MAY 2026 I N S I D E R
Updates from John-Paul and Sarah Highfield’s One to Watch.
A summary of recent Executive changes
Updates from a range of functions at ATG, from Engineering to Customer Success
Kudos for ATG team members that have recently lived our values.
Updates from some of our recent events.
OnHand - volunteering at the tips of your fingers has arrived at ATG - sign up today.
Welcome to Edition 3 of the atgInsider. As you know, this will be my last note opening an ATG newsletter, as I am stepping down as CEO. Over my ten-year plus tenure at ATG, I have seen the organization grow and change more than I would have thought possible Naturally, I have been reflecting a lot on the journey, the highs and the lows, the challenges and the wins I’ll share a few memories on the all-hands call, but some of the highlights have to be:
Meeting the auctioneers on both the A&A and I&C side and realising that these were a truly unique breed of business person and that the personalities of the two divisions had some baseline characteristics that were the same but some huge differences as well
Many talks with Richard Lewis in the early days where we were looking for the one or two things we could do with the small budget we had for product.
Running an IPO process with Tom Hargreaves, with almost all the introductions to investors happening via Zoom calls in the early days
Becoming truly international with the acquisitions of Lotti, then Proxibid and then LiveAuctioneers in those first 5 years
Meeting the people in person behind the emails and zoom calls from the Covid period and realising how much more I enjoyed the time in face to face with people as I got a much better sense for them as human beings as well as a better sense for their jobs
Many more, but that’s it for now I believe that the next chapter for ATG will be filled with great opportunity and I look forward to watching to see where you all and the organization go next
I’m genuinely excited to be joining ATG at such an important moment in the Group’s journey What has stood out to me already is the passion, expertise, and commitment of the people across the business, and I’m looking forward to getting to know the teams much more closely over the coming weeks.
ATG has a strong strategy, great businesses, and significant opportunities ahead of us I’m excited about what we can achieve together as we continue to grow, support our customers, and build on the strengths that already exist across the Group
Most importantly, I’m looking forward to listening, learning, and meeting as many of you as possible - starting with the upcoming All Hands I’m thrilled to be part of the team and excited for what we can accomplish together I wanted to thank John-Paul for his leadership and his outstanding track record in creating the company we are today I am sure you will all join me in wishing him every success and happiness going forward
Each Newsletter will feature a lot that a member of our Exec team has their eye on
Executive: Sarah Highfield
Item: 1980s Pair Vintage Hivo Van Teal Mid Century Lucite Brass
Elegant Hanging Pendants
Marketplace: Chairish
Why has it caught your eye?
Outside of ATG I own a brunch restaurant ‘Toast’ and am currently remodelling the decor. I love mixing vintage and more modern pieces.
There has been a number of recent updates to our Executive team, as listed below:
Jeremy will be stepping into a global Chief Operating Officer (COO) role after leading the NA Commercial and Operations teams for the last 4 years The unification of global Commercial and Operations teams under one leader will allow for more streamlined decision-making, greater alignment, and collaboration. This will ultimately drive better outcomes and service for our many global clients.
Richard decided to step back from the day-to-day running of the European business and has transitioned into a part-time role as Chairman of Auctions This new role sees him play a key strategic role with the global, top 40-50 A&A auction houses and some I&C too This allows our top clients to have a dedicated channel where we can communicate and deliver on priorities
We recently welcomed Jennifer Bouchard as our Chief People Officer (CPO) based in our New York Office We decided to move the CPO role to the US to align with our largest employee base and the most complex jurisdiction we operate in Jenn will support the entire global workforce at ATG with her extensive background in people operations and employee experience
In March, we launched our first timed auction using Seller Portal and our new PXB auction and lot pages, with integrated registration and bidding This marked an important step in the PXB migration initiative
The auction, delivered in partnership with Zoom Classic Cars (ZCC), ran from March 23rd to April 8th and featured high-value classic car inventory It provided a strong real-world test of both seller workflows and the buyer experience
Results were very strong:
104 registered bidders (above benchmark)
454 total bids (in line with expectations)
$300K+ max bid value (strong buyer competition)
95% of lots received bids (broad engagement)
Importantly, the auction achieved its primary objective: validating the end-to-end seller and buyer experience. While no lots reached reserve, this was consistent with the seller’s previous two auctions. Encouragingly, bidding reached up to 76% of reserve prices, showing meaningful buyer intent in a high-value category where conversion is typically more challenging.
