4 | Monday, June 2, 2014 | Northern Nevada Business Weekly
Driven auctioneer overcomes those who doubted her
By John Seelmeyer
[email protected]
Samantha Brockelsby was so nervous when
she started out as an auctioneer that she’d get
the giggles, or sometimes even pass out cold.
But her teachers at auctioneering school
would cut Brockelsby a little slack. After all,
she was all of 16 years old when she first stood
behind a podium on her path to becoming the
youngest woman in the country trained as an
auctioneer.
Two decades later, Brockelsby has gotten
over her nervousness, but she’s still driven by
the taunts of those who told her that a young
woman didn’t stand a chance of success as an
auctioneer.
“It’s terribly hard,” she says. “It’s definitely a
man’s world. But I’m tenacious, and I’m the
smartest dumb person you’ll ever meet.”
Every Friday night, she gathers the crowd
around her at Auctions Buy Sammy B on
South Rock Boulevard and methodically
begins working through the sale of about
1,200 lots consigned by sellers throughout the
region.
She’s often at work again early the next
morning — and the morning after that — with
COURTESY OF SAMANTHA BROCKELSBY
Once terrified to take the stage, auctioneer Samantha Brockelsby loves the spotlight
when she calls for bids.
estate-sale auctions or an auction ordered by a
bankruptcy court.
With four auctioneers on call, and a support
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staff of seven, Auctions Buy Sammy B sometimes handles as many as eight big sales a
week, including a monthly auction in Carson
City.
“I’m the conductor of the orchestra,” says
Bockelsby.
The conductor of several orchestras, in fact.
She also owns a U-Haul operation in
Sparks, a couple of car lots, holds a real estate
license and works as a property manager. And
she has a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old who are
growing up in the auction house.
The auction business by itself is growing fast
— tripling in the past years by about any measure — and Brockelsby is widening its reach.
Buyers throughout the world now place bids
at the company’s through the Web. It’s squaring off against national players in the auction
industry through auctions that focus on big
construction equipment. A packing and
shipping service the firm launched a month
ago already is handling 100 to 150 packages a
month.
Brockelsby showed the first signs of unrelenting drive in her teen years.
She grew up in tightly-knit family of carnival workers, completing her school work on
the road through correspondence courses and
early incarnations of Web-based instruction.
Graduating from high school at age 14,
Brockelsby joined her father and two brothers
to attend Western College of Auctioneering at
Billings, Mont.
A terrified flop the first few times she took
the stage, the young woman overcame her
fears and was voted one of the best in her class
at graduation.
The a-ha moment that turned a shy teen
into the star of the auction stage? “I found that
I like being the center of attention,” Brockelsby
says.
Her brothers and father didn’t pursue careers in auctioneering, but Brockelsby gained
enough experience in the business that she felt
confident in launching Auctions Buy Sammy
B seven years ago.
Competitors pounded her, filing complaints
with state regulators whenever Brockelsby
moved into a new area of business.
“They made me stronger,” she says. “I know
I need to do it right the first time.”
At the same time that she carves a path
through a highly competitive marketplace,
Brockelsby has needed to shift the focus of her
business to reflect the changing tastes of a new
generation of consumers.
A big shift: Unlike previous generations who
accumulated collections of antiques, or coins,
or memorabilia, younger consumers aren’t
interested in collecting much of anything beyond Facebook friends.
Brockelsby relentlessly markets her auctions
to young consumers through focused use of
social media — she spends an hour a day on
the work — that extols the cost effectiveness of
furnishing a new home or a dorm room with
stuff purchased at auction.
That puts pressure on Auctions Buy Sammy B to have the right mix of merchandise
available at its Friday night public auctions,
and Brockelsby isn’t content to see what
consigners unload out of the back of their
pickup trucks each week.
Instead, she depends heavily on a team of
three buyers who scout garage sales, private
estate sales and other venues for in-demand
items.
They generate about 500 lots a week for
the Friday auctions and get paid quickly so
they can be out on the streets to buy more.
Brockelsby also has developed a reputation for extensive research that allows
her to sell merchandise that others don’t
want to touch — vehicles without titles, for
instance.
“I take on the nightmare clients,” she says.
But whether she is auctioning a pile of
33-rpm albums or a commercial property
that’s involved in a bankruptcy case, Brockelsby today far removed from the frightened
teen she who first got into the business.
“Now,” she says, “I look at the crowd as
family.”
Boy & Girls Club leases space
The new Link Piazzo Non-Profit Center
developed by Boys & Girls Club of Truckee
Meadows has filled as quickly as it opened.
The 6,000-square-foot office center,
developed on the second floor of the organization’s William N. Pennington Facility
on Foster Drive, is home to offices of Big
Brothers Big Sisters of Northern Nevada
and Solace Tree, a grief center for children,
teens and adults.
The facility opened in mid-May.
Mike Wurm, chief professional officer of
the Boys & Girls Club, said the organization created the rental office space to allow
nonprofits that serve similar audiences to
share space with Boys & Girls Club.
NNBW staff