Considered one of the pioneers of e-commerce, Julie Wainwright knows a thing or two about reinventing retail. She founded The RealReal in 2011 and built it into a billion-dollar brand that reshaped the luxury resale market and set a new standard for sustainability, trust and innovation in retail.

In this clip from her keynote session at the Women in Retail On the Road event in New York City last fall, Julie tells the story of opening The RealReal’s first physical location in 2016 after years of online-only growth. She reflects on lessons learned, some more obvious than others, such as the need for cash in-store.

“When you run an online business, you don’t take cash,” Wainwright noted. When her first in-store shopper wanted to pay with cash, she scrambled to serve the customer. “I had to go to the employees, ‘Do you have any money? We have to make change for this sale.'”

During her session, Wainwright spoke about other challenges she solved during the foundational years of The RealReal, such as pitching the business to male investors as well as navigating multilocation inventory management.

Women in Retail Leadership Circle members can view Julie’s full keynote here and session recordings from all previous On the Road events here.