The short version: The RealReal, the US luxury consignment platform, sold a record $642m of goods in the third quarter and raised its outlook. In the same week, LuisaViaRoma, the Florence boutique turned global e-tailer, went to court auction from €18.83m. Luxury online is not dying. The full-price multibrand model is.
Two filings, two days apart, describe the same market from opposite ends. On 29 October, The RealReal reported that gross merchandise value rose 23% to $642m in the quarter to 30 September, revenue rose 19% to $206.1m and orders passed one million, which the company called its strongest order growth since 2022. It raised its full-year guidance to revenue of $806m–$810m. The same day, FashionUnited reported that LuisaViaRoma’s business would be sold at public auction under a simplified liquidation supervised by the Court of Florence, with a starting price of €18,830,495.34 — the binding offer already made by LVR Srl, a consortium led by Paolo Corinaldesi.
Rati Levesque, The RealReal’s chief executive, said the quarter set “quarterly all-time highs in GMV, revenue and orders.” LuisaViaRoma’s chief executive, Tommaso Maria Andorlini, stays on under the new owners, with Corinaldesi as executive chairman, according to FashionUnited.
The numbers on each side
The RealReal’s quarter was strong on every line the company reports. According to its results release filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, average order value rose 8% to $629, active buyers over the trailing twelve months rose 13% to 1,152,000, gross margin reached 74.9%, and adjusted EBITDA nearly doubled to $17.0m from $9.3m. It reported net income of $16.0m, though that includes a $21.2m non-cash gain on the value of warrants; on a diluted basis the company still recorded a loss per share of four cents. For the full year it now expects $2.585bn–$2.6bn of GMV.
LuisaViaRoma’s numbers run the other way. According to Modaes, the Spanish trade outlet, revenue climbed from €206.4m in 2021 to €232.4m in 2023 while losses grew from €5.2m to €39.7m. In 2021 the investment firm Style Capital paid €130m for 40% of the company, a deal meant to fund international growth and an eventual stock market listing. A New York store opened in September 2024 and closed in under two years. In March, staff struck outside the Via Roma store in Florence, with around 200 direct jobs at risk, FashionUnited reported. The deal on the table now transfers 181 employees, according to Modaes.
Do the arithmetic on the 2021 deal and it valued the whole company at about €325m. The auction starts at €18.83m. The two figures do not measure exactly the same thing — one was a minority stake in a company, the other is a business unit bought out of liquidation — but the direction is not in doubt.
Why LuisaViaRoma is not alone
LuisaViaRoma is the latest of the full-price multibrand e-tailers to fall, not the first. Modaes lists the others: Farfetch needed rescue backing from Coupang in late 2023, Matches went into receivership in March 2024, and Yoox Net-a-Porter was folded into Mytheresa in April 2025. Even the survivor is growing slowly — Mytheresa’s latest quarter showed sales up 5.6% to €256m. We traced the same unwinding in physical retail when a two-centuries-old department store drew bids under £40m.
The model those businesses shared was simple. Buy designer stock each season, at wholesale, months ahead. Sell as much as possible at full price. Clear the rest in sales that train customers to wait for the sales. When demand for new luxury softens, the retailer is left holding inventory it paid for and can only move at a discount, while the brands it stocks are pulling their best product back into their own stores.
The structural argument
Set the two businesses side by side and three differences explain most of the gap.
One. Who carries the stock. Most of The RealReal’s revenue comes from consignment: it sells other people’s goods and takes a commission, so the risk of an unsold handbag sits largely with the person who consigned it. Consignment revenue grew 18% in the quarter. A multibrand e-tailer buys its stock outright before it knows what will sell.
Two. Where the price comes from. A full-price retailer inherits its prices from brands that have been raising them hard for years. A resale platform prices against what buyers will actually pay for a piece that already exists. When new luxury looks expensive, the second price wins.
Three. What the purchase is worth afterwards. The RealReal describes itself as building the place where customers discover what to buy, track what they own and decide when to sell. That is a pitch to an owner, not just a shopper. It assumes a good piece has a second life and a second price, which is exactly how serious buyers now think about a bag or a coat — we saw the same logic in Fashionphile’s resale-value ranking.
None of this makes resale a safe bet. The RealReal took years to reach consistent profitability, its headline net income this quarter leans on a non-cash gain, and it refinanced its debt only this month. But the direction of travel is clear. The job the multibrand e-tailer used to do — choosing from many designers and putting the edit in front of you — has moved to the secondary market, where the supply is the contents of other people’s wardrobes and the price has already been tested once.
The pattern also says something about scale. LuisaViaRoma’s own plan, according to Modaes, was to shrink deliberately, to €120m–€140m of revenue in 2027, to protect margins and full-price selling. A business that took growth capital to go big is now trying to survive by going small and specific. That is the conclusion the market keeps reaching: substance over scale, and the middle is where it breaks.
What it means if you buy, own or sell luxury
If you buy new, buy as if you will sell one day. The pieces that hold value are specific: a known bag in a classic colour, outerwear from a house that makes it well, fine jewellery. Seasonal novelty from the mid-tier mass market rarely resells at all, so skip it.
If you own pieces you no longer wear, the numbers favour consigning them now. The RealReal’s order growth and rising average order value mean demand for good secondhand is healthy going into the holidays. Check the commission structure before you send anything, and photograph condition yourself first.
If you buy secondhand, treat the platform’s authentication as a starting point. As we wrote when we looked at what a resale guarantee covers, proving a piece is genuine is not the same as proving it is good.
And if you liked what the old multibrand e-tailers did best — finding designers you would not otherwise see — that job has not disappeared. It has moved to vintage and estate dealers, independent designers and craft workshops who sell direct, accessible-luxury labels that keep their lines tight, and a selective handful of mainstream houses. Those four channels are where the edit lives now.
The honest takeaway
The RealReal’s record and LuisaViaRoma’s auction are not a story about online versus stores. They are a story about who takes the risk on unsold goods, and who sets the price. The businesses that bet on buying ever more new product to sell at ever higher prices are the ones going to court. The ones built on goods that already exist are setting records.
What to watch: LuisaViaRoma’s deadline for rival bids is 23:59 CET on 8 November, with competitive bidding on 12 November if better offers arrive and a final purchase date of 30 November. The RealReal guides to $720m–$735m of GMV in the fourth quarter, its first holiday season under the new outlook.
The next move is yours.
Sources: The RealReal third-quarter results release (SEC filing) · FashionUnited on the LuisaViaRoma auction · Modaes · FashionUnited on The RealReal · FashionUnited on the March strike
