E-commerce: Catawiki no longer wants to settle for auctions

Catawiki thinks bigger. Having sold more than 2.5 million special items since its creation in 2008 – from luxury cars to collectible cards to vintage desk lamps – the Dutch auction site wants to attract new followers.

Until now, the platform’s customers have mainly included collectors who are keen on old comic books, stamp albums, classified vintages, jewelry and vintage furniture. But it now wants to market more widely – particularly in France, where it has one of its three largest markets, with more than 500,000 customers – with consumers interested in their products but not very fond of auctions.

“Some customers in our community see an object on the site, propose an auction but do not follow it through and lose the coveted object,” explains Frederik De Beer, Catawiki’s global sales director. As a result, the experience is not ideal for them. » So, so that they can buy in one click – without returning to the platform several times to outbid – a new option is being rolled out from this Thursday, the “Buy now (buy now) “.

Average sales time halved

The principle: when he publishes his ad, the seller can choose (or not) this option and sets a price at which the item can be purchased before the end of the auction. A dedicated “Buy now” label will then appear on the product image to indicate to the customer that they can purchase it without going through the auction.

It’s already been a year and a half since this live purchasing feature was discreetly launched on the site, before its more massive deployment this week. In total, more than 10,000 items have been sold this way on the platform. According to Catawiki, this halves the average sales time, reducing it from 7 days to 3.5 days. A Mercedes-Benz 300 SL coupe miniature car, for example, sold in 209 seconds with the “Buy now” option and a fossilized marine reptile also found a buyer in 364 seconds!