New York, NY, February 20, 2014 -- LiveAuctioneers, the world’s most trusted Internet live-bidding platform for fine art, antiques and collectibles, recorded its best year ever in 2013, with gross online sales of $222.5 million. Founded in November 2002, the privately owned Manhattan-based company has maintained profitability literally since its inception.

“While LiveAuctioneers has enjoyed a phenomenal growth rate that has defied all economic downturns over the past eleven years, 2013 was, by far, our most successful year to date,” said LiveAuctioneers CEO Julian R. Ellison. “We’re in super-growth mode for 2014, with plans to introduce many exciting new online products and services over the next 12 months.”

During 2013, there were 37.6 million visits to LiveAuctioneers’ website, with the number of unique visitors jumping 11% over the prior year. It was a year of substantial growth in mobile use, as well. In the fourth quarter alone, mobile visits rose by 28.72% compared to those of Q4 2012, while tablet visits surged nearly 32%.

Ellison attributes LiveAuctioneers’ seemingly unstoppable success to several factors, not the least of which is the company’s emphasis on allowing its sellers total flexibility to choose how they wish to market themselves. “Any platform that bundles its products into exclusive contracts is making a tacit statement that they can’t survive in a open-market environment – and in such cases, the party that always suffers is the seller,” said Ellison. “If a provider holds its sellers hostage by forcing them into exclusive contracts, then where is the incentive to provide better customer service or invest in new technologies and products to benefit those clients? We want our sellers to be successful. They’re free to use multiple live-bidding platforms simultaneously. We’re not afraid for them to try them all. They’ll soon see which one brings them the most traffic and bids – LiveAuctioneers.”

Seller confidence throughout 2013 was evidenced by the 27% growth in catalog listings appearing on LiveAuctioneers as compared to 2012. Last year 3,657,074 items were listed in auctions utilizing LiveAuctioneers, while the prior year’s total was 2,881,369.

In 2013, LiveAuctioneers’ brand identity took flight worldwide, as reflected by the 70% increase in direct traffic over that of 2012. “This metric measures the number of visitors who type the site address directly into their browser or click on a bookmark,” Ellison explained. “In just twelve months, our direct traffic went from 6.4 million to 10.9 million visits.”

LiveAuctioneers concluded its banner year with particularly strong fourth-quarter results. The 2,092 auctions scheduled through LiveAuctioneers during the months of October, November and December attracted 6.2 million unique visitors and prompted 85.5 million page views. Significantly, visitors to LiveAuctioneers’ online catalogs spent, on average, 27.46% more time browsing than they did in Q4 2012. This resulted in gross fourth-quarter sales of $65.8 million.

Contact:
Catherine Saunders-Watson
LiveAuctoneers
220 12th Ave.,
New York, NY 10001
917-382-5154
[email protected]
http://www.liveauctioneers.com