Hi, friends. Welcome to the Life With Loverly podcast. I’m Brittany, a wife, mom, and lifestyle entrepreneur here to help you discover your best daily style and encourage you to try new things when getting dressed each day. I took a tiny following on social media and turned it into a community of over one million amazing women, and I am so glad you’re here. I’ll be sharing my heart with you beyond the 15 seconds on Instagram, so we’ll be diving into things like personal growth, friendships, motherhood, marriage, and of course, the business of blogging. Really, this space is here to serve as your go-to resource to building a life you adore while sprinkling some kindness to others along the way. Grab an iced coffee and let’s do life together. I’m Brittany, and this is the Life With Loverly Podcast. Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Life With Loverly Podcast. If you love luxury consignment and women in business, then this episode is for you. I had the honor of sitting down with the founder of The RealReal, a large online marketplace where users can buy and sell authenticated luxury goods, Julie Wainwright. Julie is a self-made entrepreneur who built a billion dollar fashion business at 52, soon after she’d been told she was unemployable by Silicon Valley. You’ll hear how she flipped the script on failure when she took pets.com public and also was forced to shut down the company and return money to shareholders within the same year. Tune in to hear how she transformed luxury resale into a powerhouse, leading it from a startup to an IPO, making her just one of 23 women in history to take a company public as its founder and CEO. In this episode, you’ll hear how Julie found resilience after failure, how to evaluate if your business idea is good or not, and amazing stories that include celebrity stylists, Martha Stewart, and fabulous New York popups. If you are needing some inspiration to start on that dream today, this episode will be the motivation you need. And if you’d like more information on Julie’s story, you can purchase her autobiography Time to Get Real, available June 9th, and follow along on her new startup journey in the nutrition field, ahara@ahara.com. Here’s my conversation with Julie Wainwright.

Hi.

Hi, how are you?

I’m great. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you too. I’m so excited just to talk to you and hear about your past and talk about your upcoming book. It launches in June, correct?

It does. June 9th. Well, you can pre-order it now, but it’s June 9th is the release date.

I love that. That’s the day before my youngest daughter’s birthday, so I will definitely keep that in mind. Okay, so I know your book is dedicated to your dad. Tell me a little bit about your relationship with your dad and his passion for business and art.

Oh, it’s going to make me cry. So like a lot of female entrepreneurs, if their father was an entrepreneur, it does spark something in you. When I was growing up, my mother had multiple sclerosis. So by the time I was eight, she had had her first attack. And then by the time I was 16, she was really on the down slope. And she was only 36 just to dementiaize that. So I’m the oldest of four, and my father and I. So I would say that bonded us together more than probably normal. And I remember even at the age of eight, he’s like, “You got to step up and help take care of everyone.” But the other thing is he was such a good example of someone loving their work. He did a couple different things. So you can imagine, especially in the timeframe when my mother had multiple sclerosis, there wasn’t any drugs. It was all weird experimental things. But we still had a lot of fun. So he was sort of an expert at finding this fun, and he had his own art and design business and would get so excited about what his and his team would be working on. It’s before computers, so he’d always say what’s on the boards. He would share it with me, but everyone in the family was like, “Oh, look what we’re doing. So exciting. Look at this account.” And then everyone, this is, again, think of Chevrolet ads way back when. When they were introducing their new cars, everyone in the neighborhood, if they needed kids, would be like, “Oh, they were all in the shoot.” So you got very involved. And so we were all models. I used to model Shakespeare Rod and Reels when I was a little kid. So when he had a client that required children, anyone was fair game. He would either tap everyone or just maybe one specific person. I think my neighbor was on the Flintstone vitamin box for a while. So cool. It was cool, it was fun, and it was creative. I mean, they met at art school. So their school they were at was bought by the Chicago Art Institute. So technically they graduated from the school associated with the Chicago Art Institute, but they went to more of a. They didn’t think they were going to be fine artists. My dad always wanted to have his own art and design studio, and my mom wanted to be a fashion illustrator. Wow. I know. I know. Sadly, he passed about four years ago now, but up until the end, he was full of life, very funny, and still very creative.

Yeah. And so a lot of probably your just creativity and vibe for life was modeled after his example.

