 | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Nasdaq: REAL | |
| Industry | Recommerce |
| Founded | 2011 |
| Founder | Julie Wainwright |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
Key people | |
| Products | |
| Services | Consignment |
| Revenue |  $603 million (2022) [2] |
Number of employees | 3200 (2023) |
| Website | therealreal |
The RealReal, Inc. is an online marketplace for users to buy and sell luxury goods that are authenticated by experts. It has more than 34 million members, and has sold nearly 36 million items as of Sept. 30, 2023. [3] [4]
The RealReal was founded in 2011 by Julie Wainwright, an e-commerce entrepreneur. By July 2018, the company had raised $288 million in venture capital funding. [5]
On May 31, 2019, The RealReal submitted a preliminary filing (S-1) to the SEC to go public. [6]
On June 28, 2019, The RealReal went public on Nasdaq under the symbol REAL and raised $300 million during its IPO. [7] [8]
On June 22, 2022, The RealReal announced that its founder and CEO Julie Wainwright had stepped down. [9] The company appointed President and COO Rati Sahi Levesque and its CFO Robert Julian as interim co-CEOs.
On January 25, 2023, The RealReal announced the appointment of E-Commerce and Digital Executive John E. Koryl as CEO and Board Member. [10]
They cover sellers with free virtual appointments, in-home pickup, drop-off and direct shipping. As a full-service, luxury consignment [11] service, The RealReal does all of the work for its consignors, including authenticating, using AI and machine learning to determine optimal pricing, photographing and listing items, as well as handling shipping, payments and customer service. [12]
In 2017, The RealReal opened its first permanent retail store in New York City, and has since opened stores across the US including locations in California, Connecticut, Florida, New York and Texas. To date, the company has 15 Luxury Consignment Offices where consignors can drop items off and meet with a valuation specialist, and 12 of those 15 locations allow customers to browse and shop.
The RealReal has had multiple claims from luxury designers that items on their website were counterfeit. In 2018, Chanel filed suit in the Federal Court of the Southern District of New York, alleging The RealReal for hosted counterfeit Chanel on their website and misled customers that an affiliation existed between the two. [13] [14]
In 2019, Richard Kestenbaum, writing for Forbes, disclosed purchasing a bag from The RealReal for $3,600, sold as an authenticated Christian Dior bag, that was found to be counterfeit. Kestenbaum claims the only authentication of many pieces at The RealReal is from a single copywriter, whose main task is to write the descriptions of the merchandise being sold, instead of the expert authenticators The RealReal advertises. [15] In a 2021 update, Kestenbaum wrote about a customer who paid $1,000 for a pair of Christian Dior sneakers from The RealReal, but upon receiving them, was suspicious of their quality and sent the shoes to be authenticated by LegitGrails, a third party authenticator. LegitGrails uses no fewer than four authenticators to authenticate a single item, compared to The RealReal's alleged use of a single copywriter for authentication, and determined the customer's shoes were a "lower grade replica" [16] of Dior sneakers. The RealReal refunded the customer; when Forbes asked the company for a comment, it stated it has the "most rigorous authentication process in the marketplace" [16] and has added artificial intelligence to its authentication process. Forbes claims the large amount of merchandise processed by The RealReal to maintain profit margins (the company went public in 2019) makes it inevitable that counterfeit products slip past its authentication and into the hands of customers. [16]
In early 2020, TheRealReal was sued in a class action lawsuit regarding misstatements to investors, alleging that authenticators were given very little training and strict quotas that resulted in the potential for counterfeit or mislabeled items to make it through the company's authentication process more often than purported. [17] [18]
The RealReal alerts law enforcement of counterfeit items it receives. Items sent to The RealReal deemed "friendly fakes", [19] counterfeit items purchased unintentionally, are usually returned to the client; others are destroyed or retained for training purposes. [19]
In 2017, The RealReal announced a sustainability partnership with luxury fashion brand Stella McCartney, which launched in 2018. [20] [21] It also established the first Monday in October as National Consignment Day, an annual holiday. The following year, to mark National Consignment day, The RealReal launched a custom sustainability calculator. Developed with environmental consulting firm Shift Advantage, it measures the environmental impact of consignments processed by the company. [22] [23] [24] In 2019, the company marked National Consignment Day by launching a second sustainability partnership with luxury brand Burberry. [25] For National Consignment Day 2020, The RealReal announced its third sustainability partnership with Gucci. [26] When consumers consign or buy Gucci on The RealReal through the end of 2020, a donation will be made to One Tree Planted to support its mission to protect biodiversity and reforestation.
