04.07.2023
It all started with a vision. We aspired to bring the immersive experience of a live auction to the digital world. But we could not find any compelling online auction solutions on the market – none of the solutions we saw could create the thrilling auction experience we aimed for. So we decided to build what we wanted ourselves, in a company with no software background so far.
That journey began in 2015 with a small team and an ambitious goal: our in-house start-up set out to create the best auction experience in the digital world.
After three years of hard work, and innovational strength, we successfully launched the auction platform aurena.at to the German-speaking market on the 4th of July 2018.
At the same time, we introduced our own Business Management Solution that digitised the entire workflow of an auction house, from cataloguing goods to international billing. In so doing, we managed to increase the throughput of auctions by a factor of 3, with no additional employee headcount.
The launch had an immediate impact on the bidding experience, and the business as a whole: in 2019, we became the market leader in Austria. 2022 was a record year, with almost 400,000 lots sold and more than 3 million bids placed.
Today, we are happy to celebrate five successful years of our auction platform aurena.at. It’s a fabulous achievement made possible by the whole AURENA team, which has since grown to more than 100 members, including our international digital unit AURENA Tech.
There are some big numbers we would like to share with you today: since our launch five years ago, we have welcomed 142,045 bidders from 57 countries on our platform, who have placed 9,975,334 bids in 6845 auctions. Altogether, 1,407,410 lots have been sold, among them some truly extraordinary examples such as the hunting lodge of Oscar winner Maximilian Schell, an entire football stadium complete with stands and television towers, and the equipment of Austria’s biggest Covid laboratory.
We are looking forward to the next five years of thrilling auction experiences and are going to continue our growth path in the European market together with our dedicated team. If you want to become part of the AURENA story, take a look at our current job opportunities.