You couldn’t help it. It’s infectious. So if you think about it, if someone loves their job and they get excited every day about what they’re working on and it’s creative endeavor, wow, what a gift to have that as a parent. I know so many of my friends, their parents didn’t. Well, usually it was only the father that worked, but they didn’t love it. They didn’t come home and feel energized by what they were working on. And they weren’t always thinking of creative ways to show something different. And so that was, to me, a gift.

Totally. Totally. Okay. So before we get into your story with The RealReal, I’d love to hear about you flipped the script on what failure looked like after pets.com.

Well, I internalized my failure for a long time. And then at some point, just financially, I couldn’t afford to do it. But at some point, luckily I woke up, it took a while. But I’m like, “I am letting other people define me instead of really knowing what I’m made of.” And I had to say this is. And I wrote it in the book this way, which is almost exactly what it was like. I let these people define me. And those people could have been press people. It could have been other investors looking on the outside. Recruiters, recruiters had said I wasn’t employable. And so that’s a lot when you think about it. So I actually, at some point, I went, “Wait, that’s not me. That’s their perception of me, but that’s not me.” And so it literally, it was almost like. Do you ever see the movie Moonstruck when Cher hits Nicholas Cage in the face and says, “Snap out of it?” And it’s like I had to do that to myself. And I go, “Snap out of this. This isn’t your life. This is like, yes, that happened. The failure happened. There’s a lot to learn from it. But that’s not all I am. I’m not going to bring that forward.” And then oddly enough, sports helped. When you’re sitting there, I love sports. I love baseball. I prefer basketball, but I love baseball, I love basketball, I love football. And you’re looking at the batters at the baseball. So I’m at a beautiful San Francisco Giants game and the best batters, like 0.35. And you’re like, “Well, 65% of the time they’re missing.” And if they brought went into that thinking, “I’m going to miss 65…” No, it’s like, no, I’m one of the best batters out there. And if you bring all that negative forward into your present, you recreate it. And I was doing it. I was doing it until I stopped. And when I stopped, I never looked back.

Yeah.

But I did let it hang. There’s pictures of me from that time. I mean, to make it worse, I was also going through a divorce, so it sort of had a double whammy. But I would say if you look at pictures, I look like I’m downtrodden. And then even when I would look at them, I’m like, “That isn’t me.” I had to do the old share. I had to slap myself and go, “Snap out of it.” And once I did, it was a good jolt. And I’m sorry I wallowed in it because I did. I let it affect me for years. I mean, probably actively four years it was there. It was a hard lesson to learn that you can’t live. I mean, that’s not a way to live a life. It doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t make sense. All you do is just carry that in a way that’s not productive for anyone yourself or anyone around you.

Yeah. So fast-forwarding a little when you started the RealReal, some people come to the table with a business idea and then figure out how to be a business owner. Your story is different because you knew you wanted to run your own business. You just had to figure out what kind. So how did you land on consignment clothing?

Oh my gosh. All right, so I did. Well, it wasn’t even I wanted to. I sort of had to. I was like, well, no one’s. I mean, I’m sure I could have gotten a bad job, but I was tired of having soul-sucking jobs. I decided no, I had to chart my own destiny. And I had so much experience. I wanted to get back into e-commerce, which from pets.com to when I did the RealReal, the economics had changed. I knew I could get a business going pretty cheaply and test it. And I also knew Amazon was the juggernaut. So the question is, how do you compete with Amazon? So I had a matrix of all the things they couldn’t do or they couldn’t do well. And one of them was luxury. And then I sort of had that tucked away in my brain, but then I’m like, well, I’m not going to do my own luxury brand. That’s insane. And then I’m shopping with a girlfriend. And this was about, so I would say in August I did this work on the framework, and then I’m out shopping with a girlfriend in November. And by the way, I only had about two years of cash, so the clock was ticking.

Right. Like you need to figure it out.

Yes, I had to figure it out. And shopping with a girlfriend, we walk into this beautiful boutique that has a little bit of consignment in the back, and that’s where she shopped. And I had never seen her buy previously on goods before. So I was shocked at that. And we were shoppers. We were people that. And we were more like we didn’t like to dilly-dally. If we went into someplace, we were on a mission. We’re on a mission, we’re going to buy something. And we shop together a lot because if you bought a suit, let’s just say one of us was like, we were the opposite. One needed a different size on the top and the bottom, and all we’d do is buy the same suit and switch it up.

