Why this fund manager paid US$15 mil for a painting estimated at US$200,000
Bill Perkins came to Christie’s and sparked an epic bidding war. He says it was worth it
The Houston-based hedge fund manager Bill Perkins walked into Christie’s planning to spend US$2 million ($2.77 million). An hour or so later, he left having spent US$15,275,000. “The plans went awry, to put it mildly,” he says, speaking the next day. “I was shocked, but I knew it was a possibility.”
Perkins had come to Christie’s in New York for the express purpose of buying The Sugar Shack, a 1976 painting by the football player-turned-artist Ernie Barnes, whose work has belatedly been recognised as a seminal part of post-war American art. The painting in question depicts a dance hall populated by joyous Black dancers and musicians. It is a duplicate of the painting Barnes made for Marvin Gaye’s studio album I Want You and is the image featured in the 1970s sitcom Good Times. “In my mind, there’s nothing more American than that piece of art,” Perkins says.
He had coveted the work for years, going so far as trying to buy the painting’s sister work from the actor Eddie Murphy. “I actually hunted down Eddie Murphy’s assistant and tried to buy the album cover, and got crickets,” Perkins says, laughing. “They were like, ‘Who’s this nutball?’ They didn’t even give me the dignity of a ‘no.’”
So when he saw this work was coming up for auction, “tears welled in my eyes just thinking about it,” he continues.
In the Room
Perkins founded the fund Skylar Capital Management and is a serial entrepreneur, author of the book Die With Zero, and self-described “avid amateur” poker player who has won millions of dollars in various tournaments. (When a journalist pointed out that most amateurs don’t win millions of dollars, he responded: “That is true, but I’ve lost millions, too. So let’s not forget that.”)
He had already assembled a significant collection of art — he says he has four works by Barnes, five pieces by John Biggers, along with art by Norman Lewis, Charles White, and others. But until Thursday night, he had not been on the floor of an auction salesroom before. “I’ve been at charity events where they auction a piece of art,” he says. “But I’ve never been at a proper art auction, live, in the room.”
He wanted the Barnes so badly that he decided he had to go in person. “I was hyper paranoid,” he says. “What if my phone dies, what if my internet goes down? I had these horrible visions in my head of stuff that could go wrong, so I was like, ‘I need to be in the room where it happens so nothing can go wrong.’”
The work carried a presale estimate of US$150,000 to US$200,000, which Perkins knew was artificially low. The previous auction record for Barnes was set at Christie’s last year, when his painting Ballroom Soul sold for US$550,000, over a high estimate of US$120,000.
“I was going to be ecstatic if [the final price] was sub-US$1 million,” he says, “and I thought it reasonably could sell for between US$1.5 million to US$2 million.”
As soon as the lot came up and the auctioneer Adrien Meyer announced, from the podium, that there were 22 people bidding on the phone for the painting, Perkins knew things would not go as planned. “I was like, ‘Where did all these people come from?’” he says. “And so I decided to crawl out of it, get it high enough, and be done with it.”
High Drama
And so began one of the most dramatic bidding wars in recent memory.
At first, auction house specialists in the phone banks ringing the auction floor were shouting over one another with bids. The price shot up to US$950,000, then US$1.8 million, and suddenly it was US$2 million. By the time bidding had reached US$2.6 million, though, the room had quieted down, with the main action between Perkins, seated in the back with his fiancée, and a man a few seats away who appeared to be speaking on the phone to a client. “We were like, ‘We have to have our poker faces on,’” Perkins says. “But that went completely out the window.”
Throwing out bids that jumped by US$100,000, US$200,000, and even US$500,000 increments at one point, the two men went back and forth, as the entire auction room, riveted, watched in silence. At about US$5 million, “I turned to my fiancée and I was like, ‘What should I do?’” Perkins says. Wisely, “she said, ‘Babe, you have to make this decision yourself.’” At that point, he continues, “I looked around the room, and everyone was looking at me. And I was like, ‘Oh God, this is a scene.’”
Bidding continued. It was US$8 million, then US$9 million. “The guy turned to me at one point and goes, ‘I’m not going to stop,’” says Perkins. “And so I said, ‘Then I’m going to make you pay.’” (People in earshot laughed in delight.)
Suddenly it was at US$10 million, then
US$10.5 million, then US$11 million. Perkins tried to shut the bidding down by offering YS$12 million, but the adviser countered with US$12.5 million. With every bid at this level, there were audible gasps on the sales floor.
