Leland Little, the North Carolina-based auction house specializing in the sale of fine high-end collectible objects, has just launched its second sale—the New Year Estate Auction—supported by an integration with Arta. For over 20 years, Leland Little has made continual enhancements in technology that enable buyers to seamlessly connect with exceptional collections of fine art, rare wine, fine jewelry, and modernism. Building on this track record, the auction house tapped Arta to support a streamlined checkout process in which estimated shipping costs are transparently shared at the time of bidding and shipping costs are included in a single transaction for the winning collector.
Streamlining the checkout flow for collectors
Through a custom API integration, the Leland Little team built out Arta's booking product to display all available shipping options across Parcel, Select, and Premium service tiers at checkout. Collectors can choose the shipping option they prefer based on price, service level, and speed of delivery. All costs are inclusive of Arta Transit Insurance, so collectors can rest easy that their shipments are protected while in transit. If a shipment does not return an instant quote, the collector is notified at checkout that shipping costs are pending and they will be contacted as soon as they are available. Once Arta has sourced a custom quote for the shipment, the buyer is notified and can review available shipping options and check out for their lot.
In both instances, collectors pay for their lot and shipping in a single transaction. Once the shipment is booked, collectors are kept up to date on shipment status and notified with updates via Arta Emails. Automating this entire process and eliminating the need for post-sale shipping coordination will now save the Leland Little team endless time and allow them to maximize internal resources.
Moving old inventory and reducing storage costs
Requiring that collectors book and pay for shipping at the same time they purchase their lot was intentional, as it helps to address another pain point for the auction house. Previously, shipping was coordinated post-sale and could often take weeks or even months to finalize. This meant that the lots were being stored by the auction house for an extended period of time, necessitating employee time and financial resources. The Arta integration ensures that lots are shipped to collectors in a timely manner, reducing the overhead associated with storage.
Getting to market quickly by maximizing technical resources
Leland Little’s team was extremely focused on getting to market quickly and effectively, and thus chose to build a custom API integration for some UIs and leverage our hosted solutions for others. They customized the most important piece of the customer experience, the booking and payments flow, while utilizing the Arta Estimates widget for pre-sale quotes and Arta Emails for post-sale tracking and notifications. This hybrid integration model allowed their team to integrate Arta—in addition to other ecommerce tools—in just 10 weeks.
“Leland Little continually strives for excellence in all aspects of our business. It became clear that we needed to provide our customers with a custom tailored, seamless shipping experience when purchasing objects from our gallery. Arta has provided this service for our clients – from white glove to parcel, express service to standard shipping – our customers can customize the service level of any category of object, from a marble sculpture to a singular gemstone.” - Leland Little, President, Leland Little Auctions
To view incredible fine art, rare wine, and fine jewelry for sale, visit lelandlittle.com.