That’s perfect.

As opposed to getting everything altered. So we were good shoppers. So we get out of the store and I just pelt her with questions like, “Why did you buy previously owned good?” She goes, “I don’t look at it that way. I bought Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton at a great price.” I’m like, “But someone had it before.” She goes, “Who cares? This is an amazing value.” I said, “What about, are they authentic?” She goes, “I trust the owner.” And she knows the people who consigned it. I’m like, “Okay, have you ever bought consignment?” Because I’m thinking, I know she hasn’t walked into a consignment store. She said she never would. She doesn’t like the environment. So here you’ve got this beautiful environment with a little bit of consignment that was beautifully displayed, and that’s where she shopped. So I went home and researched the luxury market. I didn’t realize how big it was. I went into my own closet to see how many would qualify, and I had 60 goods back there that were sort of gathering dust because I’ve always spent way too much money on clothes. But I had never consigned before. So you just had them there. And then I started testing the competition. I consigned wherever I could consign. I took my jewelry to a place that was supposedly a luxury experience for selling your jewelry. It was so creepy. I needed a shower after that. It took about six weeks for me to test all these different venues. And then after that, I’m like, “I got it. I can build an amazing business.” And by the way, my friend had never consigned because it was too hard. I’m like, “Well, then we’re going to have to go to your house and make it easy.” So I knew I was going to have a service component. I knew I’d have to build trust by authenticating the goods. I knew that there was a lot of goods trapped in people’s houses, and I ran as fast as I could to get that business up. Yes. And then we opened, so that was November, probably it was before Thanksgiving of 2010. By June of 2011, I opened the doors and started running sales and had a really gross, but warehouse space. It was really gross. It was so gross.

Isn’t it funny to think back and you’re like, “Oh man, how did we do that?” Just especially knowing what The RealReal is today and just thinking back to the beginning on

it was.

We’ve come a long way.

We’ve come so far. I remember sitting there with Ratzi and Levecke, who’s now the CEO, building these really crappy desks to sit in. And the warehouse didn’t have air conditioning and the carpet in the first part, it was like a railroad car. And so it was brown crunchy carpet, and it was hot, and we’re sitting there building these stupid desks. And then we already had this mannequin, which was absolutely inappropriate for production work, but it was cool. I mean, I bought something cool, not practical, which we switched that out pretty fast. And the photographer who was a part-time guy, they kept cutting because it was a bad job, but we had this part-time guy taking pictures. You had to go into the restroom to get the right bandage on the mannequin. Anyway, but it was just so gross. And now the company has over a million square foot of space, both East Coast and West Coast. It’s highly automated, highly technical using AI and machine learning. I think they’re one, if not the largest, one of the largest employers of gemologists in the world. Anyway, it was something to get started that way. And we were in that really challenging space. I mean, it wasn’t terrible because it did have a proper warehouse in the back. Very tiny though. The whole thing was 2,500 square feet with a loft. But we did have a roller door. We weren’t that far from UPS, so if we had to get something out, we could literally run across the parking lot and drop it off. Oh my gosh. But it’s an area that’s still transitional. Now here we are, 2025. And I was just reading, it was in San Rafael, California. I still get the local online, the local news from Marin County. And they’re still talking about how are we going to raise the canal district and make it better because it was full of drug dealers and prostitutes where we were. I mean, there are some nice parts, but it was really sketchy. You just couldn’t leave late at night and you couldn’t get there too early in the morning.

Like odd hours. And everybody’s like –

Odd hours, it was not comfortable. But a policeman owned the sandwich shop next to us, which was great because – How’d it make you feel good? Yeah, it did make us feel good because we’re big advocates of yay, the police. And they cooked bacon every morning, which drove us nuts. Rat smell.

We can’t have the smell on these nice luxury goods.

We didn’t want the smell on the luxury goods. We didn’t want to be hungry all day either. But yeah, it was something. Let’s just put it that way.

Sounds like a great, memorable first start of a business though. You’ll never forget it.

