How auctions work on creativehub, step by step

Auctions are the newest thing you can run from a creativehub store. This is the long version of how they work: what you do as the artist, what your collectors see and do, how the close plays out, and how the money and the delivery are handled. If you want the short version, it is on the auctions page.

The shape of it

An auction on creativehub is a timed sale of your original works, run from your own store page, under your own brand. You can put up to twenty lots into one auction and give it a sale window of up to five days. Bidders do not need an account, only a card and an email address. When the clock runs out, the highest bid on each lot wins, the winner's card is charged, and we take care of the invoice, the delivery and the payout.

Our commission is 20% of the hammer price. Nothing is added on top for the buyer, and a lot that does not sell costs you nothing.

Part one: setting up an auction

1. Open Sell and choose Create auctions

In your seller app, go to Sell and pick Create auctions. If you cannot see it yet, message us and we will switch it on for you.

2. Add your lots

For each work you add a title and a description, the medium and the year, the dimensions and weight, a short note on condition, up to eight photographs and, if you like, a ten-second clip. You pick the hero image, the one that fronts the lot on the page.

Then the numbers. A low and a high estimate, which bidders see. A starting bid. And, if you want one, a reserve, which is the lowest price you will accept. Bidders never see the reserve. They only see whether it has been met.

3. Set the window and the currency

Up to five days, in pounds, euros or dollars. Lots close one minute apart in lot order, so the order you put them in is the order your collectors will experience the close. Put the piece you want as the finale last.

4. Design the page

The auction lives on your store, with the same design tools you use for a drop. Your logo, your colours, your artist profile and your FAQs. If you have connected your own domain, the auction sits on it. You can also put prints from your existing catalogue under the lots, so people who do not win, or do not bid, can still buy something. Print orders go through the normal checkout and our production as usual.

5. Decide who packs and who ships

You tell us where the lots ship from and who packs them: you, or a courier we book. There is more on this below, because it matters for how you get paid.

6. Preview, accept the terms, publish

You can preview the whole page privately before anyone sees it. To publish you accept two things: the consignment terms, which are your agreement with us, and the conditions of sale, which are the terms your buyers agree to when they bid. They are short. Read them.

Once published, the page shows a countdown to the opening, and anyone can press Follow this auction to leave an email address or a mobile number. That is your pre-sale list, and it starts growing before a single bid is placed.

7. Tell your audience

The countdown does a lot of the work, but it needs an audience pointed at it. Post the page when it goes live, again the day before bidding opens, again when bidding opens, and on the final day. Everyone on the pre-sale list is told automatically when bidding opens and when the close is near, so your job is to get them onto that list.

One thing to know before you publish: once bidding opens, the lots, the prices and the dates are fixed. The page design, your profile, your FAQs and the products under the lots can change at any time.

Part two: what your collector sees

Landing on the page

Your collector arrives the way they arrive at any drop page: from a link in your post, your story or your email. They see the lots, the estimates, the countdown and your story. There is no account to create and nothing to sign up for.

Following the auction

Anyone can follow an auction without bidding. They leave an email address, or a mobile number if they want WhatsApp alerts (text messages where WhatsApp is not available). Followers are told when bidding opens, when there is an hour left, when there are ten minutes left, and what the lots sold for. If they bid, they are also told the moment they are outbid, and when they have won.

Placing a bid

There are two ways to bid. Set as my maximum lets them enter a private ceiling, and the system bids on their behalf only as much as is needed to stay in front, in set increments. Bid now puts the price straight to that figure. At the next minimum there is just one button.

The first time someone bids, they go through a card step. A deposit of 20% of their maximum bid is held on the card, not charged, and the bid counts the moment the deposit is held. If they raise their maximum, the deposit rises with it. It is released when the lot closes unless they win, when it comes off their invoice. After that first step, raising a bid is a single click.

The deposit is there for one reason: every bid on your work comes from someone who has shown they can pay. You do not get phantom bidders, and you do not get a winner who disappears.

What bidders see of each other

Bidders appear as Bidder 1, Bidder 2 and so on. Everyone can see the current bid and the bid history. Nobody's maximum is ever shown, not to other bidders and not to you. The page also remembers nobody: a bidder is recognised only in the tab they bid from, and the link in their email brings them back. Nothing is left on a shared computer.

