The RealReal

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. On May 31, 2019, The RealReal submitted a preliminary filing (S-1) to the SEC to go public. On June 28, 2019, The RealReal went public on Nasdaq under the symbol REAL and raised $300 million during its IPO. On June 22, 2022, The RealReal announced that its founder and CEO Julie Wainwright had stepped down. 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. On October 28, 2024, The RealReal announced Rati Sahi Levesque, the company's second employee and co-founder, as CEO. At the end of 2024, The RealReal announced full year profitability. == Services ==

With nearly 40M members, The RealReal is the largest platform for authenticated luxury resale in the United States. The RealReal offers five ways to sell luxury goods on the platform: in-home pickup, drop-off appointments in its boutiques, meetings with luxury experts, and direct shipping. As a full-service authenticated luxury reseller, The RealReal does all of the work for its sellers, including authenticating items, using AI and machine learning to determine optimal pricing, photographing and listing items, as well as handling shipping, payments and customer service. The RealReal has processed over 40M items, launching more than 10,000 new arrivals to its site daily. ==Retail footprint==

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, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas. To date, the company has 17 Luxury Consignment Offices where consignors can drop items off and meet with a valuation specialist, and 14 of those 17 locations allow customers to browse and shop. == Counterfeits ==

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. 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. 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" 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" The RealReal alerts law enforcement of counterfeit items it receives. Items sent to The RealReal deemed "friendly fakes", ==Sustainability==

The RealReal is a leader in advocating for a sustainable future for the fashion industry. The brand has kept over 40 million items in circulation since its founding in 2011. Additionally, 4.68 Billion liters of water use have been avoided and 85,857 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions have been avoided. In 2017, The RealReal announced a sustainability partnership with luxury fashion brand Stella McCartney, which launched in 2018. 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. To celebrate Earth Month in 2025, The RealReal launched its first Resale Report: Circularity == References ==