Oh, and just to make it even more special, I had black garbage bags taped to every window so no one could see in.

Oh my gosh.

And also we couldn’t afford curtains. And I didn’t want to put curtains or shades in a place I didn’t own. So we’d recruit people and I’ll never forget this. My neighbor’s like, “Oh, she’s really great. She just graduated, I think from Dartmouth.” So she comes in there. She took one look and she goes, “This isn’t for me.” And I don’t blame her. I don’t blame her. I get it. Look, at some point, we always got container store things for the handbags and the shoes. So you have all this plastic. And we didn’t have air conditioning, so we had fans going. So at some point they would be stacked and getting hot. And what does plastic do? It’s like everything waned. We’re like, “Oh my God, we’re going to kill someone. Some plastic.”

You’re like the leading tower of Gucci just about to fall over there.

Exactly. So we were there nine months. I mean, a long time. Every business starts small. And at that point, I was pretty much financing the company. It’s fun to talk. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about this. I haven’t talked about it. I love this. It’s so fun, but it was gross. And then here’s the other thing. Rati was my first employee, and so we all did everything. That’s just what you do. You do everything. You answer emails, you do your marketing, you do this, you do your pickups. We do pickups. She had the most beat up car I have ever seen. I’m like, it looked like she’d been hit four or five times. So she was young. I don’t know how old she was. She was young. But I mean, you can’t park that car in front of a customer’s house. We’re picking up luxury goods. So she would literally park it a block away, and then you really have to slept this stuff. Sometimes she’d have 25 things she’d pick up because absolutely not. No one would ever have given us a luxury good with that car. It was so beaten up. It’s so funny. I’m like, “You have to get a new car.” She goes, “I can’t afford a car. You’re not paying me any money,” which is true. I really wasn’t at the beginning. It was so bad.

I’m sure the customers, if they saw it, they’d be like, “Wait, are you stealing this?”

Exactly. Exactly. It was so off-brand.

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Alright. So, and I think this is really important because at the end of the day, it has to be something I think that is competitively defensible. Otherwise, you’re in trouble. So it has to be defensible. It has to be something that’s salient for the user, meaning people want to buy it. You’re not creating a charity. So you want people to transact and you have to be able to make money with it. I mean, it’s really those areas. And then it helps, but it’s not critical because I’ve seen a lot of VC deals go to people with no business experience, but it does help if you have experience in one area of the business. It could be distribution, it could be product, it could be technology, but it does help if you have that experience. I would say most people learn more on the job. And a really good entrepreneur, even if they don’t have any experience, if they’re thrown in the deep end and they’re a good entrepreneur, by the time they pop back up, they’re going to be in – They’ll figure it out. They’re going to figure it all out. And you know what? And that’s another thing. You have to have that attitude. You have to be really hungry, and you have to be decisive. And then once you’re decisive and you see your results, what if you’re wrong? Then you have to be able to iterate really quickly. But people that challenge their own judgment, because you don’t usually have data. But let’s say you’ve done this, you thought of this idea, then you get it out there, and you’re mostly right, which is great. That is great, but you still have to iterate. And then you just move, move, move, move, move. So you want to get things, you want to get a test out as fast as possible. But you need to always work on imperfect data, which makes some people so uncomfortable. I mean, you do it in life in general. It’s not like you’ve got. But in corporations, there is more structured data, and you can look at things, and you can take a calculated risk. And so here’s what you have to think about. You got to take a calculated risk on yourself.

Yeah, totally.

And that is the best risk ever to take it on yourself.

Totally. I agree. So in your book, you also talk a little bit about Martha Stewart. Can you break down what you think Martha Stewart did really right when she was first building her brand and company?

You know what? So look, The RealReal created a new category, but people had been selling luxury consignment forever, but no one had actually made it a total business and did what we did. So if you think about Martha Stewart, she took just being a great entertainer to a level and created a category, not one little area like I do candles. She created the whole experience from the food to the table. And she made it accessible. Her goods, you could buy her things, I think, I don’t know what her first deal was it in Walmart or Target, but then she made it accessible and she gave people a roadmap on how to get there. She made it seem easy. So she has this very glamorous life, which she still does. It’s an aspirational look. I’d say she really is a perfectionist. She does do beautiful things, but she made it seem attainable.

