My Real Real Experience – Buying

First of all – sorry to be late with the post, I was at the Tucson Book Festival (which was wonderful! And my first time in Tucson! (hi LL from the author dinner!) and could not finish the post in time. Usually I try to plan it on to have it on Monday but sometimes I slip. Onward!

So, a few weeks ago I posted about my experience selling on The Real Real – now, I’ll share about my experience buying.

Okay – just a bit of history. When it first started The Real Real had some CRAZY deals – unfortunately I didn’t really participate too much but I remember seeing some great prices come across my screen at the time. Unfortunately I was neck deep in baby and never really did much shopping and plus it was all just quite overwhelming….

Cut to late last year, when I began to snoop around the site in earnest. I noticed that the prices had gone up…but that there were still some good deals to be had. I started looking around, made some purchases, and have some learnings.

Wait for what you love. A TON of stuff comes across the site. I had been wanting the green MaxMara coat above for years, after seeing my friend Alice in hers. I had tried to search for an alternative in vain but the cut was never right, or the color wasn’t the right one. And finally, of course, it pops up on the The Real Real. I had been checking eBay sporadically for years by the way…never showed. I say to wait for what you love because…

Pricing isn’t always consistent. I had seen similar MaxMara coats go for around $300, so I was super optimistic but then this showed up and was around $800. ARGH!!!!!! Coming from the selling side, I can say that pricing can vary wildly and so you just never know how some stuff will get priced. Some pieces are priced too low and get snapped up within seconds…some are way too high and sit for months and months. Prepare to possibly be frustrated and hopefully delighted.

Also..if you don’t have to have the piece right away, you can get a discount. I’ve found for certain items, they won’t unlock the “20%” offer in the first week or two of consignment. If you can wait it out (which I did for the green coat above, which killed me but I had to do it ) usually the 20% gets unlocked, unless it’s a certain brand like Hermes or Chanel. And Chanel RTW gets unlocked too.

Have a list of brands you love, including those smaller ones that you always admired that maybe you didn’t buy because they were $$. In my opinion, the smaller brands are where the jackpots are. Like, those super flashy Gucci items or Chanel jackets and stuff – those are always going to priced at a certain level. But items like a lady like Altuzarra dress (be careful with Altuzarra, sometimes I see the Target stuff in there, at ridiculous prices), or a short coat from The Row, or even a green Hermes cashmere cropped poncho for $220 – this is where the good stuff is, my friends (and I debated over that poncho before I decided to share it!!). Case in point – the coat above. It is Akris main label and I LOVE IT and it retailed for $3,990 because it is double face cashmere and Akris main line is crazily priced and I got it for… $200. YES. And it wasn’t even like I pounced on it, it sat on the site for weeks! And it is fully reversible and has huge pockets. It’s incredible and a deal like this is what keeps you coming back. I wore it on the plane and didn’t feel nervous at all because yeah I got it for $200!

But because of the deal factor…stuff goes fast. Faster than you think sometimes. So beware. I was sweating bullets during the MaxMara wait and it was in people’s carts multiple times. But also..

Stuff gets returned often, too. I’ve “hearted” a few items and seen them get sold and come back. So even if you lose out on an item, I’d at the very least bookmark and check back.

Order multiple pieces to try out if you are interested because you the site charges for both shipping + returns. For those of us spoiled by Nordstrom, Net-A-Porter, Matches, and oh…almost every luxury site, it’s a bummer. But I guess it’s how they manage their costs, right?

Be careful with handbags. A lot of them are final sale only. I hear a lot of complaints about fakes (if you go to my selling post, scroll down to the comments and you can read Jaime’s experience…actually I’d recommend reading all the comments!). The tiny good news is that it seems TRR is so used to this that they generally take stuff back, but yeah….not confidence inspiring.

Whew! This post was long because more and more tidbits kept coming to me…another reason why I was a day late! I hope this was helpful and I’d LOVE to hear about some of your favorite TRR buys! And any other tips you have!