell,’ it might be months before the next live
auction, whereas online sales occur more often. The properties that make
up our online auctions are authenticated and cataloged by our experts,
just as if they were going to be sold in a live auction. There are also
condition reports. Everything remains the same except the timelines,
which are different. There are works of art that we can give greater
exposure to online, which can also be to a seller’s advantage.
What
happens if you buy something online and don’t like it because, for
example, the green doesn’t go with my sofa, or it didn’t look that color
online?
The
policies are the same online as they are for live auctions. We do
everything we can to assist clients in making a decision. We’ll have
multiple photos; a very detailed zoom feature on the site. For flat art
we’ll show it on a wall so you can get a sense of the relative size. In
our watch shop we have two heads of our department doing a 45-second
video about each watch, giving it context, so in a sense it’s virtual
contact with a specialist, and the specialists are available to clients
in person in much the same way they are for live auctions.
When
you make the argument that you can give certain works better exposure
for an online auction than a live one, what exactly do you mean?
There
are common forms of digital marketing. It’s about driving traffic to
our site. If someone has bought something like this before or viewed
similar kinds of property, then we can alert them about the sale.
Just how worldwide are these sales? How many languages are available on the site?
All
our sales are available online around the world and in multiple
languages. Our First Open sales, auctions of postwar and contemporary
art that are live sales taking place in London, New York and Hong Kong,
also have an online-only component, too. Obviously, New York and London
are in English. Hong Kong is in Chinese. The site itself is translated
into five languages. Since there are so many Chinese artists, we
translated the whole site into simplified and traditional Chinese. In
emerging markets like the Middle East, we do a Dubai online sale every
year, meaning it is made up of property sourced from the region. So far
it’s in English, but we’re debating having it in Arabic, too. Also don’t
forget every sale has multiple currencies, so it’s a very flexible
platform and is a way to engage people who might not have otherwise
bought online.
Christie’s
is about to reintroduce its website at the end of the month so that it
is more geared to lifestyle. What is that about?
Content
will be a very big part of the relaunch. Jeremy Langmead from Mr Porter
has joined Christie’s and he really knows how to put something in
context. For example, we did an Asian porcelain sale that traditionally
is marketed to collectors of Asia porcelain, but this time we showed it
in situ, meaning in a domestic environment. And we had a whole variety
of people who became interested in it, and most of the top lots were
bought by new collectors. Over time we will be showing more things in
context. The new updated home page will have a dedicated area for online
shopping — and again this is all part of that lifestyle positioning.
Besides
the online sales, Christie’s last year introduced its buy-it-now part
of the site, which sells watches. What’s the thinking behind that?
When
it comes to watches, we have both online-only auctions and a buy-it-now
portion on our website. Since we launched buy-it-now, it has become our
most visited online sale. Seventy-two percent of Watch Shop registrants
are new to the e-commerce channel and they’re buying watches in a wide
price point: from $1,500 to $195,000. We started this because we
realized that people are used to buying when they want something. And a
watch or handbag or piece of jewelry are things that people want because
they need to buy a gift for someone, or it might be a purely impulse
buy.
Sometimes
social media can have surprising results. Someone who saw the $195,000
watch, a yellow gold Patek Philippe from 2000, posted an image of it on
his Instagram site, and a buyer who was new to Christie’s came to us
through that Instagram photo.
What about Sotheby’s and eBay? Why hasn’t Christie’s teamed up with a company like eBay or Amazon yet?
I
can’t speak to what Sotheby’s is doing. But we have decided to grow
this organically and are doing it in a way that is on-brand and
understood by our customers. Two-thirds of the people looking at this
site are new and one-third of our customers are new to Christie’s. This
is not a volume business. These are hand-chosen works selected by
Christie’s specialists.
Who are the biggest online buyers?
Right
now we are seeing the biggest buyers in the U.S. and the U.K. But it
depends on the category. Hong Kong for wine has dramatically increased
over the past few months. It’s on a category-by-category basis. We have
people shopping from all over the world. When it comes to Birkin bags
right now, I’d say the majority is Europe, but other strong regions
include Asia and the U.S.
Is there crossover between the person who bids in a traditional auction and those who buy online?
There
is a crossover. We’ve seen a number of people who start with us in the
online-only world and then move into the live auctions. These are
customers who shop in multiple categories and price points and they tend
to spend significantly higher sums in live auctions than ones online.
If you look at the timing of this, it’s very rapid. You can see somebody
buying online and then two months later they’re in our salesroom
bidding at a live auction. So they’ve caught the bug. The average
online-only Christie’s shopper has bought three lots this year. They
come back over and over again and are highly engaged.
Why
do you think it is that it has taken consumers longer to warm up to the
idea of buying art and collectibles online when the fashion industry
has been doing it successfully for over a decade now?
The
world has changed. There’s now reduced resistance to buying online. In
addition, technology has also improved so much that it is now possible
to send clients clear, high-resolution images and videos. Collectors
have also become more comfortable buying something from a digital file,
so it’s all coming together, making buying online of the moment.
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