Fashionphile's Founder on How to Spot a Superfake Birkin (with Sarah Davis)

Back Row with Amy Odell

Sarah Davis discusses her journey from running an eBay store in 1999 to founding Fashionphile, a major player in luxury resale. The episode

Key takeaways

• Sarah Davis started Fashionphile on eBay in 1999 while attending law school.
• Fashionphile uses a $35,000 metal alloy detector to authenticate jewelry like Cartier Love bracelets.

Main topics

• Luxury Resale History
• Authentication Technology

Notable quotes

Your dupe isn't cute.

Conclusion

The episode provides a deep dive into the high-stakes world of luxury

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) Sarah Davis started Fashionphile as an eBay store when she was a law student in 1999. Times were very different then. eBay would mail her physical checks. And today, her business has exploded. Fashionphile has celebrity faces like Cardi B. It employs more than 350 people. And it has sprawling offices in New York, California, London, and Japan, where teams work diligently to authenticate every product. I hear from back row readers all the time that they really trust Fashionphile when it comes to getting authentic secondhand luxury items like Birkins and Chanel bags when super fakes have never been better and counterfeiters have never been smarter. So I wanted to have Sarah on the podcast to hear about how she did it and where she thinks resale is going. How does her company manage to authenticate 1,500 bags that come in every single day? Resale comes up as a reason for the luxury industry's struggles of late. Obviously, if you want a great bag, you don't have to go into a Chanel store and buy one new. You can go on Fashionphile and get one. So can resale and luxury coexist? Today, we're getting into how to win at resale in a world full of super fakes. I'm Amy O'Dell, and this is The Back Row Podcast. I am here with Sarah Davis. Sarah, it's so great to see you. Thanks for being on the show. Good to see you again. Yes, so happy to be here. So tell me, you started Fashionphile in 1999. Yeah. Which was a totally different time and a totally different internet. I Speaker 2 (1:27) know. When I talk to my kids about those early days or literally just young people on the team and it just sounds like... I'm so old, which I, you know, I'm in my 50s. I am. But the world, there was no social media. There was no, you couldn't process a credit card online in 1999. So it's just such a different world. It's hard to even describe. But you were on eBay. Yeah. Fashion file was my like user ID. How did, was it something you were doing on the side? Like how did you get started? I was in law school and I discovered eBay. It's interesting because I think there's a lot of people that might. have similar stories. I talked to them and I was not trying to like start a startup, but I was definitely trying to find ways to make money because I grew up in a family with, I was the oldest of six kids and we paid for things ourselves. So my parents just didn't. pay for my school, didn't pay for my clothes, you know, like I paid for those things. So Speaker 1 (2:24) my Speaker 2 (2:25) entire life, it's like people are like, oh, yeah, you know, you're such an entrepreneur. I'm like, I'm like so many people, honestly, globally. Sometimes when I'm in a foreign country and some little seven year old girl try to like sell me gum or something, I like see myself in that. Not that we were never destitute. And so I don't want to say that, but. My parents didn't have money for, if I was going out on the weekend, I bought it myself. If I was getting school clothes for that year, I bought those school clothes with my own money. And I liked nice things. I wanted to have nice clothes. And so that meant two things for me. That meant because I was buying it myself, I like had to find ways to make money, number one. And number two, I was shopping resale way before it was like trendy. When I was growing up, I grew up in resale. And the old days of resale, you know, way back when, if you said, oh my gosh, I love your shirt. And I bought it at Goodwill. I'm not saying thanks. I got it at Goodwill. When I grew up, that was like shameful. You're like, oh, thank you. Yes, it is cute. You know, like I would never, why would I, why would I divulge that at that time? And so it was like a totally different world of resale, but it's interesting because those two things, not having money. And so always kind of being scrappy and then like. shopping and resale just because I didn't, again, needed to stretch my money. Those things are kind of what got me where I was today. And I wouldn't have chosen those things for myself is what I'm saying. That's interesting. Speaker 1 (3:47) Right. And what was the first thing you sold? Speaker 2 (3:50) My husband was on The Price is Right. And I'm Speaker 1 (3:56) the Speaker 2 (3:56) extrovert. My husband is like a total introvert. He was in medical school. I was in law school. Okay. So we both had like lots of money going out and like didn't have money, didn't have jobs. And like, we're trying to find ways to, to, you know, loans and all that. And he's a total introvert. And we got the chance to be on The Price is Right. I wanted to like, come on down. But my husband went through medical school in the military. And I knew that at the time. Bob Barker was a big like military support guy. And if you showed up in uniform, he's going to call you down. So I like somehow I've got away with my husband. I was able to convince him to wear his uniform. And of course he got to come down and he won some prizes. And so we ended up with these prizes. Some of the things, this is another topic for another day, but like we pay tax on this stuff you're getting as prizes. Like I didn't know that. I learned that that day. And I'm like, oh, I'm not taking that like Sapphire. sailboat necklace that he won. And I'm like, that's worth so much money. We have to pay so much in taxes and I won't wear it. And there's no resale value for it. But we did take some things that we could use. And one of the things that we thought we wanted was a rug doctor. It was brand new. When I got it, I thought you could use it on like any floor, but it was really for rugs and we only had hardwoods. So I'm like, we'll sell it on eBay. I just learned about eBay. First thing we sold. Got like 700 bucks for it. And I was stoked on that. And I just started selling things. Once I was like, wow, this is crazy. We could, like before that would have been a yard sale, get $25 back in the old days. