especially for higher value lots, sold in live auction, people want to see the works in the flesh. so, for higher value, still live auction predominately. but in every auction room, we have seen a move towards more online sales. the most impressive probably is in asia. why? because the effects of covid were longer for instance, in shanghai, we have discontinued our sales. probably in asia, the pivoting towards online has been stronger. people are returning to cities, so what are you doing to take advantage of that, to embrace the return? we are opening our galleries before auctions. we have a few days where we are open free of charge for anyone to come and visit us. we are trying to engage with new generations of collectors and people. in london and new york we have christie s late. once a ,month we are opening until late in the evening and we develop there exhibitions, shows, talks
with showrooms in ten and boy, the pandemic was one of the company s toughest challenges in its 257 year history. i popped into its london headquarters to catch up with its big boss. a real pleasure having you on my show. thank you for your time. we have been looking at the impact the pandemic has had on the big cities around the world. you have offices in some of the larger cities on the planet. i m wondering, guillaume, how did you pivot christie s during what was a horrible time? that s a great question and thank you, aaron, for having me today. 2020 was a tough year with the covid and we closed our offices. we needed a few months to pivot to online auctions and the rebound was really impressive at the end of 2020 and at the end of 2021. so, it took us a few months to change and modernise our business model, to accelerate our investment in digital. 2021 was a record year. 2022 was an even better year.
julian, before covid you had big global expansion plans. how did you have to change those? well, covid put a stop on everything for a great many of us but now we are opening a second and third itsu in paris, france. we re opening, hopefully about to start building in brussels, belgium, a second itsu. and we are talking of planning to open in germany and other countries in europe, so we are still going well. we are very fortunate. what about north america? north america was a classic. situation in the sense we had a landlord there who would not let us off any rent for two years. new york landlords are famously very demanding, so after two years of paying full rent, we gave up the keys, tragically, sadly, but we will go back into north america when the time is right. but no, covid destroyed that.
is pretty much opening up but during all of those lockdowns, when it had that zero covid mentality policy, that must have been a big impact on your business. yes, of course. i mean, in shanghai, for instance, which is very important in terms of image for us and for recruiting the sales. 0f of course, it was a loss from this point of view. but the online sales and our ability to sell from hong kong as well, where there are a lot of chinese buying there too that has helped us to overcome the situation. the chinese are back buying? yes, i was there in november. it is possible now to travel more usually in asia, especially hong kong, the main hub for auctions and the art world in asia. we are hoping this spring that we will see an even bigger opening of the region and yes, we are counting on a rebound
i think people want to get together to socialise. the draw of cities actually gets bigger in the era of hybrid working. if people don t have to go to the city centre so much for work, they are more likely to come in to socialise. i think the great goal for cities, instead of having a central business districts, we need central socialisation districts. mixed use developments that everyone can enjoy. on that note, dr megan walters, a real pleasure having you with us. thank you for your time. i ll talk to you soon. thank you. just before the pandemic locked the world s cities down, my next guest was talking about opening 100 new restaurants around the world and he knows how to do it as well. his first chain of restaurants, pret a manger, redefined lunch for office workers in mega cities across the planet. his next venture, the asian inspired restaurant itsu, it s opened across the uk and it has a small footprint in europe. its new york restaurant closed during covid. so how has the curren