Finally, Perkins bid US$13 million, and the man on the phone had had enough, signaling he was out. The room burst into long, sustained applause, and Perkins, looking a little stunned, got up and left. With auction fees known as the buyer’s premium, the total price came to just over US$15 million.
“There was so much going on in my head,” he says. “There was the very analytical side, like ‘Did I get the value right,’ and the emotional side of me was like, ‘F-yeah, it’s mine!’”
A Steal
Perkins celebrated at Blue Ribbon restaurant with his fiancée “and just took it in and marveled at the journey to get to this place, and the convergence of it all,” he says. “And the fact of how absurd my life is, that I can own this painting. It’s completely absurd.”
He plans to loan it to a museum for a few months “to let other people connect with it. It means a lot to America, and it definitely means a lot to Black America,” he says, “and then I’m going to hang it in my house.”
He says he has absolutely no regrets. “As shocking as the price is, I still feel like I stole it,” he says. “This is a US$100 million, US$200 million piece. It’s just going to take time for people to realise it.” —
Move over cotton, there’s another natural fibre set to take the fashion industry by storm, and it comes from discarded pineapple leaves. Believed to be softer, smoother, cooler, less wrinkly and more absorbent with higher dye retention, yarn spun from pineapple leaves can be used for all sorts of textile applications from denim to apparel, footwear and upholstery. On top of that, it blends extremely well with other fibres such as organic cotton, lyocell, Tencel, and recycled polyester.
Of course, you must be wondering: After centuries of pineapple production, why hasn’t anyone figured out how to repurpose the rest of the fruit or other types of agriculture for that matter? According to Harold Koh, founder of startup Nextevo — an upstream provider of ready-to-spin yarn made from agricultural waste — a lot of it has to do with economies of scale.
“Frankly speaking, there’s not much technology to it. For decades, Filipinos have been making barongs (traditional shirts) from pineapple or banana stems. But why hasn’t it caught on? Because the people doing this come from small cottage industries which are not able to scale up to meet the demands of key industry players who need to buy in big quantities. If the small supply chains can’t keep up with demand, then the big brands won’t pick it up,” shares the 61-year-old father of two.
Kickstarting the next evolution in sustainable fashion is Nextevo — launched in Singapore in 2019 by Koh — which currently works with farmers in Thailand and Indonesia to transform agricultural waste — in particular, pineapple leaves — into sustainable textiles at a commercial scale needed to meet market demands. Currently, it’s targeting four key segments: footwear, apparel, home textiles,
and interior furnishings.
Not only does Koh want to become the world’s leading sustainable natural fibre producer, he is also determined to turn this into a circular industry with a zero-waste business model. “In Southeast Asia alone, we generate about 600 to 800 million metric tonnes of waste in a year from agriculture. While some of it can be turned into biomass for energy, as a cleaner alternative
to coal, a lot of it is just sitting in a landfill somewhere or waiting to be burned,” reports Koh.
To tackle this, Nextevo has devised a vertically integrated supply chain where partnering pineapple producers such as Siam Agro-Food Industry will be in charge of buying and collecting waste from the farmers and delivering them to the textile factories. Koh hopes to impact over 5,000 farmers by 2025 by supplementing their income by up to 30%. “Many of them are living below the poverty line so I think the extra pocket money incentivises them to not burn or dump. This positive social impact ultimately creates environmental impact and assures sustainability in the long run,” he shares.
To empower partnering textile OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), Koh is investing heavily to acquire better decorticating machines that can improve the yield from the pineapple fibres. The goal he says is to produce over 1,000 tonnes of
pineapple-based fabrics in two years.
Not limited to pineapple leaves, Nextevo will also be upcycling coconut husks to be turned into cocopeat mainly for horticulture and greenhouses, as well as coir fibres for home furnishings such as mats, cushions and mattresses. By looking to alternative fibres for fabric production, Koh tackles several environmental problems such as mitigating the exhaustive use of cotton, lowering carbon emissions and pollution (fashion accounts for roughly one-tenth of global carbon emissions), and preventing dumping and burning.
Koh is just as excited as his clients about the potential for agricultural waste to be the next evolution for apparel production. “This has gone beyond a passion project for me because there are a lot of people with me on this journey now and most of them are excited to participate in a long-term sustainability drive. I think there’s also a responsibility to make this happen
as everyone wants to support eco-conscious sustainable consumption,” he attests.
