RealReal : First Quarter 2021 Stockholder Letter

The RealReal Q1 2021 Stockholder Letter

May 10, 2021

Dear Stockholders,

After more than a year of navigating the tough challenges created by COVID, we are incredibly pleased to report that we not only returned to growth in Q1 but also achieved our highest quarterly gross merchandise volume (GMV) to date. Building on December's 6% Y/Y GMV growth, Q1 GMV increased 27% Y/Y, a significant improvement from the 1% Y/Y decline in Q4.

We brought another 1.5 million members into our community in Q1, educating them about the lasting value of luxury goods and driving a shift toward more conscious consumption. We also added the greatest quarterly number of new consignors to date to our marketplace in Q1, and, as of April, surpassed $2 billion in cumulative consignor commission payouts. We accelerated from paying out $1 billion in commission over our first eight years to paying out the next $1 billion in just the past two years, helping our community monetize pieces they are no longer wearing or using and contributing to a more sustainable future.

Tackling the challenges of the past year led to numerous innovations and strategic initiatives that, combined, have us better positioned than ever to both build on our momentum and support long- term growth. We have significantly diversified our supply acquisition, expanded our retail footprint and brought millions of new members into the circular economy. We thank our entire The RealReal team for their unwavering dedication to delivering a superior resale experience to our community throughout these unprecedented times.

As we build on our recent momentum and march toward profitability, we remain focused on driving scale and operating efficiency gains. While the pandemic limits our visibility, with our return to growth and widespread vaccine distribution, we are optimistic our performance will improve significantly throughout 2021.

Continuing Recovery: Highest Quarterly GMV and Improving Growth

Our continued recovery was fueled by overall supply momentum, 34% Y/Y new buyer growth and the strength of our retail and vendor channels. When we provided our last update in late February, QTD GMV growth through Feb. 19 was 14% Y/Y. Our recovery continued for the balance of Q1 with growth accelerating in early March and accelerating even further as we lapped the onset of COVID in mid-March. In Q1, we saw all major categories exhibit growth for the first time since Q4 2019. Handbags, men's and fine jewelry generated the fastest growth, followed by growth approaching 20% Y/Y in women's apparel-our largest category and a key driver of new buyer conversion. Apparel

1

category growth is also an important driver of our financial success as it drives purchase frequency and generates attractive average take rates.

Since June 23, 2020, all of our retail locations have been open for shopping and consignment, with capacity limitations dictated by local municipalities and occasional closures for comprehensive disinfections. Our three authentication centers continue to be operational, and our processing capacity is currently not a constraint to growth. Many of our employees continue to work from home, and it has not negatively impacted our productivity or ability to manage the business. We expect some of our employees to be back in the office in June on a hybrid basis, should the city of San Francisco permit our return.

We've implemented robust preventative measures to protect our employees and customers, and work with third-party medical experts to validate our approach. While the daily state of our operations remains fluid and subject to any new restrictions that may be required by local or state authorities, given the strength of our health and safety programs, we do not currently expect future reductions in processing capacity.

Supply Recovery: Resuming At-Home Concierge + Accelerating Vendor Growth

For many consignors, an at-home appointment is the most convenient way to sell with us. In line with local safety guidelines, we were able to resume at-home concierge appointments in select markets in early March and nationwide by early April with comprehensive safety protocols.

The early performance of at-home concierge appointments is encouraging and points to signs of pent- up consignor supply. While it's difficult to estimate with precision the mix of supply by channel, we expect at-home concierge to return to playing an important role in our supply acquisition strategy post-COVID.

Momentum in The RealReal B2B vendor program also continued in Q1, with accelerating growth for the fourth consecutive quarter. The vast majority of our Q1 vendor activity was conducted with consignment terms. Q1 direct revenue reflects a modest contribution from a large vendor transaction we executed in Q4, and we anticipate product from this transaction to continue to contribute to direct revenue growth throughout 2021.

