‘Our viewing days are a relaxed day out’

Time flies. Our sale on July 2 will be the fourth at our ‘new’ saleroom in Old Goole and we’ve been steadily building on our classic bike sales. The last sale comprised 95 motorcycle lots – and we’ll be aiming to offer 70-plus at this one. And we’ve tried to make it as easy as possible for owners to sell at auction by tweaking the way we operate. Flexibility is the key, I think.

So, with that in mind, we keep the catalogue open as long as possible, closing it around a week before the sale. That gives people more time to consign their bikes and means we can boost the catalogue with late entries. But we’ve made a number of other innovations to the way we work, too.

One that has worked well, is staging an open day for viewing on the Saturday a week before a sale (all our bike sales are on Saturdays). We encourage people to come along on their own classic bikes and have a look round. Of course, all the lots are available for inspection, by appointment, but we also lay on a catering van, demonstrate some of the lots on a private road and car park area, and we can even arrange for potential buyers to have a brief test ride if the vendor is happy with that. The viewing days have become a popular and relaxed day out and they take some of the formality out of coming to view a lot.

I’m starting to see signs that our relaxed and informal approach is starting to pay dividends. Some larger auction houses aren’t really interested in lower-value lots, but we like to offer a cross-section of bikes, parts and memorabilia to suit all budgets. And we pride ourselves on being open, honest and easy to deal with.

We’ve also been getting back out and about to events and putting the Spicers name in front of a few more people. The Stafford show in April was a case in point. All the major auction houses were there, so it was important for us to be there too. It’s a great opportunity to showcase what we do – and to meet potential buyers and sellers face to face. It worked well for us this year and we’ve already secured £45,000-worth of consignments from being there.

As for the rest of the year, we’ll host our final motorcycle sale in October and I’m already working on securing a couple of interesting collections for that one. In the meantime, though, we’re looking forward to seeing both old friends and new faces at our July sale. Why not come along for a look? You might just find you enjoy the Spicers way of doing business...