Diversity leads HK auction to rosy future

Auctioneers and collectors agreed it is diversity that has boosted Hong Kong's auction market in recent years. It is not only the growing number of auction houses, but also their different competitive strategies and items on sale that leads to a gradual change in Asian auction business pattern.

"Hong Kong is becoming more and more important to global auctioneers and the increasing diversity will do good to the city' s market in future," Jiang Zaiming, a well-known curator and ink painting collector, said this will also have an impact on Chinese mainland market.

In 1973, world renowned auction company Sotheby's ventured into Hong Kong where its first-ever auction in Asia was launched. Its counterpart Christie's held its first Hong Kong auction in 1986, selling Chinese paintings, ceramics and handicrafts, and jewelry. After the year of 2000, more auction houses from all over world came and joined the business in Hong Kong.

Now, apart from the two auction magnates, international companies of smaller scale, including Bonhams, Ravenel, Tiancheng and local ones like Kai Fu have also taken root in Hong Kong. In 2012, both China Guardian and Poly Auction set up their offices in the city with the aim to expand their clientele internationally.

"Sotheby's concentrates on specialties, while Christie's is keen to open up new sources of customers. Tiancheng's strength is on jewelry auction. And you can see steadiness and innovation in Guardian and Poly respectively," He Ying, art director of Hong Kong-based Edge Gallery, described the different features of auctioneers in the territory.

Managing Director of Poly Auction Alex Chang agreed that as Hong Kong is an all-inclusive international metropolis, where people enjoy great freedom and are more open-minded, each auction house has formed its unique character and advantage while trying to open up the Hong Kong market.

Christie's fetched a total of 947 million U.S. dollars in its Hong Kong auctions in 2013, 30 percent up from last year. Its spokesperson told Xinhua they welcome positive and orderly competition, adding the company was confident in serving their customers well because of its long history, good reputation and global network.

As an auction house of smaller scale, Tiancheng has developed different characteristics and strategies. "We are more flexible," Managing Director Wang Jie said, "We hold auctions at our own showroom to reduce the cost. We put emphasis on building up our brand by printing sales catalogs in the form of a magazine for instance."

To gain its foothold in Hong Kong, Wang believed that it is important for a company to have its own most competitive products.

Besides their outstanding performance in jade and western jewelry sales, making 390 million HK dollars (about 50 million U.S. dollars) in 2013, Tiancheng was also the first auctioneer to feature modern ink painting in Hong Kong and managed to cultivate a new group of collectors.

As Wang sees it, many companies, other than Tiancheng, have already started to experiment with and promote new categories of auctioned items in a well-planned and step by step manner. Coins, stamps and Napoleon's handwritten letter were showcased in Bonhams ' latest autumn sale. Moreover, Hong Kong became one of the biggest wine auction centers in 2012 when a total of 1.2 billion HK dollars of (about 154 million U.S. dollars) deals went under the hammer.

"Some auction companies have tried new types of items for sale, Poly earlier launched an exclusive sale of Japanese erotic works, for instance," she said.

Alex Chang of Poly Auction said noted that Hong Kong has established an irreplaceable position in the auction of art works, not even by New York and London.

"Though Europe and the United States remain the center of artwork investment market in the world, Hong Kong, as a fast growing auction market, has already sprung up," Chang said, expressing the belief that Hong Kong's growing diversity would give further impetus to the future prosperity of its auction market. (1 U.S. dollar = 7.75 HK dollars)