Meet Garry Jones, CEO at B2B Marketplace Tech Leader: NovaFori

NovaFori is a B2B marketplace and auction technology provider with over ten years’ experience combining product management, business analysis, marketplace design, development, and data science. We are a UK based company and have a diverse team of over 80 employees who bring a level of unparalleled market expertise to our clients and services. We support clients from all over the world and across a broad range of industries, including fine arts and collectables, automotive, insurance, capital markets and agriculture.

As an industry-agnostic company, we are in a unique position to utilise market data, learnings, and other key findings from different markets to enhance our services and the performance of our other clients. This ensures that our product and technology is constantly evolving and gives our clients the competitive edge that is so crucial today.
 
 

 

How has the company and the market evolved during the pandemic?

 
The pandemic has rocked the global economy like never before. As a result of government restrictions, many businesses, almost overnight, were restricted from carrying out their daily services. This led to many companies having to overhaul how they operated fundamentally.

One of the significant reactions caused by the pandemic was the further acceleration of businesses and markets’ digital transformation. Old Analogue processes would need to become Digital processes, increasing global distribution and access, driving revenues and optimising costs.

According to a recent report by McKinsey, it was estimated that global digital transformation has accelerated by seven times because of the pandemic. This meant that markets and businesses that were sceptical of change were no longer able to ignore it.

This was highly apparent in traditional industries such as physical auction houses. Christie’s quickly realised it needed to invest in technology to improve their clients’ online bidding experience. Pre-pandemic, the Christie’s marketplace online was for lower value items (e.g. wine, clothing and handbags) with the higher value collectables being auctioned physically. Working closely with NovaFori, Christie’s has transformed its online presence, and now regularly auction high-value collectables such as antique jewellery, artwork and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) eg. Beeple, for values running well into the multi-millions, across our platform.
 

What can we hope to see from NovaFori in the next 12 months?

 
The future is undoubtedly exciting for NovaFori. For example, we recently entered into a partnership with Climate Impact X (CIX), a global carbon exchange and marketplace established by DBS Bank, Singapore Exchange, Standard Chartered and Temasek, to be the technology provider for the project.

With businesses, governments, and other stakeholders all striving to reach net-zero and ensure a transparent view of ESG credentials, projects such as CIX will only become more relevant and essential in the future.
 

What will the CIX platform deliver?

 
The platform will integrate NovaFori’s marketplace technology with transparent environmental impact, risk, and pricing data from market-leading partners in the carbon credit space. As a result, the marketplace will showcase verified, high-quality carbon reduction and prevention projects and deliver an impactful solution for the carbon credit market.
 

Any closing thoughts?

 
The very nature of how the world conducts business has undergone one of the most significant transformations on record in the past 18 months. With accelerated digital transformation and a heightened push on sustainability, we are focused on facilitating this revolution of how the world trades.