Alexis Maybank - By Invitation Only: How We Built Gilt and Changed the Way Millions Shop

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First published in 2012 by Portfolio / Penguin
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Copyright A & A Productions, LLC, 2012
All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Maybank, Alexis.

By invitation only : how we built Gilt and changed the way millions shop / Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-57191-0

1. Maybank, Alexis. 2. Wilson, Alexandra Wilkis. 3. Gilt Groupe. 4. Luxury goods industry
United States. 5. Discount houses (Retail trade)United States. 6. Electronic commerce.
7. Entrepreneurship. I. Wilson, Alexandra Wilkis. II. Title.

381. 14206573dc23

2011043725

Printed in the United States of America

Set in WarnockPro

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ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

To our loving
and supportive families

I n 2007 weAlexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, avid New York City sample sale shoppers and the best of friends since graduate schoollaunched, with our cofounders Mike Bryzek, Phong Nguyen, and Kevin Ryan, a business located squarely at the charged intersection of fashion and technology, where things tend to come and go quickly.

We were barely thirty.

Wed never worked togetheror with Mike, Phong, or Kevinprofessionally.

We had no proof the concept would work. And actually, it struck a lot of people as outlandish. Online sample sales?

The idea that youd have to become a member in order to shop on an exclusive luxury e-commerce site? Or that tens of thousands of women would wage a war of the mouses by attempting to buy the exact same designer shoe at the exact same time? Unheard of.

While e-commerce and fashion were separately booming, high-end brands still preferred to sell their wares exclusively in stores. Luxury executives believed customers would throw down their credit cards only if they could touch and feel their purchases.

Yet we had guts, perseverance, a lot of trust in each other, and just enough navet, not to mention the valuable experience wed accumulated working for companies like eBay and Louis Vuitton. We also had our own instincts as shoppers. We knew we were creating a site we wanted to shop onand, more than that, a site wed be willing to drop everything to visit at noon each day.

We named the business Gilt Groupe.

And together with Mike and Phong (Gilts two brilliant founding engineers) and Kevin (our founding chairman, whose idea it was to bring online flash sales to the United States), we raised millions of dollars, created a totally unique online customer experience, established a strong corporate culture, overcame the Web site and warehousing challenges of rapid growth, and hired an amazing staff to execute our vision. We launched an ambitious business that, in three and a half short years, investors would value at one billion dollars. Gilt Groupe changed fashion and e-commerce and fundamentally altered the way millions of people shop for everything from shoes to luxury vacations.

Nowadays, were asked often about our story. As we travel the country, speaking on panels and meeting customers at events or over coffees and meals, the same questions come from men and women of all backgrounds, of all ages, in all professions. At first it surprised us that they didnt want to know when Gilt would next sell Vera Wang or Brooks Brothers Black Fleece or why we had run out of their sizes during our last Christian Louboutin sale or what Mr. Valentino is like in person. They didnt press us for the date when the Parker Palm Springs would next appear on Jetsetter, Gilts luxury travel site. Instead, they askedand still doHow did you meet? How did you convince such amazing brands to sell on Gilt? How did you make sure the business didnt destroy your friendship? What are you each responsible for? How do you find good engineers? Can you read my business plan and tell me what you think?

Coming from marketers or bankers, students or entrepreneurs, fashionistas or stay-at-home moms, these questions reveal the same interests and aspirations: to start a company, to galvanize a family business, to innovate in the context of a larger corporation. They speak to a powerful human desire: to create something and to watch it grow into something larger than oneself. We definitely relate to these feelings. And we are proof that amazing things can happen when you team up with the right people to take risks and act on them.

In recounting our backgrounds, key decisions, and hard-won wisdom in this book, we hope to inform, inspire, and help pave the way for others who want to start something new, advance in a career, orespeciallybuild a business that grows to employ dozens or even hundreds, modernize industries, and change peoples lives. Whether you have already started your own company, are tackling a new opportunity inside a big organization, or just have a great idea, some entrepreneurial spirit, and no idea what to do next, we are putting forth our story with the goal of offering concrete suggestions on how to handle some of the challenges that lie ahead. Weve provided a mix of smaller anecdotes and larger takeaways, of personal perspectives on well-worn themes and interrogations of widely accepted truths.

Keep in mind as you read this book that it is just our point of view, a forthright and at times self-effacing account of our early days at the center of a fast-growing, wildly influential New York start-up. Weve helped lead Gilt Groupe from a tiny upstart based out of a dingy Manhattan office, where we sat shoulder to shoulder with Mike and Phong, to the much larger operation it is today, with more than nine hundred team members handling everything from merchandising to engineering to photography to marketing. The site once hosted two or three sales per week; it now hosts more than twenty-two per day in order to cater to more than five million members. Gilt has expanded far beyond womens fashion to offer everything from Volkswagen Jettas for $5,995 to a two hundred thousand dollar villa rental in the Bahamas (on Jetsetter; it sold).