Energised, focused on 2023
STRAUSS & CO: SPOTLIGHT ON ART EDUCATION, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, CURATED SALES Buyer’s premium, seller’s commission have remained the lowest in the market.
The Strauss & Co team had a constructive start to 2023. Following our successful executive conference, the team emerged energised and focused on our goals for the year.
We have the privilege of building on the very solid results for 2022, a year in which we held 54 auction sessions, sold 6 381 items and generated sales of R354 million. The new year has kicked off with a bang and January has come and gone in a blur.
February is always a very important month for the Arts in Cape Town with the Investec Cape Town Art Fair drawing artists, galleries, art lovers and collectors from across the world to our shores.
The Strauss & Co team has created a very exciting programme for the month of February focusing on art education, business development and curated sales.
In an exciting development, we have moved into our new offices at Brickfield in trendy Woodstock. The building is well known to our regular clients and we received very positive feedback on the auctions held at the premises in the last 18 months.
Having our own exhibition space at our disposal, will enable us to contribute to the collateral events that make the Investec Cape Town Art Fair such an anticipated annual event.
The review held at our executive conference highlighted the need for us to make certain changes to our terms and conditions of business to reflect current market conditions and address new legislative requirements.
Since we opened in 2009, our buyer’s premium and seller’s commission have remained the lowest in the market. We intend to keep them as low as possible, but an adjustment is required to take into account the substantial increases in costs we have experienced since 2021.
In making the change, we considered market conditions and the overall desire to simplify and streamline our business processes. To this end, we have introduced a three-tier sliding scale.
In order to keep things simple, the buyer’s premium and seller’s commission will be the same across all categories (art, decorative arts, jewellery and wine) and types of auctions handled by Strauss & Co.
Following amendments to the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (Fica), we are obliged by law to implement the following: for all purchases over R100 000, Strauss & Co is required to submit to the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) a significant amount of details on the buyer; an adjustment to our systems to capture the required information to simplify and automate these submissions to the FIC.
Where buyer and seller are both VAT registered and an item is purchased containing traces of gold and traces thereof, there will be additional administrative requirements on both the supplier and recipient of these goods.
Load shedding and power outages are here to stay until further notice. The impact on our daily lives, on businesses, and on our country is enormous.
While Strauss & Co is set up with efficient generators that kick in within seconds allowing our live virtual auctions to proceed regardless, this may not be the case for all our clients in their private capacity.
In addition, Wi-Fi goes down during load shedding unless one is equipped with an inverter or uninterrupted power supply (UPS). It is extremely frustrating and upsetting to be impeded from pursuing a lot that you would love to own. We would like to remind our clients that we offer telephone bidding and encourage absentee/ commission bids.
At the end of last year, Vanessa
Phillips, founder, director, and head of the Decorative Arts Department (Furniture, Silver, Jewellery, Glass, Ceramics, Clocks and Watches) at Strauss & Co, retired.
But her association with Strauss & Co will, however, continue, as will her presence at important public events in 2023. The Decorative Arts items for our March flagship sale have already been consigned and catalogued and feature strong decorative arts and jewellery sessions, which we look forward to bringing to market.
We are in the process of refining the Decorative Arts sales calendar for the year and are currently engaged in a recruitment process to secure the necessary skills required.