The auction ran smoothly throughout, with no significant buyer-side issues and strong bidding activity Feedback from the seller on the new Seller Portal experience was very positive
This milestone provides a strong foundation to continue enhancing the timed auction experience, enabling more seller migrations over FY26 as we expand functionality Going into early FY27, we will shift focus to delivering live auction functionality, unlocking a wider migration of sellers through FY27
New Seller Portal Page
New Auction Page
We’re excited to announce the launch of Priority SLAs for our top bidders on LiveAuctioneers and Proxibid The top 1% of bidders on LA and PXB bidders with over $100,000 in GMV in the last 12 months can now expect expedited response and resolution times so we can deliver faster, more reliable support where it matters most. By prioritizing support for our highest-value clients, we’re ensuring these critical users receive the speed and attention their impact demands, while continuing to support all customers with high-quality service.
The LiveAuctioneers app is responsible for 45% of LiveAuctioneers GMV and is heavily used by our Power Bidders Over the last quarter we have focused on tests in the LiveAuctioneers app to help our power bidders bid and win more Recently we ran a test to encourage them to enable push notifications so that they receive alerts to bid live, which drove a 2000% increase in notifications enabled, a 13% increase in bids placed, and a 20% increase in ALV over the control
We recently spent time interviewing our mobile app users to identify more areas of opportunity for testing in H2stay tuned!
Operations has launched a Center of Excellence (CoE) team focused on driving efficiency, automation, and stronger customer outcomes across the Ops organisation
In Q3, the CoE will focus on:
Using AI to deliver lightning fast responses to simple customer support requests Building apps and tools to automate manual tasks and streamline workflows
We expect this new org will be able to drive automation and improved customer outcomes across ops
PSA: Need help with a complex or sensitive seller situation?
The Seller Compliance team is here to support with policy interpretation, misrepresentation concerns, and grey area cases.
Just tag @na-compliance in any public channel.
Last month, we wrapped up our partnership with Warner Bros. Studios to promote Wuthering Heights, directed by Emerald Fennell and starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie In close collaboration with their team, we developed a suite of marketing assets across Chairish social channels, email, and homepage to build early awareness for the film In turn, Warner Bros amplified the partnership across their own social and marketing channels, expanding reach and introducing Chairish to a broader audience This project laid the foundation for future cross-promotions with Warner Bros Studios and we are already in talks with them about future upcoming projects that make sense for various ATG brands
The Paid Media team partnered with Measured earlier this year to run a holdout test on Pinterest, establishing a baseline Incremental ROAS (iROAS) of $2 01 A holdout test is where ads are deliberately withheld from a small, similar group of users so their results can be compared against those who saw ads, isolating the true incremental impact of advertising Using these insights, the team implemented targeted optimisations to unlock additional performance.
Key actions included reallocating spend toward a high performing shopping campaign and refreshing creative within the non shopping prospecting campaign to drive renewed audience engagement.
The results were compelling. Overall iROAS increased by 85% to $3.71, with non shopping prospecting campaign emerging as a major growth driver, delivering a 343% lift in iROAS.
Based on this success, the team is increasing investment in both shopping and non shopping prospecting campaigns, while improving retargeting efficiency by excluding lower average selling price (ASP) products to further improve return The team will reconnect with Measured in June to re test and confirm sustained incrementality gains
Check out the Holdout Test Results Below!
Google Lighthouse audits are now integrated automatically into continuous integration so performance/accessibility regressions are visible before merging The workflow runs against pull request (PR) preview environments, posts a scores table as a PR comment, and uploads full HTML reports as build artifacts Follow-up work raises the accessibility threshold back to ≥90 and expands coverage across high-value admin surfaces, aligning with platform non-functional requirements (NFR) and web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) expectations
This has had a considerable impact with continuous Lighthouse coverage on every PR with clear, actionable scorecards, and improved baseline accessibility targets across key pages
This bakes quality directly into development, reduces regressions, and accelerates feedback loops for engineers without slowing delivery
Spoof Queue monitoring is being re-implemented inside our new Admin Portal (admin-ui) as part of the broader Proxibid consolidation effort.
While Spoof Queue monitoring exists today, delivering it in Admin Portal establishes a modern home for Support Operations tools, reduces reliance on legacy Proxibid admin surfaces, and creates a consistent pattern for future fraud and compliance workflows in one place
This now consolidates the experience for Support Ops by implementing Spoof Queue monitoring in Admin Portal with an event driven ingestion and enrichment pipeline for timely review
Now this is rolled out, the Admin Portal is positioned as the central platform for Trust & Safety tooling and sets the pattern for subsequent fraud queue implementations as consolidation progresses
The Finance team successfully launched Phase One of HighRadius, a new global credit control and collections tool, in February This milestone supports more streamlined processes and an improved customer experience, enabled by the migration of LiveAuctioneers, Auction Mobility and Bidspotter com onto a single Global Finance System, Sage X3
HighRadius strengthens credit and collections through automated reminders, earlier identification of late payments and reduced manual effort, helping improve cash flow and reduce days sales outstanding It also increases efficiency, reduces errors and ensures consistent, compliant communication with customers Customers benefit from easier payment options and a simpler process for raising invoice disputes, supporting stronger relationships and improved transparency
Phase One, focused on collections for all Sage entities, is already delivering value through global oversight and intuitive dashboards. Phase Two, launching in May 2026, will introduce a customer payment portal for all entities except LiveAuctioneers, which will continue using BRASS. The team is already seeing strong early benefits and looks forward to further efficiencies in Phase Two.
