RM Sotheby's is a car auction company that has traditionally sold cars at live auctions.But the company has found that buyers are still willing to purchase six- and seven-figures cars they've never seen in person.Picture a live car auction. What do you see? A tent or showroom, filled with chairs, and excited people milling about, looking at the cool cars for sale. But thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, this likely won't be a common sight for a very long time.
"Last year, we had started a push to digital auctions and were trying to learn and experiment with different things and different platforms," RM Sotheby's President Kenneth Ahn told Business Insider. "So we were able to go from completely physical [sales] to completely online [sales] in a matter of hours.""If we weren't going to do live events, we'd have to go online to continue our business," Ahn said.
That $5,000 difference showed that buyers were still buying, despite a lack of in-person events and only having a bunch of photos to go by.