Real Authentication provides top tier Authentication, Identification and Valuation services for over 100 Designer Luxury Brands: Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermes, Prada, Gucci, Fendi and more. Contact us today to shop and sell with the confidence and protection you deserve!
Reebok UNLOCKED is partnering with
thredUP to reduce our impact on the planet by extending the life of
clothing. thredUP is the most convenient way to clean out your closet
(and do good for the earth!). Order a Reebok UNLOCKED x thredUP Clean
Out Kit and turn your gently used clothes into cash or shopping credit.
Plus, you’ll get 150 Reebok UNLOCKED loyalty points!
$173 Million later, the new funding comes just in time for the retailer to open its first store.
While it’s fair to say e-commerce has totally
changed shopping — putting mall brands out of business and spawning a
new category of fast fashion retailers on steroids
— the luxury market has had a harder time breaking out online. High-end
brands are notoriously uneasy about e-commerce for fear of eroding
exclusivity, and sites like Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay, riddled with
counterfeit goods, have not proven to be great business partners.
You can get your Louis Vuitton and Hermès another way
though: The secondhand market has found a way to make luxury and online
shopping work, and San Francisco-based site The Real Real
is leading the sector. This morning, it confirmed it’s just closed on
$50 million in funding from private equity firm Great Hill Partners. The
startup’s largest amount of funding to date brings the total amount
it’s raised to $173 million. The upcoming wad of cash will go toward
expanding the business, which consists of more than 800 employees and
three giant fulfillment centers, and a company spokesperson confirms The
Real Real will eventually file for IPO, though there are no current
plans in the works.
The
RealReal is one of many secondhand luxury shopping
companies that have leveraged the ease of the internet and enticed
shoppers to buy and sell luxury online (although not all have survived).
But while sites like Tradesy, ThredUp, and Vestiaire Collective have
cashed in on this previously untouched sweet spot, The Real Real remains
the fastest-growing of the bunch; even the Kardashians and Saudi
princesses use it. The site boasts five million users, has sold four
million items to date, and is expected to surpass $500 million in
revenue this year.
To Julie Wainwright, the company’s founder and CEO, the
site’s success really boils down to trust — a major factor in both
online and luxury shopping. Wainwright started The Real Real in 2011
during a time when the options for selling luxury were feeble.
“There was nothing out there that provided the level of
service and trust that needed to be added to the equation,” Wainwright
told Racked in an interview a few months ago. “eBay can say 90 percent
of its products are legitimate, but then what about the other 10
percent? There were consignment stores, but the space was always
limited, and most of them weren’t big enough to be sophisticated. I
wanted to construct a business that gives you the best of the internet,
and then fills in where the internet leaves holes on trust,
authentication and service. We take off of the top of eBay and the
bottom off Sotheby's.”
Part of the appeal of the startup is that it employs
luxury buyers, art curators, gemologists, and watchmakers to
authenticate product — not quite as high-end as shopping at Christie’s,
but not quite a pawn shop
either. The Real Real has employees who visit homes to evaluate product
in every major city in the US, and perhaps most importantly, the site
takes ownership of listed items, so shoppers can feel secure when
splurging — and oh, are they splurging.
Listings have hit as high as six figures (while Wainwright wouldn’t confirm the average listing price, she has said
that “Net-a-Porter[‘s] average basket is $430, and ours is bigger.”).
These days, The Real Real is selling everything from clothing to art to
furniture to diamonds, Wainwright told Racked that 25 percent of its
customer base is men, which probably is a nod to the site’s robust list
of watches and sneakers.
The icing on the cake here is that The Real Real sees
itself as a player that’s bolstering the luxury sector, not preying off
of it. In 2017, it is expected to pay almost $300 million to those who
are selling on the site, and the company says this money will then be
spent “back in the primary market, continuing the luxury lifecycle.” The
company is also collecting data on luxury brands, and is currently in
conversations about potential partnerships with brands like Louis
Vuitton, according to TechCrunch.
Wainwright told Racked a third of its customers are millennials, and
The Real Real studies which brands are popular by age demographic.
“I’ve met with all the top brands and I tell them that
I’m the gateway drug for their brands, and some are in trouble,” she
told TechCrunch
last month. “Dolce is in trouble. We pick it up from people over 40
[years of age] and sell it to people over 50. There’s a whole disconnect
with its advertising and they know it. They aren’t reaching millennials
at all. We can also predict trends... if you have Valentino Rockstuds,
hand ’em over, because the party is over.”
As part of its ongoing growth strategy, The Real Real is
getting into brick and mortar. Wainwright tells Racked she can envision
opening a giant store of sorts in five years that’s dedicated to
secondhand merch — “a superstore in a major metropolitan area that has
one floor dedicated to women's fashion, one to men’s, one to home, and
one for art.”
For now, The Real Real is executing its plans for store
expansion on a more practical level: This winter, it will open a shop in
New York City’s Soho neighborhood that will double as a valuation space
and a store. Wainwright has said that the new store will have 100 Birkins on the wall and well, nothing can really top that.
