“Salome,” Robert Henri, 1909. Oil on canvas from the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.

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A New British Antiques Web Site Wants Your Business

Calling all spenders: the antiques marketplace on the Internet wants you. This is premise of a new site, Antique Street (www.antiquestreet.co.uk), which will launch on the World Wide Web in October.

Antique Street, B2B2C antiques portal and trading community, has seen an infusion of cash from Cube8, a new media and technology incubator, which has taken a 60 percent stake in the future of the company. The investment will allow the site to provide services for antiques shops hoping to gain a presence on the Web. All shops will be grouped on the site in a sort of “mini” antiques mall configuration, making it easier for those hoping to further shop the collectibles market until they drop.

What makes this site different from the rest of the Web’s burgeoning antiques industry is that it allows dealers to have the option to use a limited service for free, enabling antiquestreet.com rapid growth potential in the relatively untapped sector of the luxury goods market.

The company will be under the direction of Jane Brown, who has more than a dozen years of antiques experience from positions with Sotheby’s and Bonhams Auctioneers in London. She has also acted as a consultant for live auctions and valuation services on the Internet.

“Antiques dealers have been slow to discover the benefits of exposure to the buying public on the Internet. By getting more dealers online we can increase their exposure to a wider customer base while making the buyers’ search for antiques easier,” she says.

Antique Street was established in April with its headquarters in London, the center of the British Art and Antiques market.