When I visited Copenhagen in 2000, a traditional show-room style auction house named Lauritz Christensen was making its internet bid. "How quaint," I thought. "Poor little Danes, eBay is going to squash them like a bug."
Boy, was I wrong. It seems every time I check their site they've bought another Mom and Pop auction house and marched further across Scandinavia. One of the oldest auction houses in Denmark, Laurtiz is now also the biggest, and has expanded into Sweden, Norway and Germany.
I love everything about Laurtiz except their shipping costs (with the current exchange rates it's a flat fee of approximately $135. to the U.S.– choke). The site is easy to use, fast, and has an English language option. They post several good photos of each item. Now that eBay is so vast, the scope of Laurtiz feels manageable and more fun to browse. Plus, if you're ever overseas, you can preview the wares in the real, vs. the virtual, world.
Laurtiz says that they want to "eliminate all sense of snobbery and elitism from their auctions," and that their "ultimate goal is to establish a Lauritz.com branch in every country where one can find an IKEA store."
I can't wait until they open one in Paramus.
I checked it out - we are redoing our website soon and it's good to have other examples that work well. And I like Laurtiz's effort "to eliminate all sense of snobbery and elitism from their auctions"
Posted by: Tom Curran | Wednesday, January 30, 2008 at 07:11 AM