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. Cause we put it up for like 99 cents in an auction, drove it up to like $700. Like this is nuts. So started selling just things we had. I had nothing luxury. I remember there was, I had a pair of Doc Martin, Mary Janes and a pair of. like gap overalls that my kids would actually want both of those things now that I still sold those things. And that was my first experience. And so realized that, oh my gosh, like I love shopping in resale environments and consignment shops and all that. And I'd always see something that's super nice, but it's like, oh, there's a Prada skirt for $30, but I'm not a size zero. So I guess I'm not going to buy it. And then I was like, wait, I can buy that and sell it on eBay. A lot of people do this now that that hustle. And so I started doing that, looking for things, not as just as, you know, selling things around my house, but like looking for things to sell to make money. Speaker 1 (6:26) You must have been very early then to eBay. Speaker 2 (6:28) Oh, yeah. This is like, again, this is back in the day. For years, I'm accepting checks in the mail, physical checks that you're sending me because there's no like payment system. And I'm waiting for the check to clear. And when I, again, this is the kind of conversation I have with my kids. They're like, what are you even talking about? None of them have Speaker 1 (6:45) a Speaker 2 (6:45) checkbook. None of them know where does one buy a stamp? You know, like, this is crazy, like an envelope. Like, how do you get that? So it sounds so hard. And it honestly was hard. And so there's lots of things to learn there. So Speaker 1 (7:00) then how did you how did this become your full time job? Did you practice as a lawyer? Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:05) So I have a lot of friends that I that I still kind of stay connected with from those law school days. And it was a strange phenomenon because now like everybody has there was no. phones. Like now you snap a picture of yourself on eBay, snap a picture of that thing with your phone and you can just post it right from your phone. It's so cool and easy. Back then, eBay didn't even have a photo host. I don't want to get into all the details, but there was no mobile phones. Yeah, I'd have a camera. And back in the old days, like we didn't have digital cameras. This is nuts. This is prehistoric. What's cool is that as things have changed, what's going to be around in 10 years will sound as freakish. In 10 years, we're going to look back to today and can't believe we used to use such prehistoric methodologies and technologies. But my husband and I were both in like graduate school and we shared one computer at home. This is how it used to be. You'd have a computer in your living room. And so we both would use like computer labs at school. So I would literally bring stuff to my lab at law school and everybody's like, what are you doing? But then they're like, oh, could you sell this for me? Because like... Yeah, that's awesome. Cause I'd show them the things. And so it was like, these are people who had nice things and wanted to get rid of it. And I was able to kind of provide that service. And so started out that way. And then by the time I graduated from law school, I like paid off my law school loans from selling on eBay. And I was just like, oh my gosh, there was so much freedom in it. And I really enjoyed the creativity of like developing the brand. Like I said, fashion follows my user ID. enjoyed that process and everybody around me is like, okay, finally, she like graduated from law school. I passed the bar. They're like. now she can get a real job and like make some actual real money. Cause I'm, I'm probably bringing home after all my expenses, maybe, I don't know, in the first year, maybe like $10,000 or something, you know, like get a job. This is a waste of your time is what it looks like. But nobody else was doing this. I was, I, by the time I graduated from law school, I'd kind of figured out that like designer. Speaker 2 (9:09) products just keep their value better than anything else. Like when you drive them off the lot, a really great brand just keeps its value. And I was really just loving it. And I was not making a lot of money, but I was making some money and nobody was really doing this in a professional way, in a scaled way. Even my husband was like, okay, like now you can like stop this weird thing you're doing from our house. So instead of that, I just moved the business out of my house, got a small office and started. I really only had a side job. I had a friend's dad who was a lawyer, and I did some work from him part-time, but I never had a real job. I still have my credentials, though, and I keep them in case this whole thing doesn't work out. I can dust it off. Speaker 1 (9:56) I'm sure it comes in handy. Speaker 2 (9:58) Yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah. So then when did you move off eBay? We kept eBay, actually, for a long time. I want to say... Meaning as an outlet? Because one thing that's really great about eBay is there's a ton of eyeballs on there. Where if you think about like starting in 1999 on eBay, we got our website in 2007. And we love that because then it's like there's no fees and just a lot of the back and forth. When you're selling on a platform, you can't really connect with the customer. You don't get any data. So like you buy something from me and I want to be able to like communicate with you. hopefully re-engage with you. And so we would do all these crazy, like they called it guerrilla marketing back in the day, but like you buy a bag for me on eBay and I send you in the box. I had a consignment agreement in the early days were consignment. And, and I put it on pink paper, the same agreement you could download off the website, but I put on pink paper because people would just fill out the consignment agreement, ship me stuff. And I wanted to know, did you find me on the website or did you buy something from me on eBay? And I knew the pink paper meant, oh, this is somebody who I just stuck that in the box. And basically it said, hey, thanks for this purchase. I want this back if you're not using it. And if you got anything else, let me sell it for you. And that was kind of a guerrilla marketing kind of way to meet people. But there was no social media. There was no Google ads. Speaker 1 (11:24) You know, there Speaker 2 (11:24) was a bunch of search engines. not one that was like really wasn't like Google dominant. Yeah. So super interesting times. Speaker 1 (11:32) If you enjoy this podcast, you'll also love my back row newsletter. It's a publication covering fashion, power, and the