Small to Big: The RealReal

After watching a friend snag fabulous deals on a Chanel coat and a Louis Vuitton handbag while shopping at a high-end consignment store, Julie Wainwright set out to replicate the experience online. TheRealReal.com, which she launched in March 2011, sells secondhand designer clothes, shoes, and accessories. It marries the deep discounts shoppers can get on EBay with the slick presentation of flash-sale sites such as Gilt.com. For Wainwright, 56, whose résumé includes a stint as chief executive officer of the defunct Pets.com, the perennial challenge has been getting enough inventory to meet demand.

I began with a circle of people I knew and myself. In that group we got about 900 items. We sold that out right away, in the first two or three weeks. Then it became, “What else can we do?” I started getting calls as soon as the site was up from Los Angeles that people wanted us to pick up clothes. One of us flew down to L.A. to pick up a few boxes, and she drove back a U-Haul truck with more than 1,000 pieces. We sold that faster than we sold out the first 900. How are we going to solve this problem of getting product flowing in on a regular basis? We obviously can sell everything we bring in.