Create Your Niche

You founded The RealReal in 2011 when the country was still coming out of the Great Recession. What was your inspiration and your vision for The RealReal?

First and foremost, I've been in the commerce industry and e-commerce for a long time. I ran one of the first commerce sites Pets.com years ago. So I really wanted to get back into commerce. I think it's a very exciting place and the opportunities were huge. But I also wanted to create a business that could compete with Bezos and Amazon because I figured Amazon will take over the world. So what's left? And I have this wonderful matrix which dealt with developing products mostly on the beauty side and mostly on the clean beauty side, which is almost a null set. It's very hard to have beauty products without pretty harsh chemicals in it and have them be shelf-stable. But the one was beauty, the other one was luxury. And that's all I had really. I figured you could do everything else so... Or doing organic products. So right around that time I explored doing organic cleaning products, doing healthy beauty products or luxury, and clearly, I was going to start a brand. So I'm walking around with this model. I have no ideas. I am thinking I have got to get going here because the clock is ticking. Money was going out of my bank account, money wasn't coming in, I wasn't getting any younger. And then I was shopping with a girlfriend and that's where it all clicked. So we're in a boutique in Menlo Park that has a little bit of consignment in the back. And it's all luxury consignment. And that's where my girlfriend shopped and she had never walked into a consignment store before. So when we got out of the store, she bought everything in that area of the store. I said, what just happened? And she said I got a really good deal on Louis Vuitton and Prada and Gucci. I said that you just bought previously owned goods. She said, who cares? I trust the owner. I trust they're real. So why wouldn't I want something that is absolutely beautiful, timeless, made well, and a great deal? And that was it. That's when I started really researching the high-end consignment market and really what the strengths and weaknesses were of the current players, eBay, which can't authenticate and will take anything. And then your brick and mortar stores, which are really locked in in terms of audience, whoever walks through and where they also get the products and they also can't authenticate. And it's hard for them to scale.