NFTs, of course, remain a big part of winning over the next generation of collectors. Two months later, it moved more than $1 million worth of rare tea in Hong Kong, its first such auction and one of several concerted efforts to cater to Asia’s increasingly moneyed clientele. Last October, it sold a pair of Michael Jordan–worn Nikes for $1.5 million (a record for sneakers). Much of Sotheby’s revamped business is less conventional, though. Last year, Sotheby’s scored big with a $676 million sale of blue-chip 20th-century art (Rothko, Pollock, Twombly) from New York real estate mogul Harry Macklowe and his ex-wife a second portion of their collection, including pieces by Andy Warhol and Gerhard Richter, will go under the hammer in May and could break the $832 million record for a single-owner collection set by the David Rockefeller estate in 2018. What are those experts selling? Some of it is quite traditional. Stewart would also like to see the company’s art market specialists build their personal brands online to attract young, web-focused buyers: “There’s a place on social media for someone to be an expert on contemporary Southeast Asian art.”
#Olly laser focus movie
Sotheby’s is now experimenting with predictive algorithms that operate a little like Netflix’s movie recommendations, tracking a customer’s interests and offering suggestions for Sotheby’s salespeople. Stewart has also leveraged the company’s extensive database of clients-including its FYEO (For Your Eyes Only) system, which tracks private sales-to learn more about who is buying and what else they might be interested in. Last year, 92% of all bids came via the web, roughly triple the portion from 2018. Sotheby’s highest-profile auctions now attract close to 2 million views online, up from a few thousand in recent years. The set featured six flat-screens showing rooms in New York, Hong Kong and London fielding bids over the phone, the telecast switching back and forth from Barker and the phone rooms as a news anchor might with reporters in the field. (With Covid restrictions easing, live audiences are returning.) Sotheby’s chief auctioneer, Olly Barker, was fitted with a newscaster’s earpiece to ensure the production booth could relay the latest bids to him. When Sotheby’s auctions went online in June 2020, their livestreams felt like a cross between Downton Abbey and an energetic CNN broadcast. “It would’ve been like a high school production with a webcam.” (“Like the opera,” Stewart says.) While phone bidders have long been a staple of most sales, the highest-profile auctions had largely viewed the internet as “an afterthought,” he says.
One of the first things Sotheby’s needed to do in the age of Zoom was change how it conducted its auctions to avoid the perils of other in-person events.
“The pandemic allowed us to rethink the conventions of the art market, which run deep,” Stewart says. Sotheby’s rang up $7.3 billion in sales last year, up substantially from 2020 (a 38% increase) and 2019 (22%). Since his arrival, the house has shifted some of its focus to NFTs and other nascent markets-luxury sneakers, rare teas-and made greater use of big data to guide how it manages sales and clients. Much of that is thanks to Stewart, a former investment banker who left the CFO job at Drahi’s Netherlands-based telecom, Altice, to join Sotheby’s. The picture for Sotheby’s is considerably brighter these days. artist Lyle Owerko’s depictions of vintage stereos, known as the Boombox Project, for as much as $2,500.
The first “drop” included digital versions of L.A. Nifty Gateway (2018): The site started selling NFTs in 2020. eBay (1995): The first transaction on the site, known at the time as AuctionWeb: a broken laser pointer sold for $14.83, or about $28 in 2022 dollars. Heritage Auctions (1976): A $4 gold coin was the star lot at the Dallas house’s inaugural event, selling for $17,000 ($84,000). Christie’s (1766): James Christie’s earliest sale featured home goods including a “beautiful needle-worked carpet” for 50 guineas ($13,000). F Stockholms Auktionsverk (founded 1674): The oldest in the world, Stockholm Auction House’s first recorded sales included Bibles and a black velvet saddle (worth $119 today).
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