Alexandra and I met 10 years ago, during our time at Harvard University and soon became fast friends. From the start we knew that one day we would like to create a business together, we were just unsure what it would be at that time.
A couple of years ago, we decided to brainstorm and think of ways to unite our experiences in order to start a business together. Alexandra had great knowledge of the luxury fashion world with retail experiences from the likes of Louis Vuitton and Bulgari, while I come strictly from the e-commerce world. I was one of the first employees at eBay and during my 4 year run I witnessed it’s growth from 40 employees to about 5,000.
As you can imagine, experiencing such a dramatic rise was more than inspiring and something I hoped to be part of again. Alexandra and I would frequently meet in NYC and attend the city’s famous sample sales. We would receive numerous calls from family and friends instructing us on which designers they would like us to go and see, not to mention the exact items they would love us to bring back. So we started thinking that for this to work online nationwide would be really lucrative while also marrying our expertise and enabling us to form a revolutionary business. Gilt Groupe was launched on November 13th 2007.
Alexis Maybank CSO & Co-founder
Click here to hear one of our Tin Shingle members experience selling on Gilt >
