Ex Sotheby's CEO to Invaluable

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Bill Ruprecht, the ex CEO of Sotheby's will now become the chairman of the advisory board at Invaluable. Ruprecht left Sotheby's in 2014 after a yearlong battle with hedge-fund manager Daniel Loeb.

The Wall Street Journal reports

The art world hasn’t heard much from Bill Ruprecht since the longtime Sotheby’s chief executive stepped down almost two years ago following an activist shareholder revolt.

Mr. Ruprecht’s departure in late 2014 capped a turbulent, yearlong campaign by hedge-fund managers such as Third Point’s Daniel Loeb to transform the auction house into a leaner, more-profitable company. Mr. Loeb criticized Mr. Ruprecht directly in a letter he released publicly before eventually calling a truce and joining the board.

After he left, Mr. Ruprecht largely disappeared from global art circuit, advising a few collectors on their art buys but otherwise remaining absent as the auction house he helmed for 14 years hired a new leader, Tad Smith, and underwent roiling changes.

Friends said Mr. Ruprecht mostly went fishing—in Alaska and elsewhere—and rarely came home to Greenwich, Conn., preferring to travel.

“The art world is a hothouse, and I purposefully tried to get a little distance from it,” Mr. Ruprecht said Wednesday, in his first interview since his departure, “but I keep getting drawn back in.”

Now, the 60-year-old Mr. Ruprecht will become chairman of the advisory board of Invaluable, a privately held online art venture based in Boston that for the past seven years has used a modified electronic-trading platform to facilitate online bids in auctions. This year alone, it plans to take part in more than 17,000 live sales originating in more than 4,000 auction houses, galleries and e-commerce outfits around the world—including eBay Inc., Sotheby’s and Phillips. Sotheby’s chief rival, Christie’s, uses its own click-to-bid platform.

Using a model similar to design clearinghouse 1stdibs, Invaluable is best known for charging auction houses—from Latvia to Nigeria to Vietnam—a $650 fee to post offerings for any coming sale on its mothership site. Before each sale, Invaluable alerts potential bidders to offerings that might appeal to them based on their requested items or past purchases and allows them to bid in real time during the sales; afterward, Invaluable charges buyers a 5% commission on any winnings.

When Mr. Ruprecht stepped down from Sotheby’s, the art market was riding high. Now, he’s wading back into the auction arena at a time when the top of the art market is slumping. This fall, he said he expects to see “continued reductions from the historic highs” seen at auctions a couple of years ago, in part because he doesn’t think the major houses will offer risk-offsetting sweeteners to potential sellers as they once did. The online art marketplace is also fractured by startups such as Artsy, Paddle8 and Auctionata.

Instead of prying away masterpieces from wary billionaires, the auction executive said his new role will allow him to focus on winning over millennials, who increasingly are doing more of their art shopping online.

According to a report issued earlier this year by insurer Hiscox, $3.3 billion worth of art changed hands online last year, up 24% from the year before. Dallas-based auctioneer Heritage Auctions, which is known for selling collectibles such as coins and memorabilia, sold $344 million in online art last year—more than tripling Sotheby’s online total for the period and a sign collectors till may feel confident competing at price points below $500,000.

Rob Weisberg, Invaluable’s CEO, said the company is on track to top $350 million in online sales this year. He said that besides adding Mr. Ruprecht, the company’s biggest initiative of the year was to rejigger its platform to add a fixed-sale feature so galleries could join in, posting their offerings and allowing shoppers to “click to buy.” The fee for galleries is $500 a month; the buyers’ commission remains 5%.

Mr. Weisberg said 175 galleries have signed up already, including New York’s Paul Kasmin Gallery, but he hopes Mr. Ruprecht’s arrival will convince more blue-chip dealers to join, he said. “Dealers are continually looking to extend their reach to new buyers, which we have,” he said.

Mr. Ruprecht’s art-world re-entry appears relatively smooth so far. Even as he clicked through cellphone photographs of some rainbow trout he hooked in Alaska last week, he said he planned to attend Andy Warhol dealer Alberto Mugrabi’s wedding this weekend at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in “I’ll be there with 600 of my closest friends,” he said.

Source: The Wall Street Journal