Julie L. Wainwright is an e-commerce entrepreneur. She is the founder and the former CEO of The RealReal, an online marketplace for authenticated luxury consignment.

Career

Clorox

Early in her career Wainwright began working for The

Clorox The Clorox Company (formerly Clorox Chemical Company) is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of consumer and professional products. As of 2024, the Oakland, California-based company had approximately 8,000 employees worldwide. N ...

Company in brand management and

computer software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

.(accessed April 25, 2009)

Berkeley Systems

By 1996, she had replaced Wes Boyd as CEO of

Berkeley Systems Berkeley Systems was a San Francisco Bay Area software company co-founded in 1987 by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades. It made money early on by performing contract work for the National Institutes of Health, specifically in making modifications to th ...

where she was instrumental in changing the company's strategy by making it a leading interactive entertainment entity. (accessed April 25, 2009) As president and CEO of the company, she reduced a two-year decline in productivity. She was among one third of the employees that were laid off from Berkeley when the company was sold to CUC in late 1996.

Reel.com

In March 1998, Wainwright became president and CEO of Reel.com, replacing founder Stuart Skorman. Four months later,

Hollywood Video Hollywood Entertainment Corp., more commonly known as Hollywood Video, was an American Video rental shop, video rental store chain based in Wilsonville, Oregon. Founded by Mark Wattles in 1988, the chain would quickly expand following the compa ...

purchased Reel.com "in a deal valued at $100 million."

Pets.com

Wainwright was approached by John Hummer of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners to run Pets.com, and was CEO of Pets.com when it ceased operations 268 days after its initial stock offering ⁠— ⁠"one of the shortest-lived public companies on record" according to Kirk Cheyfitz, author of ''Thinking Inside the Box: The 12 Timeless Rules for Managing a Successful Business''. After shutting Pets.com in November 2000, her husband sought a divorce. Wainwright said that this was a very difficult time in her life: "I had two major life crises in the same week, one public and one private, that sent me on a

journey of self-discovery Journey or journeying may refer to: * Travel, the movement of people between distant geographical locations ** Day's journey, a measurement of distance ** Road trip, a long-distance journey on the road Animals * Journey (horse), a thoroughbred ...

and healing I couldn’t have anticipated."

The RealReal

Wainwright founded The RealReal in 2011, and the company shipped its first orders in June of that year. In a 2015 article
Forbes
gave The RealReal a FORBES-estimated valuation of $300 million saying “the startup is in a much better place than Pets.com ever was.” By December 2017, The RealReal employed 950 people. The company's focus on sustainability led to its becoming the first luxury member of the

Ellen MacArthur Dame Ellen Patricia MacArthur (born 8 July 1976) is an English retired sailor and charity founder. MacArthur is a successful solo long-distance yachtswoman – on 7 February 2005, she broke the world record for the fastest solo circumnaviga ...

Foundation's CE100 USA. In early 2019 The RealReal announced it would be adding an additional half-million square feet of e-commerce center space in Perth Amboy, New Jersey to its existing e-commerce centers in Secaucus, New Jersey and Brisbane, California. Wainwright was mentioned on CNBC in a report about the company's authentication process. In early 2020, TheRealReal was sued by investors in a class action lawsuit in connection with alleged securities laws violations stemming from TheRealReal's initial public offering. On June 22, 2022, The RealReal announced that its founder and CEO Julie Wainwright had stepped down.

Advisory Roles

Wainwright is an advisor to Springboard Enterprises’ New York Fashion Tech Lab and Purdue University's Krannert School of Management. She has been a board member of the Headlands Center for the Arts, Magic Theatre and San Francisco Art Institute.

Recognition

In 2019, Wainwright received the Parsons Table Award. In 2018 Wainwright was included in Inc.’s Female Founders 100 list, Entrepreneur’s 50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs and Fast Company’s Most Creative People In Business. In 2017, The RealReal received the award for Best-Performing Company in the small-cap category from ''WWD''. She has been included in the Business of Fashion’s BoF500 for both 2016 and 2017, Vanity Fair’s New Establishment list 2017, and Forbes 40 over 40. In 2016, Wainwright accepted the Fashion Group International’s award for Innovation in Retail e-Commerce on behalf of The RealReal and won Springboard Enterprises’ Northstar Award. The ''San Francisco Business Times'' recognized Wainwright as one of the most-admired CEOs of the year in 2014, and again in 2017 as one of the most influential women of the year. Wainwright was selected for the inaugural 2021

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

50 Over 50; made up of entrepreneurs, leaders, scientists and creators who are over the age of 50.

References

External links

Wainwright's book
on Amazon.com
The RealReal
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wainwright, Julie American women chief executives Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American technology chief executives Krannert School of Management alumni 21st-century American women