Sweeping away years of scepticism around online sales, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the auction world into an incredible phase of experimentation last year. In a bid to find newer ways to connect with their clients amidst a global health crisis, luxury auction houses took a massive digital leap with record sales in 2020.
According to Mercury Project, a Switzerland-based research firm, the five big auction houses — Antiquorum, Bonhams, Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips — clocked a revenue of CHF 316 million against all odds last year. “As the world started to shut down in March, we were not sure how the luxury watch market would respond to the pandemic, but we soon realised that our clients were still hungry for watches. They wanted to buy from the confines of their homes. So instead of having our usual auction in May, we organised our first [online] auction for 2020 in June,” says Alexandre Ghotbi, head of watches for Phillips in Continental Europe and the Middle East.
THE DIGITAL BOOM
A smashing success of sorts, this live online watch auction proved to be a game changer not just for Phillips, but also the overall industry, which had been talking of digital sales for over a decade but not with the same conviction as seen in 2020. “Our sales at this auction totalled over USD 31.7 million. It was the first-ever non-thematic ‘white glove’ auction. We had over 2,000 people bidding online and over phone calls — it was just so exciting,” says Ghotbi.
Although the pandemic hit a pause button on an entire season for auctions in spring 2020, the world’s top five auctioneers organised 189 sales for luxury watches last year,
