You Gotta Have Art
Lark Mason, president, and Ben Turk Tolub, vice-president, iGavel
www.igavel.com
Founded in 2003
Nine employees
$6.5 million in revenues in 2005
Niche: Fine art auctions
New service: Mason and Tolub, former employees at Sothebys.com, are bringing the art and antique community into the digital age with a site where savvy collectors can purchase guaranteed high-end fine art and antiques. Unlike eBay, only trusted sellers in the art community are permitted to put items up for auction.
How the company did it: While Mason, a regular appraiser on PBS's Antiques Roadshow, provided the company's business expertise, Tolub applied his technical knowledge to building the site's functionality. "What we're finding now are a lot of experienced sellers who really know the art and antiques market [but] never got into the computer side of things. It's all about making it easy for those people to get online," says Tolub. iGavel operates on AuctionAnything.com, an auction software provider, and a custom Filemaker Pro database, which manages pre- and post-auction transactions. In all, the pair spent about $50,000 of their personal savings and thousands of hours getting the company off the ground.
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