Bob Hughes, Wall Street Journal reporter who's covered the auction market and author of the novel "Late and Soon" (published in October 2005 and worth reading), was discussing online auctions with us. We asked him if he would share some of his thoughts.
"Way back in
the last millennium – 1999, to be exact – the world of big-money art auctions
meeting the online world looked pretty grim. Sotheby’s, the renowned auction
house, joined forces with online heavyweight eBay to offer fine art. Four years
later, the joint venture was dissolved, at a loss of about $100 million to
Sotheby’s. Buyers just weren’t ready to spring for five- and six-figure art
online. In fact, more than a dozen high-end art sales Web sites began and faded
around the same time.
This seems
funny, in a way, since people are willing to spend a lot of money online for
cars, computers, even homes. But something about high-priced art caused people
to think twice. Auctioneer eBay still sells art online, as do other, smaller
sites, but there isn’t a site where a connoisseur might plunk down $10 million
for a Monet. Back at the time of the dissolution of the Sotheby’s venture with
eBay, Sotheby’s chief executive William Ruprecht said there were not as many
people “prepared to buy authenticated fine art online as we had hoped.”
That’s still
the case, but perhaps not for much longer. As more people become comfortable
ordering online. On the day after Thanksgiving, U.S. shoppers spent $305
million on online purchases, excluding travel, a 22% increase over the
comparable day a year ago, according to comScore Networks, a Reston, Va., market-research
firm. Nielsen//NetRatings reported that the volume of Internet search queries
grew to more than 5.1 billion in October 2005, up 15 percent from five months
ago. While that kind of interest may not translate into sales of Picassos and
Renoirs immediately, it’s bound to open the market for lesser-priced but still
quality works.
Indeed, the
auction houses themselves are now embracing the Internet as never before. Sotheby’s
and Christie’s – the two main auction houses in the world, with about 95% of
the business – now publish their auction results online. Sotheby’s also makes
its catalogs available online (these can cost $40 or so apiece for the bound
versions), and both of the Web sites for these houses have excellent search
tools, too. Another art site, ArtNet, is a valuable resource for art news and
for tracking the price histories of certain artists – something that collectors
once relied exclusively on their dealers and the auction houses for."
What’s missing
still, though, is the kind of publicity that the auction houses can drum up, the
scholarship and provenance research that auction house can bring, as well as
their reputations. Not to mention the excitement of the auction floor for the
big sales. (In my novel, “Late and Soon,” I give readers an insider’s view of
just such an auction.) Some auctions permit live bidding online during an
auction, so there are strides being made. But as the blogosphere grows, who
knows what kind of universe may await interested collectors in the next decade?"
It's been fun seeing how focusing in on customer conversion rate
optimization has become the 2006/2007 Rallying Cry for Marketers,
according
to independent research firm Forrester Research Inc. In a report
titled, "Marketing Technology Adoption 2006," June 2006, Forrester
interviewed 371 marketing technology decision makers and influencers,
and more than 40 percent say their organizations "have plans to
implement Web interaction optimization software by the end of 2007." 
