When Bond Wolfe chief executive Gurpreet Bassi wants to rush a video out on social media in response to the latest stamp duty change, he need only make a dash upstairs to the studio at the firm’s head office on Colmore Row in Birmingham.
After buying a 50% stake in digital agency See You Social earlier this year, Bond Wolfe has rebranded the business as BW Media and moved the team of seven into its own office.
That switch from being a “client of” to becoming an “investor in” a business specialising in social media management and advertising serves as further evidence of how integral digital marketing has become to the auctions sector.
“I think we need to really be on the front foot,” says Bassi. “We had 30,000 people watching the last auction live, which was a record for us, and a lot of it has to do with the work our digital media group is doing in the background.”
Close to 3,500 people registered to bid for the 19 May auction, which raised £23.8m from 203 lots – a 93% success rate. Only around 10 lots were withdrawn prior.
The aim for BW Media, led by managing director Craig Upton, is to continue to grow its business with other clients, as well as helping to further increase Bond Wolfe’s footprint.
“Ultimately, my goal is to make us one of the most successful and recognised property brands in the UK,” Bassi says.
Acquisition strategy
The media investment is also part of a wider acquisition strategy to grow the Bond Wolfe property business, which was founded by Gurpreet’s uncle Paul Bassi in 1983 and covers agency as well as auctions and employs around 40 staff.
“There are a couple of businesses we are looking at hopefully acquiring and really becoming a multidisciplinary property company,” Bassi says.
He also hopes to attract more applicants from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, and more women applicants. “We’ve got quite a diverse staff base and I do feel a social responsibility there,” Bassi says. Whilst the accessibility of auctions attracts a diverse buyer base, he says that the corporate property world remains “quite closed off”. “I’m passionate about trying to change that,” Bassi says. He has experienced racism first-hand during his career and says he hopes the public conversations taking place now don’t simply “go away again” without real progress being made. “I’ve got white friends who have started up new businesses and been called entrepreneurial, but I’ve been called arrogant,” he says.
Meanwhile, he is busy preparing for the firm’s ninth live-streamed sale since the Covid-19 pandemic began. In fact, it has held more remote auctions than in-room sales as the pandemic began about a year after Bassi and Ian Tudor launched Bond Wolfe Auctions following their departure from SDL Property Auctions – then SDL Auctions Bigwood – at the end of 2018.
Bigwood had previously been bought by Bond Wolfe in 2007 before being sold on. Back to the present and four of Bond Wolfe Auctions’ live-streamed sales have raised in excess of £20m, with the current high achieved in March at £30m.
“I remember when we used to do £30m-£40m of sales in a year. This year, we’re at £80m with four sales to go.”
Key to this performance is an enviable list of public sector contracts secured in recent competitive tenders, but often underpinned by relationships built up over many years. The first big win for Bond Wolfe was with Birmingham City Council, for which it will offer more than £1m of commercial ground rent lots in its 21 July sale. The company has also been appointed by City of Wolverhampton Council, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, Walsall Council and West Midlands Police.
“It just gives our brand a lot more credibility, particularly when we go to public tenders,” Bassi says.
It also creates a pipeline of stock alongside its work for corporate clients, receivers and housing associations. Birmingham, for example, is using community purchase orders to bring vacant properties back into use.
Replicating the ballroom
The business has also benefited from the stamp duty holiday and has seen growing numbers of bidders based in London and the South East, attracted by the relative cheapness of lots in the Midlands and North as well as the opportunity to bid online. It has also seen growing numbers of female bidders and younger investors, as well as buyers in overseas markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore. The 3,000-4,000 people registering now compares with a good turnout of around 1,000 for a room auction held by the team.
Bidders are able to register for the auction as a whole – rather than for individual lots, as with most auction houses since the switch online. Bassi says this replicates the room more closely. Bond Wolfe may have missed out on some more granular data here on the level of interest in individual lots, but it seems to have paid off. “The whole auction is opened up and we’ve seen that as a real success story,” Bassi says.
Nevertheless, he can’t wait to get back to the room when it is safe to do so. “We’re trying to replicate the room anyway, so why wouldn’t you go back to the room and have the room live-streamed?” he asks. The hope is that 30,000 people will be watching online too.
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