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.”
The changes adopted by the Ganungs since purchasing Lang’s in 2005 have resulted in more money in everyone’s pockets – the consignors, the bidders, and the auction house.
By adding live Internet bidding to their business model, Lang’s has enabled many of its customers to save considerable sums they otherwise would have spent on traveling to and attending auctions. “Customers were telling us, ‘Hotels can cost $170 a night. When you add up all of the travel expenses, it’s $1,000 that we could have spent at the auction if we had bid online.’ Immediately we could see their point, as well as the added benefit to our consignors, who would end up pocketing more money in the long run.’
“It was amazing to us that our customers were so adamant about wanting to bid through the Internet,” Ganung continued. “Many of them are older rather than younger, and the misconception is that this group would not be computer users. That absolutely is not true.”
Ganung said that she and her staff noticed a small drop in live attendance with their initial use of eBay Live in November of 2005, “but at the next sale, there was a large drop, then more and more. When gas prices exploded, the live audience was almost nonexistent. The difference with and without the Internet was just amazing. We went from having hundreds of [in-house] buyers to having over 300,000 hits online over the course of a two-day auction.”
The changeover from printed to virtual catalogs will be equivalent to finding a new, untapped revenue stream, Ganung said. “Our catalogs are huge – some nearly 400 pages – and they’re very expensive to produce and ship. They had gotten so big, we were having problems with the binding keeping them together. We were having to run the pictures smaller and cut down on the size of the descriptions, neither of which we wanted to do. And Fed Exing a catalog from New York to, say, San Francisco was costing $106! We couldn’t foot the bill, and we certainly didn’t want our customers to have to deal with that sort of expense.”
The shift from those who previously would have ordered catalogs to now viewing them online was remarkable, Ganung said. “We went from selling thousands of catalogs to just a few hundred. Everyone told us the same thing: ‘When you put it on the computer, it’s easier and cheaper for me.’ Our customers have been clear about what they want – an electronic, downloadable catalog; live online bidding, and e-mailed prices realized.”
Ganung said the savings generated from going totally green will trickle down to the consumer. “We’re dropping our Internet buyer’s premium and passing the savings on to buyers,” she said. “With eBay Live, the online buyer’s premium used to be 22½ percent. Starting with our Spring Auction, it’s going to drop to 18 percent. These are tough times, and if we’re to bring in the buyers for our consignors, this is the way to do it.”
The environmentally friendly changes are already under way as Lang’s prepares for its annual Spring Sale, to be held this year on April 17 and 18 at the Holiday Inn in Boxborough, Massachusetts. Debbie Ganung confirmed that LiveAuctioneers will provide the sale’s real-time Internet bidding component. A “cash-and-carry” Discovery auction [on-premises live bidding only] will precede the main sale, on Thursday, April 16 at the same location.
“You will not find a larger supporter of LiveAuctioneers than Lang’s,” said Ganung. “We were one of the companies affected during the big eBay crash. EBay was of no help to us whatsoever. There was no customer service representative to call because there was no customer service representative, period. The only place we could call and actually reach a person was LiveAuctioneers. They were on the phone taking terrible grief from us over something they had nothing to do with. They even apologized for things that were eBay’s fault. LiveAuctioneers has been with us through good times or bad. In my opinion, if anyone goes anywhere else but LiveAuctioneers, they’re making a mistake.”
Lang’s conducts two major cataloged auctions per year, in April and November. Typically, the sales include more than 2,000 lots each. The company welcomes enquiries regarding consignment of quality antique or vintage sporting items.
To contact Debbie or John Ganung, call 315-841-4623 or e-mail LangsAuction@aol.com.
Click here to view Lang’s Sporting Collectables’ Nov. 7, 2008 catalog; click here to view the Nov. 8, 2008 sale.
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