A Dutch internet auction site is expanding its operation to entice more bidders in Britain.
Catawiki is to launch in the UK, letting bids be made in sterling, as part of its efforts to access the world’s largest market for collectibles.
The sites co-founder, Rene Schoenmakers, said the UK is also the biggest market in Europe for online shopping.
He said the auction site already has a "small but very active community of UK bidders", which has made Britain its fourth largest market.
Bidding in sterling and a new staff of 20 staff in the UK are designed to increase that community.
Catawiki has already expanded into Germany, France, Belgium, Spain and Italy.
"We are in the unique position of being able to fill the gap between Ebay and the more traditional auction houses," Mr Schoenmakers said of Catawiki, now in its seventh year.
While not trying to outpace Christie’s or Sotheby’s, he said that customers are increasingly willing to bid on more expensive items.
So far, Catawiki’s most expensive lot was a 1960 Porsche which sold for €165,000.
Catawiki's auctions begin every Friday at midday and all lots start at €1 in Europe and £1 in the UK.
There are more than 25,000 lots each week with some 12 million visitors every month to the site.
The company charges the buyer 9% and the seller 12.5% of the sale price.
Amongst the weird and wonderful items for sale were the complete skeleton of a flying dinosaur which fetched €150,000, the first ever TinTin comic (1930) which went for €30,000, and a €15,000 bottle of Macallan Anniversary Malt Whisky.
Comments
Now discovered to have always been operating a secret prohibition on advertisers using english (or poorly translated Portuguese). The sinister aspect of this being that the advert could be in a perfect Portuguese but, on answering the phone, the english user is then denounced to OLX by the Portuguese. And de-listed without any notification. Never being told.
A service like Ebay / OLX / Catawiki being particularly useful if amongst many thousands giving up on Portugal and going back to the UK and having stuff of no use there. But OLX so secret, no way of knowing that your advert has been pulled. Many, over the years, will have had a couple of enquiries then no more over the weeks and never known that we english users had been 'secretly denounced' - just as in the good old days of Salazar!
Read all about it here and forget OLX! Switch now to Catawiki.
http://www.expatfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=42132/start=0/