Business "undertakers" to auction off Sunset Bowl today

Another day, another business closing, another emotion-filled auction.

The James G. Murphy Co. will be there, as it has for 38 years.

It's there when businesses go bankrupt, when they sell off because they can't compete with cheaper imports, when the economy is tanking, when property is worth more for condos than the business on it.

This morning, it will be auctioning the entire contents of the Sunset Bowl in Ballard.

Tim Murphy, president of the Kenmore company started by his dad, James, knows the ritual.

"We're the undertakers," he said. "We're the last person they remember before they go out of business."

Last year, the Murphy Co. had $39 million worth of sales, making it the country's eighth-largest industrial auctioneer.

Today should be another good day.

"I always feel bad when it's a piece of history," said Murphy about the Sunset Bowl, built in 1956, according to county records.

But that's the reality of the auction business.

The Murphy Co. does about 110 auctions a year, mostly in the Pacific Northwest. Sometimes, it deals with wrenching circumstances.

Next week, the auctioneers will be in Spokane to sell off a wood-products company.

The owner committed suicide in February. The company's production manager committed suicide last October.

As housing construction fell, the company had run into a financial disaster when its main customer pulled its business, said Blair Reynolds, executive vice president and general counsel for AmericanWest Bank in Spokane.

The company owed $3.8 million to the bank, which will get the proceeds of the sale of a variety of woodworking machines and other equipment.

What's left of the business is the listing of its contents on www.murphyauction.com.

At some auctions, Murphy said, "We've had employees cry, knowing this is the end of the company, the last of it."

On Feb. 19, the company auctioned off the Vos Dairy in Arlington, family-owned since 1971.

Bud Vos, 61, who started the farm, said the family quit the dairy business at the end of 2006.

"Somebody got the harebrained idea of taking cow feed and putting it into fuel. It was because of ethanol. The price of milk stayed the same, but the cost of feed doubled," he said.

"Now," he lamented, "milk prices are up 30 percent like everything else, but who's got a crystal ball?"

The dairy had 400 cows. Vos was at the auction. He didn't consider not being there, to watch it all end.

"It's emotional, but you gotta be part of it," he said. "When your mother dies, you're there, too."

Now, he said, what he has to deal with is the silence.

"You're used to having cattle and tractors," Vos said. "It's dead quiet. We're not used to that."

The auction company sees directly how changes in technology affect businesses.

In January, it sold off the contents of Western Video, a production facility in Bellevue. It had been in business nearly 25 years, owned by Thomas and Bonnie Foti.

"We had well over a million dollars' worth of equipment," said the husband. "We used to spend $65,000 for a camera. We were digital, but it wasn't widescreen, and it wasn't high-definition."

Now, he said, somebody could buy a Macintosh system for $25,000 to $50,000 "and do everything we could do."

Murphy said an auction company is often the first to know when the economy is going south, and the first to know about impending doom for a business.

"Sawmills are usually the first to slow down," he said. "About a year ago, we started getting calls to do sawmills. We've done about eight of them."

Now, as home building declines, he said, "We notice we're getting more and more construction equipment."

An auction of construction equipment on March 22 was one of the bigger ones in recent memory, with 1,265 items sold, from jackhammers to backhoes.

Murphy can pull out auction leaflets from the company's file cabinets, or walk by framed leaflets on the office walls. Each leaflet tells a story of another business shutting down.

That's the Kent candle manufacturer, he says. That's the Vancouver sewing company, that's the Moses Lake brush manufacturer. ... They all could no longer compete with cheaper imports.

That's Boston Market, which in 1998 closed 56 restaurants in the Pacific Northwest.

That's freeinternet.com, which had 300 employees in Federal Way, and had signed up about 3.2 million customers for free Internet access. It went bankrupt in 2000, at the beginning of the dot-com bust.

Sometimes, companies call Murphy to gossip about competitors, saying they've heard they're going out of business.

Murphy picks up the phone and calls the company to see if the rumor is true, and if the company needs his services.

"I've had a few people tell me, 'I know who is spreading that rumor. We're never going out of business!' " he said.

But sometimes, Murphy said, the business owners acknowledge they're in trouble, telling him, "Better come talk to us."

So if you're in business, having Tim Murphy on hold might not be the best way to start to your day.

Because Murphy also can tell you something else.

"We've had a few people dream that a princess or prince will come and bail them out financially, and they can start again," he said. "It hasn't happened yet."

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com