Totally.

And gave practical advice and gave you a whole formula for creating wonderful entertainment and wonderful food. And that is something that I bet 500 people said, oh, I could have done that, or I though of that. But they didn’t. She is the first one to create this category. Other people had done cookbooks and have done well or done cooking shows, but she just expanded the set and made it accessible. I think it’s brilliant. It’s so simple. It’s such a simple concept.

Well, people wanted her whole lifestyle.

Well, that’s right. It is aspirational.

Yeah. It was so accessible, not just for one part of that. And then that sold itself, which is amazing.

But she also gave you step-by-step.

Totally.

You can do this this way. You can do it this way. So she made it both unattainable, but attainable on your own level. And then doing deals with companies that are more in the budget category also made it attainable.

Right.

Yeah, I just think it’s brilliant. See, here’s the other thing. My mother was only 20 years old when she had me. So that means that Martha’s just about four years younger than my mother would be. And when I look at that, there aren’t that many people of her age that would’ve envisioned something so big and magnificent.

No.

And there’s still not that many women that think that big and really understand that they can create that in their life. And that’s one of my goals is to make sure that women know, yes, you can create what you want in your life yourself.

Yeah.

I mean, why did you start this podcast?

So I have a fashion blog and do styling, and that’s kind of where everything started, but I wanted just a deeper connection with my followers past what I could get on Instagram or talking to them on stories. And I wanted to share things that happened to me that I felt like could encourage or help somebody else. And so it really just started as so much more of a secondary outlet to connect with my community. And I’ve just loved just interacting with people, interviewing people who have amazing stories, who can help other women and listeners who just want to be inspired.

Yeah, I just think it’s great. I think what you’re doing is great.

Okay. So getting back to the RealReal, tell me about your first celebrity client that consigned a warehouse worth of clothing.

Oh, she didn’t want it to be public at that time. Well, let me just tell you, it wasn’t one, it was multiple warehouses.

Oh my goodness.

And I can’t give her name because she didn’t want a public sale. But let’s just say she’s very tiny and she had multiple warehouses and it saved the company, to be honest, because we had just launched and we were running out of product. And I had started this big campaign about three months before we launched about how we’re going to work with stylists. And I went down in LA, met with stylists, sent postcards, promoting, blah, blah, blah. And then we had nothing. And then we got a call that said, “So-and-so wants to clean out her warehouses. Could we be there the next day?” And Rachi flew down and rented a U-Haul with an intern, with a young intern. And then when she got there, I had to make arrangements for them to spend the night and call the interns because it was not just a warehouse, it was multiple warehouses, and it wasn’t a short thing to happen. It needed a lot of processing. And this is before we actually had apps to process everything. What we did is we actually put everything in a spreadsheet and then mapped it with pictures on our own iPhone instead of having an app to chronicle the consignment. I mean, this is back when we had the crunchy brown carpet, and she had the beat up car. So anyway, luckily the intern’s mom said yes, she could spend the night there. That’s so funny. And it was almost two full days of clean it out. And also the celebrity wanted to try on everything again.

Oh my goodness. So it was really like, “Let me clean this out, but maybe you can’t take that. Let me see if I still like it.”

It had been in warehouses, so they hadn’t seen them for a while.

They probably forgot some of the bags and shoes.

Yeah. So we had to do that. So the whole thing, and we’d worked with her stylist. And once we worked with her stylist, then we got other clients.

Give you so much inventory and then you’re like, “We could start a whole other marketing campaign after this.”

No, you’re exactly right because we would do things like we were running two sales a week, and then we could run three sales a week. And at that point, we were dividing the inventory by brand. So we would say, “Oh, we’ve got on one row Rack of clothing. Let’s say you could handle 50 items and say you had two racks of Chanel. It’s like, okay, we can run a sale. We can run two sales of Chanel because there were 50 items, let alone the handbags and the shoes. But it was all visual merchandising and moving from three sales a week to running one four sales to every day was a big deal. It was all based on what was on hand and then trying to make it look good. But yeah, the early days were tricky and we really focused city by city to get out there to win.

You guys were online and then also stores.

Well, that came later.

What was that process like?

