Catalog Auction runs a live, first-come-first-served sale right inside a digital catalog. Each cellar locker is a single, one-of-a-kind unit. The first signed-in reader to claim a locker holds it — everyone else sees it sold the instant it's gone.
Selling a handful of private cellar lockers is a small event — but doing it properly means an online store, a payment flow, inventory that can't oversell, logins, and an admin tool to track who bought what. Standing all that up for a single release is far more cost, time, and IT overhead than the occasion is worth. So clubs and restaurants fall back on emails, spreadsheets, and call-ins — and the release gets messy.
A full storefront, checkout, and inventory system is a heavy, costly project — hard to justify for one release of a dozen lockers.
Without a system, orders come by email and phone. Two members think they got the same locker, and sorting out who was first is awkward and risks the relationship.
Spreadsheets go stale and payments live in someone's inbox. There's no single, auditable record of what sold, to whom, and for how much.
Catalog Auction gives a club or restaurant the full selling and management stack for a release, without building or running an ecommerce site. It starts with your professionally designed PDF catalog: load it, open the sale, and you're live in minutes — nothing to commission, nothing to wait on. You get the admin side too — live inventory, a record of every claim and buyer, and a clean close-out when the event ends.
No storefront, servers, or integrations to commission — and no project timeline. Publish the catalog, flip the sale on, and you're taking claims minutes later.
Members claim lockers in-page; staff get live inventory, a verified buyer for every claim, and a single auditable record of the whole sale.
Run it as a single event, or extend the same setup to long-term management — annual releases, renewals, and lease-expiry reclaims when a term ends.
Installing a new wine-locker room — or renovating an existing one — is a real capital outlay. This pre-sale model turns that project into a self-funding one. Open the claim event before a single locker is built: members reserve and pay up front, and that committed revenue covers the installation or renovation. You go to the contractor with demand already proven and the budget already in hand.
Pre-sell the lockers in a planned room to gauge real demand and collect deposits before breaking ground — the fit-out funds itself.
Reopen an aging cellar with a fresh release. Re-sell existing lockers at today's rates to underwrite the upgrade without dipping into reserves.
Commitments come in before the spend goes out. Demand is proven and the project is funded by its own buyers — not the club's balance sheet.
Each cellar locker is a single storage unit — exactly one to claim. No price negotiation, no ranked bids. The locker is the product, and the first valid claim wins it outright.
A reader taps a locker in the catalog. The claim popup opens in place — a photo of the unit, its specs, and the price — on the page they're already on.
Signed in, the reader hits Claim this locker. A single server-authoritative race guard decides the winner the moment the request lands.
The winner holds the locker. For everyone else, live inventory polling flips it to sold out — the scarcity made visible.
Spin-up begins with your professionally designed PDF catalog. You load it, we turn it into a live, shoppable reader, and each locker on the page becomes claimable — no re-design, no rebuild. From there the claim flow is fair, fast, and entirely in-context.
Load the professionally designed PDF you already have. It becomes a live, shoppable reader as-is — your presentation and branding intact, with claimable lockers laid right over the page.
The product popup renders right inside the reader — the same dark-theme, brand-red UI the shopper is already in. No redirect, no new tab.
A database UNIQUE (pub_id, sku) constraint is the race guard. Exactly one claimant can win a locker — concurrency handled at the source of truth, so a double-claim is impossible.
Claims require a signed-in reader (email + one-time code), so every reservation ties back to a real, reachable person.
The reader polls inventory and flips claimed lockers to sold in near-real time, so the competitive state is always current on every screen.
Catalog Auction ships three server-authoritative subtypes. Wine Locker uses FCFS; the other two are ready when a different competitive model fits.
| Subtype | Winner determination | Reader action | |
|---|---|---|---|
FCFS — first claim winsfcfs |
First logged-in claimant reserves the unit. | Claim this locker. | Wine Locker |
Bid — high bidder winshighbid |
Highest live amount per SKU, recomputed on each poll. | Place a bid. | Also available |
Preferencepreference |
Ranked 1–3 "My Bids" routed to staff by email. | Rank up to 3 items. | Also available |
Wine Locker is made for venues that release a limited set of named, members-only cellar lockers to a waiting, well-heeled audience — where the release is an event and fairness is a point of honor.
Country, yacht, city, and members' clubs offering private cellar lockers as a prized perk. A live first-claim-wins release lets every member compete fairly for a unit — no waitlist disputes, no "who asked first," every claim tied to a verified member.
Fine-dining rooms and wine bars with a private cellar, releasing a handful of personal lockers to regulars and VIPs. Turn a scarce, high-touch offering into a branded, self-serve claim event that runs itself and protects the guest experience.
The live demo runs the real reader UI — the claim popup and cart render exactly as in production. It's front-end only: nothing is purchased, nothing is recorded, no sign-in required.
