Julie Wainwright
speaker
189 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Julie Wainwright’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I'm not. We're not going to go through. Did you see the documentary about Celine Dion where she has warehouses of costumes? It turns out. It's a thing in fashion, all right? Not just celebrities. And can you, this literally got the call at three o'clock in the afternoon. Can you be there tomorrow morning? I'll text you the address.
Employee number one, Rati Levesque. At that time, Rati's not. Oh, Rati's now the issue. She's now the president.
All right, so flew down and with an intern, all right, the next morning. So we had one intern in Georgia. All right, so Georgia and Raji fly down. Rent a U-Haul, which I'm sure Rachi will be mad I say this, but she's not the best driver. At least she wasn't at the time.
So her car back in San Francisco was beaten up. I'm like, oh, I don't know about her driving this U-Haul. Anyway, they go to this person's warehouse. And I'm trying to, like, talk to them all day. They're like, yeah, there's a warehouse. This person then decided she wanted to try on everything one more time before consigning. Of course. Of course.
You can't be sure you want to let go of it until you do a personal fashion show. A pickup that probably would have taken eight hours was now extended to two and a half days. Wow. which meant I had to call the intern, who was a high school girl's mom, and say, do you mind if Georgia spends the night in LA?
She was a summer break, but she was underage, so I had to get them a hotel room, and I had to, like, and then all of a sudden, they go in, and then I said, do you want me to fly someone down there? Because I'm answering the phone, I'm skewing product, I'm doing everything, I can't leave. Someone's got to be at the office. And remember, this is very early days. And she's like, send someone down.
So I sent my boyfriend down. He's driving it back. All right. It just wasn't that great. So they're calling. It was a total punk. She gets there, opens the U-Haul. Tons of boxes. Tons. But nothing good? Everything was good. Oh. Not a lot of handbags, but everything was, no, she was totally punking me. But here's what happened. And this person's so little, it was like a double zero, zero.
Turns out a lot of people wear that size. It's got us through the summer. That stylist gave us more product from our clients. Another one did. Then we put someone in LA and there it started. We said it's more complicated. Yes, because we were a marketplace. We couldn't just call up a vendor and say, I want more.
You know, there really isn't that thing. It's a simulation. So that's too bad. I didn't know. Oh, yeah. I mean, look, we were with NASDAQ. We weren't on the New York Stock Exchange. You hit a button, but it's already done. It's like you're doing it. It doesn't really. No, but I'll tell you what's fun. Confetti comes down. So it does make you feel good. That makes it a little bit. Yeah.
And everyone in the company had stock. Anyone that had been with the company five years more were part of the IPO and were there with me, standing with me. And honestly, they said they have never seen an IPO like this.
In what way? Well, first of all, it was inclusive. All right. So people had their kids there. People had been there for a long time, whether you were in the ops center working an hourly job or you were an executive. Also, I'm sure we were the most stylish. There's no doubt in my mind we were the most stylish.
And I'm like, let's get my picture up there next time I walk in there because there were no women on the fraternity board.
But then there's been women since then. So that's good.
Not lately, but you're right. We had Bumble come out, I think, right after that, and that did well. But before me was Katrina Lake with Stitch Fix.
Well, all right, let's just take a step back. If you take money from people, which I took a lot of money, you have to have a vehicle for them to get it out. Totally. It's as simple as that. You either have to sell the company or take it public. That's it. You only have two paths. Or if you shut it down, you're sort of in hot water for a long time.
That's a bad end. So I find founders, they don't always understand that you are obligated to actually return money. Once you take it in. So no one was going to buy the real, real. So our path was going public. And my goal was when the company got to at least a billion dollars in top line sales, we should be ready because it was becoming highly predictable. And we were that year.
We had a billion 2019 with a billion in top line sales. It was predictable.
Except you still report. You still have a board of directors.
you report publicly the mechanism in my view isn't that different if you're running a company you're still having board meetings preparing financials reporting you better have checks and balances on those financials and you're reporting into the board of directors yes
Yeah, everyone talks that, but you're right. It's a different, I agree. I'm just being a little cantankerous, but I don't disagree. But look, the RealReal was growing 40%. Pre-COVID. In January of 2020 versus a year ago, same period a year ago. February, same number, 40% versus a year ago. March, San Francisco and New York were early people to force shutdowns.
Showing 61–80 of 189 · page 4 of 10
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