When it comes to buying home goods on the internet, reality can bite. You might want that Italian secretaire slathered in tortoiseshell and 22-karat gold, but your checking account is deficient by $1 million. That Staffordshire spaniel figurine? The shipping costs more than the dog.
Everything but the HouseEBTH for shortis here to save the day. This Cincinnati firm has created a unique concept: online estate sales with price points that attract mere mortals and big spenders, alike. Each sale at EBTH.com lasts seven days and whatever the itemfurniture, jewelry, art, coins, carsthe bidding starts at one dollar.
Within the artfully curated sales, EBTH's swoon-worthy brands have included Cartier, Hermès, and Louis Vuitton. Various style periods have been featured, including Mid-Century Modern, Victorian, Art Deco and more. Additionally, modern items have included those from KitchenAid, Crate and Barrel, and Whirlpool. You could theoretically buy a Cartier watch and a KitchenAid mixer from the same estate sale.
Among the more interesting items sold: a silkscreen by Andy Warhol, a 1969 Corvette Stingray, a signed Madoura pottery vessel by Pablo Picasso, and a Charles and Ray Eames 670 and 671 lounge chair and ottoman. Nashville has recently attracted an EBTH operations team, managed by Brittney Forrister, seeking estate sale gems.
'There is a high-profile network here with the artists and singers and songwriters,” Forrister says. 'So the eclecticism of Nashville works really well with what we do. You just find interesting things.”
To wit: in June country music icon Tanya Tucker concluded an online auction of costumes to benefit Sweet Relief Musicians Fund.
On the procurement side, EBTH employees work with a psychologist to learn how to sensitively handle estate sales after a death or when a client is downsizing. Jacquie Denny, one of the firm's co-founders, says that the methodology of EBTH helps sellers feel excited about letting go of belongings rather than dreading the process.
'For our clients, when they see how excited someone is to own an item, it makes it so much easier,” Denny says. 'It's a person connecting with a person. They're getting a fair market price and they are getting the value sense that someone else is going to love this as much as they did. I think that's what's unique about our model: for the buyer and seller, it's a proposition that makes both feel that this is a cool process to be involved in.”
