Paddle8 Selling Art Auction Platform and Client List in Bankruptcy Proceedings

Art auction house Paddle8 is selling its intellectual property (IP), including an innovative proprietary platform credited with helping bring fine art sales online for the 21st Century, as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. The lot includes 31 domain names, platform architecture and bidding engine, customer/transaction database, 19 trademarks, three apps, newsletter subscribers and data, and social media accounts with more than 150,000 followers combined. Nevium Intellectual Property Consultants will serve as the proposed retained sales advisor to the trustee, Paddle8.

“This is a truly unique opportunity to acquire a turnkey art brand with a captive audience, or any of its valuable individual brand assets,” said Doug Bania, Nevium Intellectual Property Consultants Principal. “The customer list—chock full of prominent collectors from the art and business worlds—would be a tremendous asset on its own.”

Founded in 2011, Paddle8 combined the taste and quality of the traditional art auction industry with a modern ecommerce sensibility, with art, design, jewelry, watches, and collectibles at more accessible price points. In 2016, Paddle8 merged with Auctionata to create one of the top ten art auction houses in the world, outside of China, with 793,000 registered users and more than $150 million in joint annual sales.

Paddle8 has sold works by Jeff Koons, Julian Schnabel, and Damien Hirst, among others, but it is perhaps best known for the 2015 sale of the sole copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s “secret” album, “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which was not released to the public.