While this initiative was led by the Finance team, it was truly a cross-department effort A sincere thank you goes to colleagues in Legal, Info Sec, IT, Data protection and Marketing for their collaboration and support in making this project a success
The engineering team delivered a new internal bidder management service that gives Seller Portal fullbidder lifecycle management (create, approve, decline, list) via a pluggable registry adapter architecture. Previously, bidder management lived in legacy tooling (GAP Toolbox / WavebidClassic), with no direct capability in Seller Portal.
This foundation unblocks major seller/admin workflows and positions us to extend bidder management across additional marketplace registries without rebuilding the core service.This means that the Seller Portal bidder management capability moved from none to full CRUD (create, read, update, delete) lifecycle, enabling additional SP2 epics on top of the shared service This establishes ATG’s first cross marketplace bidder management abstraction, overall promoting consistency and reuse across registries
Roberto Trasvina, Matt McHughes & Charles Snelgrove - took ownership of a legacy codebase with 40,000+ critical security issues and reduced it to 7,000 in two weeks
Melanie Magee - elevating our service quality while thoughtfully protecting our bottom line Key result- building an expedited training program for the buyer support team.
PXB migration team - successfully delivering on the first customer facing milestone
Chairish Seller Support team - improved ticket SLA compliance from 38% to 85% in last quarter.
Melanie Magee and Priyal Vaswani - led an overhaul of our Chairish post-delivery processes to improve resolution time and reduce refunds
Gladys Delfin - her team continues to set the bar for excellent support across ATG, routinely meeting >90% customer satisfaction and >90% of tickets meeting all SLAs
Darcy Manning - successfully closing out a number of important projects, including our insurance coverage, delivering significant cost savings for ATG
Peter Drake - investing in SQL linting and code quality standards, integrating SQLFluff into GitHub actions workflow, ensuring code quality checked are automated and consistent
Priscila Anhuci - instrumental in supporting the GAP office migration, helping safeguard around £4m in revenue across roughly 100 auctioneers Has shown strong leadership throughout this time of change, supporting the team and helping drive us toward our new org structure
Vova Zaretski & Yelena Szatmary - working to better automate Chairish Auctions and the movement of inventory from Chairish to LiveAuctioneers to increase sell-through and simplify manual workflows
Joanna Huang & Nicole Jaureguy - stepped up to audit the paid media campaigns for ESN and PXB Their work is already making a measurable impact by identifying opportunities to save the business money
Amanda Morse, Ale Katz, Meg Cass & Daniel Fernandez - this dream team embodies the kind of partnership we aspire to Not only has it led to stronger, more aligned outcomes for the business, it also proves that the way to win is leveraging our collective expertise in “art and science ”
Tiffany Dammann, Dan Pennington, Nate Ellis & Katie Hart - on their tenacity to reduce our auctioneer debt levels during March and for delivering improvements in our cashflow
Mark Baker - making the largest single contribution to the shared Ana context repository on the team, covering report templates, visualization guides, and API documentation
(CONT’D)
Hazel Jabbitt - working on the GAP Office sunsetting project , and playing a critical role in working with our new back-office partner on top of leading >25 Wavebid customer demos.
Pamono Logistics - staying ahead of frequently-changing tariff policies A special thank you to Tommaso Celeste for leading the design of “Customs Engine 2 0”
Natalie Christman – always raises her hand to lead projects and manages dozens of initiatives at once with a positive attitude and attention to detail
Adam Acker - sets the bar for Commitment through his leadership in stabilizing Proxibid, optimizing Dynatrace observability costs, and supporting teams through platform migrations, always stepping in where needed
Holly Smith - really stepping up, leading key HR initiatives in absence of a CPO as well as leading her team through the changes
Asif Khan - his work on supporting our ZenDesk platform He moved a number of initiatives to completion, providing coverage at a critical moment.
LA Support team - took on seller-facing tasks that previously had to be handled by engineering In the last quarter, they handled 73 tickets that would have required engineering help previously, with Christy Jordan leading the charge here.
LA Bidder Support team - reducing average first response times by 25% in the last 6 months and 80% in past year
Ben Smith - constantly exploring AI and frontend tooling, then turning that learning into shared systems that make the whole team better
Kelsey Anda - developing Lovable apps resulting in time savings of 10-15hrs/week!
Another great way to pass on recognition is via the atgPeople recognition tool, where you can send any global colleague a shout out (just click on Performance > Recognition).
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