A counterfeit is a fake or unauthorized replica of a genuine product, such as money, documents, designer items, or other valuable goods. Counterfeiting generally involves creating an imitation of a genuine item that closely resembles the original to deceive others into believing it is authentic.
Prada S.p.A. is an Italian luxury fashion house founded in 1913 in Milan by Mario Prada. It specializes in leather handbags, travel accessories, shoes, ready-to-wear, and other fashion accessories. Prada licenses its name and branding to Luxottica for eyewear and L’Oréal for fragrances and cosmetics.
Guccio Gucci S.p.A., doing business as Gucci, is an Italian luxury fashion house based in Florence, Italy. Its product lines include handbags, ready-to-wear, footwear, accessories, and home decoration; and it licenses its name and branding to Coty for fragrance and cosmetics under the name Gucci Beauty.
Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault is a French businessman, investor and art collector. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company. Arnault is one of the richest individuals in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$199.7 billion as of September 2024, according to Forbes and US$208 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Consignment is a process whereby a person gives permission to another party to take care of their property and retains full ownership of the property until the item is sold to the final buyer. It is generally done during auctions, shipping, goods transfer, or putting something up for sale in a consignment store. The owner of the goods pays the third-party a portion of the sale for facilitating the sale. Consignors maintain the rights to their property until the item is sold or abandoned. Many consignment shops and online consignment platforms have a set time limit at which an item's availability for sale expires. Within the time of contract, reductions of the price are common to promote the sale of the item, but vary by the type of item sold.
Vintage clothing is a generic term for garments originating from a previous era, as recent as the 1990s. The term can also be applied in reference to second-hand retail outlets, e.g. in vintage clothing store. While the concept originated during World War I as a response to textile shortages, vintage dressing encompasses choosing accessories, mixing vintage garments with new, as well as creating an ensemble of various styles and periods. Vintage clothes typically sell at low prices for high-end name brands.
Newegg Commerce, Inc., is an American online retailer of items including computer hardware and consumer electronics. It is based in Diamond Bar, California. It is majority-owned by Liaison Interactive, a multinational technology company.
François-Henri Pinault is a French businessman, the son of billionaire François Pinault. François-Henri took the reins of his father's retail conglomerate Pinault-Printemps-Redoute in 2005, and turned it into the luxury group Kering in 2013. He has been president of the family-owned investment holding Groupe Artémis since 2003. He has been married to the film producer and actress Salma Hayek since 2009.
Counterfeit consumer goods are goods illegally made or sold without the brand owner's authorization, often violating trademarks. Counterfeit goods can be found in nearly every industry, from luxury products like designer handbags and watches to everyday goods like electronics and medications. Typically of lower quality, counterfeit goods may pose health and safety risks.
Julie L. Wainwright is an e-commerce entrepreneur. She is the founder and the former CEO of The RealReal, an online marketplace for authenticated luxury consignment.
Supreme is an American clothing brand established in New York City in April 1994. The company focuses on streetwear, skateboarding, and hip hop fashion trends. Its main products include clothing, skateboards, and accessories.
Twice was an online marketplace for buying and selling secondhand apparel based in San Francisco, CA. The e-commerce platform was created to make selling used goods easier and shopping used like buying new. Twice manages the selling process for the customer, such as pricing, shipping and merchandising. Twice vets each item to ensure it meets “like new” standards. The company currently buys and sells men's and women's clothing as well as women’s shoes and handbags from popular retailers and brands.
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The Major League Baseball Authentication Program, or MLB Authentication Program, is a program run by Major League Baseball Properties, the product licensing arm of Major League Baseball, to guarantee the authenticity of baseball merchandise and memorabilia. The centerpiece of the system is a tamper-resistant security tape sticker with an embedded hologram. Each sticker carries a unique alphanumeric code. The sticker is affixed to all game-used merchandise and memorabilia, while information about the item is entered into a computer database. Between 500,000 and 600,000 items are authenticated each season.
Fashionphile is an online fashion resale website where consumers can buy and sell luxury designer items such as used handbags, accessories, and jewelry. Fashionphile has brick-and-mortar locations in Beverly Hills, San Francisco, New York City, Irvine, Los Angeles and Carlsbad, California.
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