Going, going, gone (kind of)! Allbids founder steps back from auction powerhouse

In 2002, Canberra’s government departments faced an ever-growing problem: what to do with all their aging IT equipment.

Enter Rob Evans.

Rob moved from his family home in Curtin to Sydney when he turned 17. At the time, he was working for an auction house in the western suburbs and “not having much fun”.

“I had a yearning to return to Canberra,” he says.

“And this was just when it was becoming massive for everyone to have a computer on their work desk, but no one had a strategy for how to dispose of them at the end of the two to three period, so I saw the opportunity.”

And so Allbids was born.

Two decades later and the company, based on Wiluna Street in Fyshwick, has become one of the largest auction houses in Australia, with separate platforms for antiques and cars, and more than 250,000 registered users.

It’s now time for its founder to hand over the business and enjoy a well-earned retirement by the beach in Cronulla.

“It’s time for me to step back,” Rob wrote in a LinkedIn post this week.

“I’m most proud of our contribution to Canberra as a national business that has employed so many great people whose careers have blossomed both within and beyond the company.

“In doing so, Allbids has become the most trusted large auction platform in Australia and our involvement with many charities across Canberra and NSW has helped raise in excess of $30 million.”

In the early days, Rob worked 60 to 80 hours a week, meeting with the heads of every government department in Canberra and promising to “turn your unwanted equipment into money.”

“We did an IT auction in Canberra every Thursday night, and we’d get a couple of hundred people in there buying laptops and computers, and it was great.”

Once word spread, members of the public started using Allbids, too, and it morphed into a local eBay.

“Watching how strong eBay was in those days, we thought we could do it better by making it localised, so we tried to get more general goods for online auctions,” Rob says.

This move also prevented the business from suffering as IT equipment increasingly became “the throwaway item it is now”.

Auctions of antique and collectible items followed, conducted by Evans Hastings Valuers and Auctioneers (EVHA).

Three years ago, he started the Carbids offshoot, which includes unique and classic car auctions, with help from car buff Ben Hastings. Now, about 400 cars go under the hammer in online auctions every month.

“I think that’s a figure any car dealer would be delighted with.”

But Rob now says everything has fallen into place for him to take a step back.

He’s moved back to Sydney to head up the Allbids office there but says the HQ will always remain in Canberra, where the vast majority of the company’s staff work. And this requires a CEO who is also based in Canberra.

“And Ben’s doing a fantastic job there,” he says.

“You can keep going and working 80 hours a week to try to make as much money as you can, but I’ve never been that person. I’m more about the lifestyle.

“I used to go down to Broulee every Thursday night and come back on Tuesday morning, and now in Cronulla, I’m even closer to the beach and my work.”

Rob has also since lost his parents, who played an integral part in the business’s early days, helping to collect the money at the end of each week’s auction.

“I’ve sort of lost my anchor points in Canberra, so everything has fallen into place for this to happen now.”

Ben Hastings will become CEO and Dandi Wisambudi COO of Allbids, while Rob and his brother Morgan Evans will remain board members.