So one of the things that was happening in the op center is we were getting an amazing product and photographs just weren’t showcasing. The quality was high. It was so beautiful. The clothing, yes, the handbags would blow your mind and then the fine jewelry and watches. And we thought we need to bring this to life and see so people can experience it because we’re not like other consignments. We’re not eBay. I think that was the other thing. We’re not eBay. This is beautiful, beautiful things. So I was in Soho walking around in September and I kept thinking, I think it’s time. Because by then we were going to hit almost $500 million in revenue. I thought it’s time to bring a store. We need to do it in New York because New York’s the fashion capital of the world, at least in the US. Paris would argue and Milan would argue in that order. But let’s say Paris is, but New York’s a closed second. And I was on the phone with Rachi. I go, “I think it’s time. It’s the end of September. Do you think we can get a pop-up done by November 10th?”

Yeah, right in time for holidays.

Holidays. And that was our goal. And we did it. And we did it, and it was such a big success. And the cool thing about this, you can measure it. So you could say if a new customer came in, did they buy more than an average new customer? Did they then shop online again? So what did it do? It had an immediate halo effect in the business. It got a lot of press and we really blew it on that first store because we didn’t realize people were going to bring us consignment. And they were literally wheeling in bags of consignment where we had to set up a whole makeshift area. It never occurred to us.

Yeah, because you’re like, “Well, we’ll just sell these, not like we will also intake.”

Right. And so it changed the whole design when we finally got a store out in Soho, but it was a revelation. It was just like what we thought. People were like, “I had no idea.” And then the press helped, and then people who knew the RealReal online brought their friends. So it sort of started lifting the whole brand to another level. I mean, there’s a finite number of stories you want to do that way because they’re not as efficient. But I think they’re all profitable now for the company, but it’s a different business than being online, but it absolutely solidified the brand, brought it to life, and brought in tons of consignment.

Yeah. Well, and I think of people who maybe went to the storefront first and saw that they trusted what you were offering and then maybe bought something in store, but then would go back to shopping online because they already trusted your in-store experience.

It created a whole new level of trust. And then when we added the consignment offices in SoHo, then they could meet with the gemologist right there and a handbag expert and they could do it. And to this day, it’s pretty funny if you go there or any of the stores, people wheel in luggage full of clothing and things. And you’re just like, wow. It is crazy. Because we will come to their house. They don’t have to schlep that. We can do it for them. We’ll do the dirty work. No, but I think people just feel safer meeting with someone and bringing their own goods.

So what would you say is the number one item that you would see people wanting to purchase?

We started doing every year the end of year fashion, and it depended on the year. I would say that the ones that never lost their steam was anything from Hermes. They’re so expensive, even resale, but they’re still coveted because they’re handmade. They do have high resale value. And then the Chanel flap bag never really went out of style at all. You can argue it’s less quality than it was. It doesn’t matter. It’s still in demand. After that, it all depended. For a long time, Gucci was by far on fire. On fire. And then it fell off, but it had a good run, I think for five years. And usually resale was almost a better indication because people started buying old Gucci, even though the new Gucci, which was the one that everyone wanted, they just wanted to wear the brand because it was so cool. Totally. But Louis Vuitton, especially never fulls. There’s classics, but Louis Vuitton’s always in the top. And then when you look at watches, Cartier Diamonds, again, always at the top. And watches Rolexes are always covetable. Totally. Other ones like Petique Philippe, those are. But Rolexes are still somewhat accessible versus the Petite Philique, which could be tens of thousands of dollars.

Totally.

I would say the evergreen products never waned. It’s just if a brand was hot, it would shoot way up. Totally. And then contemporary brands, some of them just would take off like crazy depending on their season. Zimmerman could pop up to the top. Jacques Moose could pop up to the top and they’re not really, they’re lower level things. For a long time, Tori Birch Flats, we couldn’t get enough of them. Yes, so true. So there’s always one or two items from other brands that just catch on. Coach had a handbag once that was so on fire and we weren’t taking Coach because in general, the price was just too low for resale and the product quality wasn’t good. And then they made this amazing handbag. So we had to take – We were like, whoa. Because it was just on fire. So one piece from one designer can really change the trajectory of the brand.

