Megan Mulrooney is the Business Development Manager at the London, U.K. based online valuations platform ValueMyStuff. Benefiting from high profile start-up exposure on Dragon’s Den in 2010, the platform recently started offering extended customer services. Accepting only 200,000 GBP funding to date, Megan (pictured with platform founder Patrick van der Vorst) tells us how ValueMyStuff has successfully set the lead as a p2p online marketplace for valuable objects.
The easiest way to explain ValueMyStuff is …
We provide online valuations of antiques, art, collectables – any object that might be of value – in 48 hours and at a low price that doesn’t compromise expertise. People take a smartphone picture of their object, upload the photographs to the website and with a click of a button their images are sent to our team of sixty experienced fine art, antiques and collectables specialists (all who have worked at Sotheby’s, Christie’s or other leading auction houses), and then receive a full valuation back within 48 hours. It’s that simple.
Describe the founder of ValueMyStuff and what fuelled him to start the platform.
Patrick van der Vorst, who was a President and Head of Department at Sotheby’s London for over 12 years, started ValueMyStuff in 2009 in order to make the art-identifying and valuing process as approachable and effortless as possible. Things took off in 2010 when ValueMyStuff appeared on Dragon’s Den, a TV program where entrepreneurs pitch to investors, and Patrick received a £100,000 investment from Deborah Meaden and Theo Paphitis. Now, we have more than 400,000 customers and have made more than 480,000 valuations to date.
In your opinion, what is the secret for success of ValueMyStuff?
ValueMyStuff is expertise for everyone. There are many reasons why people need a valuation- maybe they wish to sell an item at auction; or need an object valued for insurance, inheritance or tax reasons; or perhaps found an item in their attic and want to know what it is worth. The difficulty before was customers having access to qualified expertise that they could trust. ValueMyStuff gives people instant access to the expertise they need to realize the value of their objects.
Why is now a good time for ValueMyStuff?
Trading on the web has become so prevalent – increasing over the years since eBay started in 1995. But the problem with online trading platforms was (and still is) the lack of qualified expertise in the marketplace. ValueMyStuff’s offer of expertise ensures items trade at their fair price. After providing appraisals for three years we realized that the need to understand the value of their art or antiques was only the first step in the journey to sell or insure. Our customers not only sought our advice regarding the value of their objects but wanted to know the best place to sell, which conservator to use for restoration or even the most qualified art shipping company to transport. After rebranding last year, we added services to insure, auction, exhibit, transport, restore, and store people’s objects. This makes the platform a real one-stop-shop for anything people eventually want to do.
What’s been a challenge for ValueMyStuff?
We’re constantly working on getting community right – we have people who know a lot about art, antiques and collectables – and others that don’t. We can’t ever assume the mind-set of a customer and every day we are trying and doing things to educate and increase the value of community so that our website can act as an online research institution for art, antiques and collectables.
What are the first three things you do when you get into the office?
I look at the number of people who have signed up within the past day – there’s about 200 daily on average. And then I look at the number of people that have transacted versus the number that have not transacted. I’ll usually then reach out to those customers who have not yet purchased a valuation to receive feedback on their experience and find out why they chose to not transact – their feedback is valuable going forward so that as service providers we continue to understand and develop our website to fit the needs of our customers.
What advice can you share about building the right team?
My advice would be to recruit people who are experts in their particular field – SEO, design, marketing, online development – whatever it is. The trick and (magic!) is then to bring them together to create the best innovative technology platform possible. This has worked for us and we continue with 10 people in-house in the UK, a team of 70 experts worldwide, and strong third party IT and support services to deliver a platform that allows any one, from wherever they live, to get a valuation and then continue on to sell, store, ship or do whatever they want with their object.
What’s ahead for online marketplaces for valuable objects?
More and more galleries and art houses are going online – we are in the thick of it now – and ValueMyStuff has been the only one so far to make expert valuation easier and for people to sell peer-to-peer from their home. It’s definitely an exciting time to be trading on the web and we hope that we can only continue to make collaborative consumption on the web easier, safer and more transparent for all those involved.