Being outbid

The outbid email goes out straight away, with a link that lands them back on the lot. From there, raising is one click. This is where most of the action in an auction comes from, and it is why the close is designed the way it is.

Part three: the close

Lots close one minute apart, in lot order. A bid in the last two minutes of a lot pushes its close back by two minutes, and again if needed, for up to an hour. So nobody wins by sneaking a bid in at the final second. The auction ends when the bidding ends.

When a lot closes, the highest maximum wins, provided the reserve has been met. The winner pays the price shown on screen, not their maximum. If two people set the same maximum, the one who set it first is in front.

Part four: the money

The winner pays automatically

As soon as a lot closes, the winner's card is charged the balance: the hammer price, plus delivery to the address they gave, plus any tax, less the deposit already held. Every other bidder's deposit is released. The buyer gets an invoice and you get a sold email telling you what to pack and where it is going.

If the card fails, the buyer gets a payment link and 48 hours to settle, with reminders along the way. Very large balances are paid by bank transfer instead of by card.

If a winner does not pay

After 48 hours the sale is cancelled, the buyer forfeits their deposit, and they are blocked from bidding again. The lot is then offered to the next highest bidder at the amount of their last bid, for 48 hours, on the same terms. They are under no obligation to accept. You keep the work throughout, and nothing ships until payment has cleared.

What you receive

The hammer price less our 20%, plus your share of the delivery charge, and a packing allowance if we booked a crate. There is no buyer's premium, so what the collector pays is what you see on the page plus their delivery and tax. Tax due on the sale is added to the buyer's invoice at checkout, as with any creativehub sale.

You are paid by bank transfer 35 days after delivery, which is the window in which the buyer can raise a problem (more on that below), and you get a statement for each auction.

Part five: delivery

The buyer pays for delivery. It is priced for their address from our rate card and charged with the balance at the close. Where the rate card cannot price a lot, an oversize piece or a courier job, we quote it by hand and the buyer pays it by link before the lot ships. Import duty into another country is the buyer's.

You pack the work within seven days of payment, and you photograph the front and the back before packing. Those photographs are your evidence if anything is ever disputed, so do not skip them. Then either you ship it yourself, in which case you receive the delivery charge less the transit insurance we arrange, or we book the carrier for you. Everything is tracked and insured. Very high-value or especially fragile lots always go by a fine-art courier that we arrange.

Part six: if something goes wrong

A buyer can report a problem from the link in their delivery email, within 14 days of delivery, with photographs. We compare their photographs with the ones you took before packing, decide each case ourselves, and tell both sides why. There are three kinds of outcome.

Not as described. We collect the work at no cost to the buyer, the buyer is refunded once it is back with you, and you are not paid for that lot.

Change of mind. Consumers in the UK and EU have a legal right to cancel within 14 days of delivery. They send the work back at their own cost, and once you confirm it is back as it left, the buyer is refunded. Business buyers and buyers elsewhere do not have this right: their sales are final.

Damaged or lost in transit. The buyer is refunded and you are paid in full, straight away. The transit insurance covers it. Keep the packaging.

Your payout is paused while a report is open and resumes on its original date if the claim is rejected. When you publish, you confirm that each work is your own, authentic, yours to sell and its first sale. Copyright stays with you.

The quick answers

What can I auction? Originals: paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, unique prints, the one-off creations you have made. First sale only.

How many lots, for how long? Up to twenty lots, a sale window of up to five days, in GBP, EUR or USD.

Do I have to set a reserve? No. If you do, bidders never see it, only whether it has been met.

What if a lot does not sell? It stays with you. No fee, no commission.

Can people bid before it opens? No. Until the opening time the page shows the lots and the countdown, and people can follow the auction to be told when bidding starts. From the moment a lot opens, Set as my maximum does the job an absentee bid used to do.

Can I change things once it is live? The design, your profile, your FAQs and the products under the lots, yes. The lots, the prices and the dates are fixed once bidding opens.

Where does the page live? On your creativehub store, on your own domain if you have connected one.

Who is the buyer buying from? You. We run the auction, take the payment and hold the money as your agent, and the invoice names you as the seller.

That is the whole thing. Setting one up takes minutes, and the auctions page has the short version if you want to send it to someone.