It’s so true. I’ve actually made several purchases from the RealReal. And it’s funny because two of the handbags that I’ve bought over the years, one is an Hermes Kelly and one is a Chanel flat bag.

There you go. And honestly, if you wanted to sell them now, you probably would make money on them.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is what I tell my husband. So I’m like, “This is an investment. I need another.”

Well, no, that’s true. That is true though. Exactly. No, they have appreciated without a doubt. And Rolexes have appreciated. Totally. Well, the top men’s watches have appreciated. Now they took a little hit. There’s little swings and roundabouts, but if you look at it over time, the value, it is a good investment.

Yeah. Well, I was talking to some of the girls on my team before this interview, and I was just saying how I love the experience of going into the store and just being in the mood to buy what speaks to me. And I feel like sometimes when you go into the RealReal, you might not get anything that’s on your wishlist because it might not be available, but maybe you’ll find something else you didn’t even know you wanted or something comes from the back that they’re like, “Ooh, let me just show you this.” I love that. And so it can be such a fun experience because you don’t quite know what you’re getting yourself into. And I feel like that kind of takes us back to old school shopping and how –

I know. Wasn’t that fun? Yeah. I really miss it. I’m going to give a talk next week about what people can do to get in live in retail again. Because honestly, I think going into an environment where it’s fun to shop, and it’s creative in a weird way. And if you’ve got a great salesperson, they can actually envision you in a way that you don’t even know is happening. And it is so much fun. The RealReal has that whole treasure hunt thing anyway, because there’s only one of them. And then the stores are accessible. So you walk, what store do you tend to shop in?

Soho and also the one on the Upper East Side.

Oh, 72nd. Yes. That’s a beautiful store.

It really is.

It’s smaller, but I think the merchandise shows really well in that store.

I agree. That’s where I bought two handbags and I actually bought a bracelet there as well. This beautiful sapphire bracelet.

And you might’ve missed it online.

Exactly. And I really probably wouldn’t have looked at jewelry online to be like, oh, I was just in there and I was like, “Let me try this on.” And then I was like, “Wow, this is a really good price.” And it just kind of snowballed. It’s funny, one time I was in New York with a friend at Fashion Week and we had borrowed some handbags. And this was early on in my career. And she was like, “I want to start a business where there’s some type of card or something that goes along with every handbag. So if it gets resold or if years down the line, there’s something that tells the story of where the bag has been.” Because if you think about how many times you take your best handbag to this fun dinner or to these events, and it’s the story of the handbag. And I was like, “I don’t really know how that’s going to become a business, but I love the fun that’s around that idea.”

Oh, that’s so funny. I was just saying to someone, sometimes I look at my closet and I’m like, “That closet’s had more fun than I have.” And obviously it was with me, but you know what I mean? But that’s what you’re talking about. You just remembered this event or that event or maybe you did this. Yes, it is so much fun. And then getting people to give it up is a little hard sometimes because it’s sentimental. But the coolest thing about resale, besides the fact you get great things and they’re unusual things, and they’re one-off and you get a great price, those things are all the number one thing. But the other thing which is really important, it’s good for the planet to recirculate goods as opposed to just buying new. So it’s really good. So I feel good about that because it’s not like. I always think I’m pushing shopping when I started The RealReal, but people are going to shop.

Right. It’s a good thing if you’re going to buy – Let’s give them a good way to do it.

Previously owned things are a good thing.

Yes, I agree. Okay, so you have now exited from The RealReal. Throughout your book, you talk about the importance of timing from funding to scaling and exiting. Can you tell me how you decide on the timing of when to take action and what life has looked like since your exit?

Timing’s always hard. I don’t think you know. I don’t think you can plan for timing. I think it’s as simple as that. You can know when the investment world’s changed, but that happens to you. So I think if timing issues. I’ve been too early with companies. Pets.com was too early. The RealReal was spot on.

Totally.

