Diversity leads HK auction to rosy future

Christie's fetched a total of 947 million U.S. dollars in its Hong Kong auctions in 2013, 30 percent up from last year. Its spokesperson told Xinhua they welcome positive and orderly competition, adding the company was confident in serving their customers well because of its long history, good reputation and global network.

As an auction house of smaller scale, Tiancheng has developed different characteristics and strategies. "We are more flexible," Managing Director Wang Jie said, "We hold auctions at our own showroom to reduce the cost. We put emphasis on building up our brand by printing sales catalogs in the form of a magazine for instance."

To gain its foothold in Hong Kong, Wang believed that it is important for a company to have its own most competitive products.

Besides their outstanding performance in jade and western jewelry sales, making 390 million HK dollars (about 50 million U.S. dollars) in 2013, Tiancheng was also the first auctioneer to feature modern ink painting in Hong Kong and managed to cultivate a new group of collectors.

As Wang sees it, many companies, other than Tiancheng, have already started to experiment with and promote new categories of auctioned items in a well-planned and step by step manner. Coins, stamps and Napoleon's handwritten letter were showcased in Bonhams ' latest autumn sale. Moreover, Hong Kong became one of the biggest wine auction centers in 2012 when a total of 1.2 billion HK dollars of (about 154 million U.S. dollars) deals went under the hammer.

"Some auction companies have tried new types of items for sale, Poly earlier launched an exclusive sale of Japanese erotic works, for instance," she said.

Alex Chang of Poly Auction said noted that Hong Kong has established an irreplaceable position in the auction of art works, not even by New York and London.

"Though Europe and the United States remain the center of artwork investment market in the world, Hong Kong, as a fast growing auction market, has already sprung up," Chang said, expressing the belief that Hong Kong's growing diversity would give further impetus to the future prosperity of its auction market. (1 U.S. dollar = 7.75 HK dollars)