Auctionata, an online auction site that broadcasts live streams of sales of art, watches, jewelry and other luxury objects from studios in Berlin and New York, has won a prominent backer as it competes with others trying to sell more and more art via the web.
Groupe Arnault, the controlling shareholder of French luxury group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, is investing an undisclosed sum in the online art auction site, Auctionata said Tuesday. It joins several other investors in this latest round of funding, at $45 million, which takes the total amount raised from investors to $95.7 million since Auctionata was founded in 2012.
The investment is not the first time LVMH has been involved in the auction business.
In 1999, Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, bought a majority stake in Phillips, a British auction house, with hopes of turning it into a rival to Sotheby’s and Christie’s, but sold his stake a few years later after putting hundreds of millions of dollars into the business.
In 2013, Auctionata sold Egon Schiele’s “Reclining Woman” for $2.3 million at a streamed auction in Berlin. But such a high price is an exception. Most of Auctionata’s sales of art are in the $5,000 to $15,000 range.