You can’t control that. You can control the quality of product you put in, the positioning and the pricing. So you can control a lot, but you can’t control timing and you can’t beat yourself up. You can’t beat yourself up about any of it, to be honest. All you can do is learn from it. Yeah, that’s so true. It’s great advice. And when I left The RealReal, I’ve always been interested in nutrition and personalized nutrition because I mean, any research you read and it’s like what’s staying healthy? Diet is number one. Exercise is important, but if your diet is wrong, no amount of exercise in the world is going to help you stay healthy. Your nutrients, what you need in your body change over time. And to be able to get personalized nutrition information, and we did it through an algorithm. And also if you take different supplements or meds, certain meds actually create other problems, the suppression of key nutrients. So that’s the genesis behind Ahara to give an algorithm that will actually, based on science, give you your optimal foods, your optimal nutrition that you may be low in, you may be low in magnesium, you may be low in whatever, vitamin Bs or omegas, which I think I was low in all of those things. And then they give recommendations on how to bring that into your diet. And you don’t have to eat lots of things, just change your diet enough for your health. To be honest, when I did it the first time and I went ahead and did the genetic testing, I always thought I knew. I would say I knew about 55%, but that other 45% was really important to know. And I’ve made small changes in my diet. And I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I’m really healthy. Is my energy better? Yes. Did I lose weight? I did, just by getting a better balanced diet. Yeah.

See, I mean, I think it can be life-changing. I really do.

I agree.

Well, this has been such a great interview. I’ve learned so much. One question that I always wrap up my interviews with is what is the most meaningful act of kindness that somebody has extended to you that has had a lasting impact on your life?

I would say, I mean, it’s pretty easy to say, oh, your parents believed in you, which isn’t really kindness, that’s their job. But I would say even when I was young, a few teachers in school were like, “Boy, you can do it.” And this is in grade school and identifying me as that person because you’re a little kid. And they saw something in me then that, because I don’t know if when you’re 10, I think you just expect your parents to be, “Yay.” You know what I mean? So I would say that, that just a teacher going out of their way to recognize. And then even same thing happened when I was at Purdue, and this probably really changed my life. And it was a huge lecture hall. And this professor said, “I’ll help you get your dream job. What do you want to do? I’ve never seen anyone do this well in this course.” And he did.

Wow.

And he did. And that set me on a trajectory that maybe I would’ve gotten that job. But let’s just say when this head of consumer psychology puts in a call to the CEO of a company, they wanted to interview me. Does make a little bit of a difference. And he didn’t have to do that. Totally. It was a lecture hall of 500 people.

Yeah, that’s amazing.

So I would say, and the beauty, I actually do a lot of work with Purdue now, and professors are really helping their students more than they did when I was there. But that one person making that one call actually did change my life considerably because I got to the West Coast. I worked in packaged goods at Clorox. And at Clorox in the very early ’80s, just dating myself, but I don’t even care, the guy smuggled in finance an Apple II computer and said, “Watch this.” Because we were hand calculating profit and loss statements. And he’s like, “Watch this.” And he put in all that data and I’m like, “This is the future.” And then I got a call to join a software company, and I joined it. And in my 20s, I moved to Europe and was running international, which is surreal. Traveling all over the world, setting up partnerships all over the world in a software company. But I would say it all started from that one teacher.

That’s such a gift. Well, Julie, your book is coming out June 9th. Can we buy that on Amazon? Where can we get it?

You can pre-order it.

Okay.

Yes.

We will pre-order it. Perfect.

And I hope people love it. It’s a weird thing writing the book because all tech businesses are collaborative, and so you’re getting feedback all the time. You’re iterating. When I was asking my agent, can I have a lot of people read along the way? She’s like, “No, write the book. We’ll get you an editor.”

They’re like, “Oh, what?”

I know. She’s like, “All right.” And then she goes, “We want a group of people that read books in this circle.” So it was a tight circle of people. And I’m like, “Oh man, I hope it flies.”

Hopefully this passes.

I know, exactly. It’s a little nerve-wracking.

I’m so excited to get a copy of it, and I just am excited for our listeners to get to know a little bit more about you. So thank you so much for your time today.

Oh, it’s been so much fun. It’s so much fun to talk fashion with people that love it too. It’s really been fun.

I agree. All right, friends, until next time. Hi, friend. If you’re loving the show, will you go find that follow button on your podcast app? This will ensure that you won’t miss a single episode. I love having you in this community. Until next time. This season of Life with Loverly is produced by Elizabeth Evans Media Productions.