The RealReal is an online luxury consignment store that claims all of its items are 100% real — but are they?
The company's high profile dovetails with the increasing popularity in luxury online shopping and benefits from a consumer who is more willing to buy secondhand merchandise. A report by Cowen Equity Research estimates $200 billion worth of U.S. luxury goods are available for resale, saying The RealReal is "the only platform currently that offers a vast product offering with 100% authentic luxury items.
Other internal company documents clearly spell out strict quotas that employees have been expected to meet or face discipline. This means some obvious problems with merchandise can be overlooked.Meltzer said it was inexcusable that The RealReal sold her a scarf that was mislabeled. "I was pretty excited," Garcia said. "And then when the dress arrived, it's like what you hear about when you order on the internet — expectation versus reality. It was a cheap-looking polyester. And the lining was cheap too. I have Prada dresses, so I know the quality."
CNBC made repeated requests to The RealReal for interviews with Wainwright or a company official, which were declined. After CNBC asked for specific comment about the copywriters and quotas, the company emailed a statement, which did not address those issues. Parchment and other former employees said that copywriters, who often examined the items, did not have sufficient training to spot fakes.
The RealReal told CNBC that the company employs more than 100 gemologists, horologists and "brand experts on staff, as well as hundreds of additional trained authenticators. We make every effort to accurately authenticate the items we receive, arming our authenticators with tools and technology as well as authentication guides. Our authentication team receives daily training updates to stay ahead of the latest developments from brands and counterfeiters.
But Parchment said, in her experience, corrections were frequent. "I don't think anyone had enough training at the end of the day," Parchment said. "The fakes are getting really good. And when you have such a high volume that you have to get through and you're worried about hitting your goal, at the end of the day, I don't really think they cared whether it was real or not anyway.
The RealReal's use of copywriters to authenticate items is not new. Greta Stehr, a former luxury manager in Los Angeles for The RealReal, said she saw that firsthand during an employee tour of the Secaucus warehouse in 2015. The thing about authentication is that there's no formal training, so it's kind of like the wild West in a sense. There's not a roboticism to it. There's some level of human error and opinion involved.A former senior level manager, who said he could not be identified because of his non-disclosure agreement with the company, described quotas as "benchmarks" that any company would need to set up to achieve success.
"I had training. I wouldn't say I had enough because I obviously had some bags that I published on the site that were fake," said Bobb, who worked at The RealReal for about one year and left in August. She said a manager had alerted her to the fake items she had published.Soruce: CNBC
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