Lauritz.com declared bankrupt  

Oh my. This is not good for many reasons.

Just a couple of weeks ago they sold some Niels Vodder made Finn Juhl pieces for record breaking prices. I guess the seller will never see any money for it. 

Wow, this is surprising.  I know nothing about Lauritz and how they're structured, but being a prominent auction house always seemed to me like a license to print money.  Charging fees to both buyers and sellers on millions of dollars of merchandise.  How do you lose money doing that?

@mark737 Very good question. It certainly appears that way and I have been wondering too. Maybe the Danish press will cover the case and explain the background a bit more than they have done lately. But of course an auction house has staff and people are quite costly. They have premises, maybe they rented them. And as far as revenue is concerned they depend on sales. The more expensive the items are, the better. But I guess you can never predict sales, prices and incoming items which probably makes financial planning a bit hazardous. So I guess a crisis (of which we have seen some in the past) and subsequently a drop in sales will have impacts. Having said that, the press also mentioned bad management decisions. 

I see they are/were a public company on the Stockholm exchange ( LAUR-ST) . Historical price data shows share prices peaking in  June 2016  at 16.60 SEK but then falling steadily to under 1.00 by 2018.  Last price was .236 on July 10.  Recent company info says they had 123 employees and 12 auction houses.  That level of overhead would require a very large sales volume to sustain profitability.    

It's a pity, 1-2 years ago they sold their German business. A total of 3-4 auction houses. I had already thought at the time that things might not be running smoothly there.

I once sold something through Lauritz. A large Borge Mogensen set consisting of: 1 sofa, 3 armchairs and a coffee table.
Overall I was only moderately satisfied with the service. Among other things, I had to run after my money for a long time due to a bank error by Lauritz. Lauritz later admitted it was their fault. 

That was about 2 years ago. The last armchair only found its buyer a few months ago. Also, the sale price had only reached the minimum price. At the time, Lauritz gave the reason that container shipping had become much more expensive due to the pandemic crisis and the difficulties in China. As a result, retailers would only order moderate amounts. Or the buyers from overseas (e.g. Asia) stay away completely.

Also since the Ukraine war, retailer business in Europe has fallen sharply. All of this must have been a difficult time for Lauritz.

There are another half dozen auction houses in Denmark. But I don't know how they are doing. If anyone is interested, I could look them up.

@browkin Thanks for the info. I bought a table at Lauritz two years ago. Everything was fine. It must have been right in the middle of the pandemic and my feeling was, that it was a pretty good time for everybody in the furniture business. But things have changed since then as you mentioned. 

I would be interested in your info on the other auction houses.  

@mark737 Nice research. They had a large volume, no doubt about it. According to Danish media, Lauritz owes its customers DKK 50 million from sales in the past months. Of course, I don't know if they kept all the money or if the 50 million was only a part of the sales revenue. Either way, however, 50 million DKK is equivalent to 8 million Euros, which is a lot of money. Just not enough, it seems

I heard a lot positive feedback about: https://bruun-rasmussen.dk  

I think they are the next competitors from Lauritz. I would go to that address next time,

if I would need to use an auction house. 

Furthermore there are: 

Lauritz news: The bankrupt auction house has been bought by Auktionshuset.com a month ago and is now (kinda) active again. But - what a pitty - the old pictures seem to remain offline. 

@herringbone  Good news, possibly.  I just did a Google search using "site:Lauritz.com" and when I clicked on one of the image results it took me to a page at https://www.auktionshuset.com with the photos and auction info.  So it seems they have now linked all the old Lauritz info to their url. 

Oh, great! On should probably start to download some of the more important pictures, just in case. 😅