Our Legacy
Heritage Global Partners (“HGP”) brings a proud and storied heritage to our industry. Its principal managing partners, Ross and Kirk Dove, are proud to embrace their third generation asset advisory and auction legacy.
It all started in 1937, when their grandfather, Harry Ross, decided to make a go of it on his own and open Ross Mercantile Company in a small warehouse in San Francisco to service the local clientele. A former boxer, he worked hard and built a solid reputation in the City by the Bay. Fifteen years later, he was joined by his son-in law, World War Two veteran, Millard Dove. Together they built a very successful and well respected regional firm. Both Harry and Millard were renowned for doing business with a handshake that you could trust and a promise to always treat the customer with kindness, respect, and above all, dignity.
In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, grandsons Ross and Kirk Dove proudly took their place in the family business. Together they expanded the firm into Dove Brothers, which became the world’s most innovative and respected industrial asset advisor and auctioneer. During their tenure at Dove Brothers they built acceptance of the auction industry by the world’s largest companies, Forbes Magazine’s Global 2000, and eventually conducted events for most of these global corporations. The techniques and strategies they developed were unique to the industry and far ahead of their time.
Their early pioneering of asset management and cross border marketing has seen countless efforts at duplication over the decades that followed. As early adopters of the Internet, in 1999 they re-branded the business as DoveBid. Together they raised over $150 million dollars in venture capital from Silicon Valley’s preeminent firms. The innovation of DoveBid and its pioneering spirit led to many of today’s industry standards, including online auctions, webcast auctions, email campaigns, SEO, and virtual auction marketing, among other countless developments. In 2008, the firm was acquired by GoIndustry and the website rebranded as GoIndustry-DoveBid (Go-Dove). The firm retained both Doves as global presidents through September, 2009.
In October 2009, Kirk and Ross Dove left Go-Dove, and the family legacy was re-launched as Heritage Global Partners, with the goal of bringing world leading best practices, technology, strategy, execution and results to the marketplace. Today, HGP is one of the world’s largest industrial auction companies, and well respected by buyers, sellers and auctioneers round the world. HGP is a wholly owned subsidiary of Heritage Global Inc. (NASDAQ:HGBL).