From automobiles to pineapples
Before Koh worked in the agriculture industry — most recently as president and CEO for Indonesian fruit supplier Great Giant Pineapple (GGP) — his career some 35 years ago started in the automobile industry where he worked for the likes of BMW, Borneo Motors, Volkswagen and General Motors. For a decade at General Motors, he took up various management positions, even moving to the Philippines and Indonesia, handling everything from distribution to manufacturing, sourcing and product development for brands like Opal and Chevrolet.
After a long and fruitful career in the car industry, he tried his hand at equipment handling of heavy machinery for Cargotech where he managed the entire Asia Pacific region for two years. Serendipitously during that time, he received a phone call from an Indonesian acquaintance asking him to head GGP, the world’s second-largest pineapple producer with the world’s largest single integrated facility (plantation, canning factory and processing plant) in one location spanning over 32,000ha.
“Agriculture? I knew nothing about agriculture and I didn’t even have the heart to tell them I never ate pineapples,” he laughs. “I deliberated for a long time because handling agriculture is a totally different animal and one I had no knowledge in. It took me another five months to make up my mind but by Nov 2009, I was ready to join them and moved back to Jakarta where I lived for another nine years. I had fun and learned a lot.”
During his time at GGP, Koh came to better understand the importance of sustainability — a time when few companies were concerned with the environment — and what more could be done to tackle climate change. GGP’s zero-waste policy sought to utilise and recycle all by-products resulting from its operations. For example, wastewater from pineapple and cassava production is
converted back into biogas and steam to power the plants. The result is cleaner energy with more money saved.
Handling waste was also important. Composting was practised on a small scale — too much of it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — so GPP found other ways to upcycle pineapple waste, including using it as a cattle feed, nutritional supplement, meat tenderiser and ingredient in beer.
One of the few companies that prioritise environmental impact, GGP also had Koh working on selling carbon credit — earned when you emit less greenhouse gases — to sell to other large corporations. “Tesla for example has so much carbon credit that it sells to big car companies. In theory, you have to buy carbon credit to reduce your carbon consumption,” he explains.
When trash is treasure
After close to a decade of learning the ins and outs of agriculture manufacturing, Koh was 58 and near-ready to retire, when some friends urged him to join the biomass business — turning discarded wood into palettes to be sold for fuel or energy. While dabbling in this, Koh received another unanticipated call from another industry friend from the Sambu Group — the world’s largest coconut producer — to find out what he could do with all their discarded coconut husks.
“I told him, ‘you’re asking me to become a karung guni (scrap dealer)!’” he jokes. After doing some research, Koh decided to utilise his vast knowledge in agricultural waste and turn it into a scalable business of his own with the start of his next evolution, Nextevo.
“I realised that there is an abundance of agricultural waste in Southeast Asia. There’s so much potential to do this but I wasn’t going to do coconut husks alone. I wanted to start with pineapple leaves because I had all the contacts at my fingertips,” says Koh.
He continues: “In my mind, running a business, even a sustainable one, is always about scalability and revenue. I think I have the opportunity to do this at a large enough scale that we can attract major fashion brands
and global players. Sustainability is no longer a trend, it’s a requirement by the consumer and governments, so this is the perfect time to enter the market.”
Koh says that his company is on target to start producing commercial quantities of the new product by Q1 2022. The year-long pilot has gone from product development, proofof-concept, and practical trial right through to initial production.
Currently, Nextevo has collaborated with homegrown sustainable fashion brand NOST to produce artisan-woven batik fabrics made from pineapple leaf fibre yarns (PALF) handcrafted by artisans based in
Indonesia. Now on display at the National Design Centre till Aug 15, the PALFCRAFT capsule breathes new life into agricultural waste and presents an exciting sustainable alternative to the fashion and textile industry, while preserving heritage craft.
Koh also hints that Nextevo might be working with a footwear manufacturer to supply PALF to make shoe uppers.
The future of waste
Working towards being a truly zero-waste company, Nextevo is currently also in the midst of developing further solutions to convert by-products during the production process into value-added solutions — finding a home for the ‘waste-of-thewaste’ — which Koh says is top secret at the moment.
What he’s willing to reveal for now is that plans are underway to kickstart coconut husk production with continued refinement of PALF blends and textile applications. Koh is also looking at the possibilities of refashioning other agricultural waste materials like sugar cane bagasse, durian and rice husks, and empty palm oil fruit bunches.
“We are committed to doing our part for People and Planet. We always look at the whole supply chain from end-to-end to make sure that environmental sustainability is always at the forefront of our businesses.”