The Art of the Deal
http://www.modernluxury.com/cs/articles/the-art-of-the-deal
Taking a quick-paced tour through her Lake Street offices, it’s easy to grow a little jealous of Leslie Hindman. “This is our main exhibition space,” says the iconic auction house owner, gesturing across an impossibly high-ceilinged showroom packed with 19th-century oil paintings, Venetian urns, gilded French clocks, Edwardian bureaus and every other kind of antique imaginable. Few people on earth, it’s clear, spend as much time surrounded with beautiful “stuff”—“it’s a technical term,” she jokes—as Hindman and her 60-plus staff.
For Hindman, though, what’s long been a rewarding business has recently enjoyed a quantum leap of success: After 30 years of operating in Chicago, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers has, in the past two years, opened offices in Naples, Milwaukee and Palm Beach, and plans to open locations in New Orleans and Denver in the next three months. Business is booming.
Her secret? Long the largest auction house in the Midwest, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers is currently enjoying a substantial two-pronged push: An Internet-generated, off-the-rails global market for beautiful things, coupled with (thanks to the troubled economy) an increased need for cash from sellers as well as investors looking for dry ground.
“When I started, people thought that if you had a major painting it needed to be sold in New York or London,” says Hindman. Now, she says, it’s easy for an auction house of her prominence to put such a work on the global market.
On that point, the auction business has become so dominated by the Internet, one wonders why physical offices are even necessary. “People don’t take you seriously unless you have a physical presence,” says Hindman. So she’s choosing her locations with care, establishing herself in monied cities neglected by the big boys. “Naples is a very Midwestern-focused city and a good city, with a wonderful philharmonic and a sophisticated downtown,” she says. “We opened there and it was ridiculous how well it was going. Then we were getting so many calls from Palm Beach we thought we should open there, too.” Milwaukee also was a sleeping tiger—“an old city with a lot of money and sophisticated people and great institutions,” she says.
It’s such a success story, in such a buzzy business, that one wonders if the reality TV cameras can be far behind. “The shows they’re doing now don’t interest me,” says Hindman, who previously had two shows on HGTV. “When I was on, I loved it. It wasn’t boring, but people really learned something.” For Hindman, there’s clearly no need to sensationalize an already fascinating biz: “It’s interesting and fun, and I love it,” she says.