2014 found us moving into a larger premises for our vintage shop. Nigel was travelling along the South Coast attending small, local auctions buying stock for our shop. On his way back to the Island he missed the ferry, which was a regular occurrence, resulting in another two hour wait for the next one. With this time on his hands Nigel came up with the idea of starting our own monthly, ‘live’ auction on the Isle of Wight. So, we hired a local hall and put the word out to as many people as we could. The early days proved to be a very steep learning curve and incredibly hard work but gradually we improved; the auctions were very popular and soon became a regular fixture and we increased to holding them on a fortnightly basis at different locations across the Island.
When the pandemic happened we obviously could not hold our live events, at this point we were attracting approx 150+ people to each auction, so we decided to try an online model. This was quite a challenge as neither of us were particularly technically minded, however, we persevered; once again it was a frustrating and stressful time, building a new business model and working out the things we didn’t know that we needed to know! Slowly, the business began to grow and although our customers missed the live auction events, which were always good fun, the online model proved very popular.
Jumping to 2024 we worked with a development team to improve our website, it was built with a clean look, a simple bidding process and with all the professional functionality we required. This new site enabled us to increase our auctions from one a week to three a week and the business grew even more. At this point it was still just Nigel and myself working in the business and this really helped us refine and develop all the skills needed to keep a busy business on track.
In 2025 the business went from strength to strength, with loyal, returning customers, a strong social media presence and many happy buyers and sellers. At the end of 2025 Nigel and I transferred the day to day running of Isle Of Wight Auctions allowing us to concentrate on 2026, which will bring even more exciting improvements to the website and enable us to support others to build their own, successful auction business.
Looking back, the journey from a missed ferry to a thriving online auction business was never about chasing growth for its own sake.
It was about responding to change, learning as we went and building systems that would support a growing business.
That lived experience is what now underpins My Auction House. Everything we’ve learned, from live halls to online platforms is there to help others build auction businesses that are practical, resilient and grounded in reality.