Rati Sahi Lévesque was denied a promotion from representative to full-time worker at the bank where she worked due to a crime on her record. At the age of 18, he was left with ownership of a fake ID that he used to help his entry bars. . What may have been perceived as a career-ending moment became the turning point that put her on the path she is today: as a foundational component of the e-commerce revolution in the luxury shipping industry.
Lévesque laughed at this story while sitting on a bench in Sant Ambroeus in the West Village: “Everyone had a fake ID, but I was stupid enough to get stuck with it. Well, I may still run in the bank as assignment manager yes I hadn’t been arrested. She laughed again, this time as if her father were in the room, and said, “Look, Dad, you were really worried at the time, but everything turned out okay.
Everything that has been elaborated is an understatement. Brick after brick, the CEO, COO and co-founder of The RealReal has helped shape the luxury consignment market by fundamentally converting consumer behaviors toward online resale and building a category-defining business.
Was it an accident? A philosophy of “build it and they will come”?RealReal Dolor. La s trajectory was strategically designed and was the result of significant investment in the business aspects contracted to drive this major shift in consumption. These aspects manifested themselves in the form of an army of experts recruited for the products, including gemologists and Christie’s modeling workers. and Sotheby’s. They developed technologies to assess the authenticity of stones and handbags and even led the creation of a Kelley Blue Book-style product to help establish a popular market for the resale of luxury goods. They were the first to introduce after-sales returns and also the first. To identify a call center, two visitor service tactics that were unknown at the time for peer-to-peer resale.
However, they were developed with one purpose in mind: trust.
“Trust consideration number one, because at first other people thought our platform was a scam,” Lévesque says. “So making that vital connection for us, because we were going to eBay or any other peer-to-peer site, and he found that the pieces couldn’t be returned.
Discoveries like this were vital in the early stages of the construction of The RealReal. “We opted for full transparency and started describing everything with incredible accuracy. We’d say, ‘Hey, there’s a gap in this,’ and the value is set accordingly. “she explains.
This transparency permeated everything the company touched. They developed Vision, a piece of hardware that analyzes bags at the pixel point to determine whether it’s a high- or low-risk product. They created a device in collaboration with the country’s leading gemology school. the University of Arizona, which measures a gemstone with exact accuracy. “Now, a technician can assess the quality and detail of a stone without calling a gemologist, but we still ask a gemologist to check everything afterwards for accuracy,” says Levesque.
Given that TheRealReal’s SKUs measure around 1 million exclusive products at any given time (by comparison, Nike offers around 120,000 SKUs according to an educational article published by S. Aniyruddh and Kiran Kumar), “the amount of generation needed to not lose things, check and then move them properly is at the core of our business and what we’ve built,” Says.
Once customer buy-in was established, brand and celebrity alignment followed. Designer brands, such as Stella McCartney: “After Stella McCartney came along, other brands started to follow,” says Levesque, and Gucci signed with The RealReal for its legitimacy and the security that its brands presented on the secondary market.
The most recent example of this is the launch of Consignment Commitment, which features wardrobe pieces from “the most fashionable women in the world,” such as Kate Moss, Julianne Moore, Lake Bell, and Ivy Getty. These celebrities, who also come with stylists and trendsetters, have partnered with to sell their second-hand pieces and raise awareness of increased global customer behavior.
This Chanel bag, owned by Julianne Moore, sold on the site, is a testament to that brand’s acceptance and the position of VIPs in The RealReal’s shipping process.
“Instead of being discarded, or even discarded, the platform allows a garment to have a more sustainable circular life,” says designer Jonathan Cohen, whose eponymous line is sold on the site. “What I also like, especially coming from a luxury ready-to-wear brand, is that it allows someone who may not have been able to buy those pieces to buy brands that they may not have been able to buy when the pieces were released. I’m part of that group.
“Brands have to realize, and our knowledge also shows, that other people are consigning, which adds more price to the item for the number one market, because now there’s a secondary market for it,” Lévesque says. They also reinvest cash into their businesses through those unsold products. “
The same father who worried about the effects of crime on Rati’s career is the same man she describes as “a brave businessman before he was called. “As the owner of several restaurants in San Francisco, Lévesque’s father, an Indian immigrant, provided de facto elegance to the future founder through his own work.
At a dinner to celebrate the debut of the Consign Pledge, celebrities such as Anna SophiaArray. . . Robb supported the company’s purpose of achieving global customer behavior, asking customers to log 1 in five pieces to help build a more sustainable environment in the long term. according to the Paris Climate Agreement.
“I spent a lot of time in the restaurant and observed how my father worked with the employees, what it was like to run them, how he hired people, and what it meant to work through the good, the bad, and the bad,” Levesque said. he said. remember. ” I think you’re soaking it all up. At the end of the day, he is an immigrant and immigrants are told that they come to America, that they work very hard, and that they are successful. And that’s what he did.
“I remember he never made me feel like I couldn’t do it,” she adds. “Which was appealing coming from a very classic background. Women don’t paint in Indian culture.
More than 30 million members later with such major brands as Rolex and Hermès in The RealReal, the company to which VC said after VC, “this is not going to be a company that is going to succeed,” recalls the executive, TheRealReal is now a publicly traded company and its revenue is expected to exceed $1 billion this year.
“We had a crazy concept from the beginning and you can never believe we made it this far,” Lévesque says with a smile. “It’s been an amazing adventure and it’s also been really fun. “