By Greg Smith
NEW YORK CITY – Antiques, art, design and luxury goods platform 1stDibs has offered dealers who sell on the website five 15-percent-off promotional codes to help sell during the month of April.
“We are funding a promotions program for the month of April in order to help our sellers during this challenging time,” a spokesperson told Antiques and The Arts Weekly. “Each dealer will get five unique promotion codes that they can offer to buyers to use during the month to close sales. Those promotions are 15 percent off any order (no minimum order size), with a cap of $400 (so on orders over $2,666, the buyer would only get $400 back).”
Like many other businesses in the industry, 1stDibs laid off 70 employees last week in an effort to shed 17 percent of its costs according to the spokesperson.
Though, as sales slow amid the crisis, galleries around the world struggle with monthly costs of business that do not decrease. Dealers had asked 1stDibs for a break in their monthly “rent” on the platform, which costs dealers $1,000 every month whether they make ten sales or none. They were offered the promotional codes instead.
“We believe the best investment we can make is in initiatives that help sellers close deals, such as this new promo code,” the spokesperson said. “Sellers pay a mixture of subscription fees and commission fees and our job is to make sure that we cover those costs for dealers by generating demand.”
The platform will continue to take its commission on all sales, that percentage varies from 15 to 5 percent based on the order price.
Some dealers say they are still making sales on the platform through the pandemic. Alternatively, they also report that items previously on hold by designers were passed on.
1stDibs indicated it will continue to market the inventory of its website at a cost of $2.4 million per month.
Edits 4/8: The original story reported that 1stDibs hopes to rehire the 70 people it has laid off. It has made no such comment. The story also reported 1stDibs’ commission percentage on sales was a flat 15 percent, though it is instead a sliding scale commission structure ranging from 15 to 5 percent.
