WATERVILLE, N.Y. (ACNI) – Lang’s Sporting Collectables, Inc., the world’s leading auctioneer of antique and vintage fishing tackle, is breaking from tradition and taking a completely “green” approach to its business methods going forward.
Lang’s co-owner Debbie Ganung told Auction Central News that the company will no longer be printing the lavishly illustrated hard-copy catalogs for which they are so well known. Instead, they will produce electronic catalogs exclusively, for CD, DVD or online viewing/downloading through Lang’s Web site (www.langsauction.com) and that of its Internet live-bidding facilitator LiveAuctioneers.com (www.liveauctioneers.com).
Taking it a step further, Lang’s will conserve even more paper and trees by e-mailing auction announcements to its customer list of 30,000 collectors as opposed to mailing out masses of postcards.
“There are several reasons why we made the decision to go paperless, but it started with our own customers urging us,” said Ganung. “We specialize in antique fishing tackle, which is collected by a predominantly male group, almost 100 percent of whom are fisherman. These men are staunch conservationists who donate to wildlife preserves and environmental groups. Some have even made arrangements in their wills to leave property to conservation causes. They had been asking us what we were doing to ‘go green.’ At first it was just a few people, but this last year, we had 20 times the requests from ecologically minded collectors to do something that was good for the environment.”
Ganung said she and her husband, John – co-owner of Lang’s – had also been encouraged by their staff of young, computer-savvy employees to give up their old-school, ink-on-paper methods in favor of Internet-based alternatives. “They had been pushing us in this direction for quite some time,” said Debbie Ganung. “They had been correct with the other suggestions they had made over the last few years, so we said we would trust their judgment and go this route.”