John Pye Auctions Business Assets department were appointed agents for the Phones4U Administration after initially supplying the Administrators, PwC, with a solid barometer of appraisal data from our unique case management/auction software platform, Assetline.

Assetline tracks instructions and captures auction data as a valuation and recovery management tool across all John Pye Auctions equating to millions of items of retail stock sold by auction into the secondary market.

Having been appointed exclusive agent status on the basis of our data supplied and our retail stock remarketing, management and auction credentials, within a 3 day period John Pye Auctions collected over 3,900 Phones4U Tote boxes containing sim cards, store retail vouchers, accessories and mobile phones. This stock holding equated to 40ft trailers and an additional 5 x 40ft trailers of brand new retail stock.

Stock, valued at £3.5m was relocated to our 11 acre West Midlands Auction Hub in Staffordshire, where we processed and data wiped stock for a series of online auctions, as well as effectively managing Retention of Title claims.

We maximised realisations by:

• Utilising our end user secondary market online auction model; processing/presenting stock on an individual lot-for-lot basis

• Undertaking international remarketing, with advertising gaining traction in the Far East and generating over 400,000 unique web hits from mainland China to our bidding website in one week

• Spreading volume across our auction sites in London, Staffordshire, Nottingham and Derby to avoid flooding regional markets

The project delivery was recognised by the insolvency market at the 2015 Insolvency & Rescue Awards as a key case study which helped John Pye Auctions secure Asset Valuer/Auctioneer of the Year at an award ceremony at Hilton Park Lane, London, in front of 800 insolvency, restructuring and turnaround practitioners and associates.