The RealReal has become a giant in the fashion and clothing re-sale market. The company was started in 2011, and by 2019 they were a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ, with nearly $300 million in revenue. But can you trust that what you are purchasing from them is even from the brand they claim, let alone legit? The answer is no, and we will show you the real world examples.
The RealReal claims that they have “the most rigorous authentication process in the marketplace.” Furthermore, “We are the only resale company in the world that authenticates every single item we sell.” They explain that they have high risk (Hermes, Rolex, etc) and low risk items, both of which are examined by an authenticator, as well as checked again by the Quality Control team.
For the low risk items, which seems to be the vast majority of items, including many expensive contemporary designer brands, “Our lower-risk authenticators are deeply trained in authentication. They currently receive a minimum of 40 hours of training, including during onboarding, job shadowing, daily training sessions and quizzes.” Does your job require you to complete online training sessions? If so, you know this type of training is not the most effective. Even if the rest of the training is useful, this still says that in as little as one week an employee can be considered an authenticator. With how quickly the company has grown, it doesn’t seem like they have been able to keep up with hiring and training quality authenticators.
Job Requirements and Past Controversies
Here are the job requirements for becoming an Authenticator for The RealReal. In a world where we are used to seeing ridiculous requirements like 3 years of experience for an entry level position, these qualifications are at the other end of the spectrum and appear thin. The role of Assistant Manager in Authentication has no skill requirements listed at all. Only the High Risk Authenticator position requires a college degree (no mention of any specific majors) or actual experience. Hopefully the authentication process of the high risk items is better, but even that does not seem to be flawless. The RealReal has previously been sued by Chanel, who claimed that The RealReal was allowing counterfeit items to be sold on its website.
Here is an excerpt from a press release discussing a lawsuit brought by stakeholders of the company, claiming that The RealReal made statements regarding their IPO that “featured allegedly false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that the Company’s employees received little training on how to spot fake items, that the Company’s strict quotas on its employees exacerbated product authentication issues, that consequently, the potential for counterfeit or mislabeled items to make it through Company’s authentication process was higher than disclosed“
The Evidence
Finally, we have some examples from The RealReal’s website to show you.
Take a look at these three items which The RealReal lists as Casablanca, which they correctly label as an emerging brand. The brand was founded by French-Moroccan Charaf Tajer, and they make very cool clothing. If you know anything about the brand, or if you simply browse their website for two minutes, you will have no doubt that these items have nothing to do with this Casablanca, which was established in 2018. It’s completely obvious, but the styles are nothing like anything from the real brand, and they are clearly very old items, decades out of style. And if you had the items in front of you, you would see that the labels are incorrect. So what happened? Were these items mislabeled? No; They are from a different brand that was called Casablanca, and the fact that these items were accepted by The RealReal gives us ZERO faith in their ability to truly authenticate any items.
Take a look at what one of these leather jackets looks like in detail:
This is the exact model jacket as shown above from The RealReal (Here is the one on therealreal.com, and here is the one from Yahoo Japan Auctions). This jacket, which will cost you about $30 from Yahoo Japan Auctions, is listed for $795, marked down to $397.50 at The RealReal.
Look at the label from the Yahoo listing! This item had to have been accepted by the consignment team, authenticated, then through quality control, styled, photographed, measured, priced and listed on the website, and not ONE of those people was able to tell that this item is not what it claims to be? The embarrassment is almost as overwhelming as the incompetence.
A More Egregious Example
Take a look at the following photo. Clearly a vintage belted leather jacket that is worth almost nothing, and surely not an item of interest to a designer consignment store, right?
If you are The RealReal, you’d say that this item was from Golden Goose. Take a look at the lining, which is clearly shown in their photos, and see if you have any doubt.
Would anyone in their right mind believe that this was from the incredible luxe Italian brand that was founded in 2013? Take a look at this photo, which shows what brand this jacket is actually from.
This is an old brand called Golden Goose by Daniel Young. Absolutely no connection to the contemporary designer brand. Again, we ask how these items made it onto the site. We even brought this one to their attention, yet the item remained until it was actually sold a couple months later!
This is where we gave up. In addition to all the people who physically handled the item and somehow could not identify the problem, even The RealReal customer service is untrained or unwilling to work to rectify an error brought to their attention.
This brings us to our conclusion; If The RealReal cannot be trusted to even properly identify a brand, how can they be trusted to authenticate a counterfeit item that was designed to fool people? How many people have been ripped off, intentionally or not, by The RealReal? We have zero faith in their ability to authenticate items and find it hard to imagine how these items can pass through their system if it is as thorough as they claim. In our opinion, there is no excuse.
