Huge Highs and Huge Lows - Anonymous employee The RealReal Employee Review

3.0
Dec 18, 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great shared company vision; Julie the CEO is an amazing businesswoman who knows what she's doing. Since I was an early employee, I got paid very well and got fantastic stock options. Great health, dental, 401K benefits are apart of the employee package. Lots of perks like sweet treats, catered lunches (on a monthly allowance system), bagels on Fridays, etc. Co-workers in most departments are a joy to work with. Easy going atmosphere regarding socializing and listening to music (headphones or out loud in your department). And of course: working with amazing luxury clothing and accessories all day like Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Givenchy. People who love fashion will love TRR.

Cons

It's a startup, and I learned that means a lot of overtime. It also means a lot of changes. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. It can be an extremely rough learning curve, and a very frustrating one at that. But I learned how a rapidly growing business works: weekly/monthly quotas are key, and the operations departments are driven by these numbers. (Holy stress!) Depending on when you started/what department you are in, promotions come easily or not at all. TRR is advertised as a "Promote from within" company, which holds true about half the time. I was lucky enough to be promoted twice, and got paid well. Other employees who started way after myself or others, were often not paid well at all and were not promoted when they should have been. Being in a luxury consignment environment, many employees can act very snobbish and have lots of attitude. But there are just as many down to earth co-workers to balance it out. Communication! Or lack thereof. The phrase "Too many cooks in the kitchen" always came to mind. Communication among department managers, and a manager to their employees, often needs a lot of work- and lead to a LOT of fires that need to be put out.

Explore other reviews about The RealReal

5.0
May 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Overall, the receiving team is very sweet and engaging. They try to help you when you need it or ask for it.

Cons

When you don't reach your goal, they do get on you/

2.0
Jun 13, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Pay and commission can be good, but the structure is unnecessarily convoluted and not as generous as it seems, and you will have no work/life balance if you want to actually make consistently high commission. If you have a true passion for luxury and fashion, you do get a lot of opportunities to handle and interact with special/rare items, and depending on store location you can meet a lot of interesting industry people and celebrities, especially during Fashion Weeks

Cons

Poor and unsupportive management with extremely unrealistic demands and expectations; you will get virtually no training, but are immediately expected to know how to do everything. The overall company culture is just unpleasant and very cliquey, and there's constant employee turnover. The online customer service system is terrible, so you will frequently have to handle customer issues that have nothing to do with you/your sales.

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