With the beginning of the resumption of at-home visits alongside direct shipments, virtual appointments, retail drop-offs and vendor, our supply acquisition engine is increasingly diverse and agile. Our supply acquisition evolution-virtual, vendor and stores-has the potential to both unlock incremental supply and de-risk our business, positioning us favorably for long-term growth. Given our consistently high sell-through in Q1, we believe our GMV growth reflects supply trends over time and we will no longer provide the detailed supply disclosures that we previously provided in

2

accordance with SEC guidance regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the case in Q1, where the trajectory of our GMV recovery correlated to our supply recovery.

Retail Expansion: 10 Neighborhood Stores By The End of Q2

Our retail stores are redefining and elevating the luxury resale shopping and selling experience. Our stores drive supply efficiently, have high average order value (AOV) and low return rates, drive brand awareness and create a halo effect in the local market. We operate flagship retail stores in Chicago, L.A., NYC and San Francisco and announced a strategy on our last earnings call to extend our physical presence via smaller footprint neighborhood stores close to where our existing and potential high-value consignors and customers live.

In Q1, we opened neighborhood stores in Brooklyn, N.Y.; Newport Beach, Calif.; and Greenwich, Conn. We plan to have a total footprint of 10 neighborhood stores by the end of Q2, and kicked off Q2 expanding neighborhood stores to Texas, with locations in Austin and Dallas. Our stores offer a highly curated selection of products based on local trends, while also providing a convenient way for customers to consign, return products and meet with our experts. We believe small footprint neighborhood stores are a highly effective and efficient avenue to drive supply and sell high-value items. We are confident that more consumers will return to our differentiated retail experience over the coming quarters as the COVID re-opening gains momentum and our retail footprint grows.

Q1 retail highlights included:

• Buyers who purchased in-store in Q1 spent 4.4 times more compared to online-only buyers; and
• Buyers who purchased in-store in Q1 generated AOVs approximately 2.6 times higher than online-only buyers.

We encourage you to visit one of our neighborhood stores to experience them in-person (please visit www.therealreal.com/storesto find the store nearest you).

Supporting Growth: Arizona Authentication Center Opening This Summer

In Q4, we signed a lease for an authentication center in Phoenix, which has a significantly larger capacity and the potential for operational efficiencies over time that will better support our future growth and have a positive impact on our consignor and buyer experience. It will also reduce our average fixed cost per order as we scale, due to the significantly lower occupancy costs on a per- square-foot basis vis-a-vis our existing facilities.

The Arizona facility is on track to begin operating in early summer. This facility will create more than 1,500 local, full-time jobs over the next five years, offering competitive pay, rewards and

3

benefits. We have an existing local presence through our partnership with the University of Arizona developing a degree program for gemology, which will create a pipeline of gemology talent to support our growth. Given the ability to build upwards in our Perth Amboy and Arizona authentication centers, we believe we now have sufficient capacity to support our growth for the next 5 years.

As a Bay Area-based company, our Brisbane authentication center played an important role in our early phase of growth. But with growth comes change and we need to significantly increase capacity to support our future growth. With our expansion into Arizona, we made the difficult decision to cease operations in Brisbane in early July. All of our Brisbane employees in good standing were offered comparable roles in our Phoenix authentication center with relocation assistance and their current salaries and benefits.

Technology Innovation: Enabling Operational and Supply Efficiencies

We continue to invest in technology to help us scale and grow more efficiently, with a focus on projects that either drive operational or supply acquisition efficiencies. We continue to optimize our automation of pricing, copywriting and photo retouching, and see an opportunity to improve our effectiveness and breadth of automation in these areas. We are prioritizing projects that support efficient supply acquisition, including removing friction from the at-home and retail consignment processes, optimizing the consignor onboarding process and building functionality to support multi- SKU ecommerce capabilities.

We are making progress on a number of efforts to leverage technology innovation to enhance our authentication efforts, including refining Item Risk Scoring (IRS), which leverages data science algorithms to identify points of risk and evaluate new items coming onto the marketplace. Our ability to identify risk at the beginning of our authentication process strengthens each quarter as we optimize our algorithms and our unique data asset grows with scale. We are also making progress using machine learning that leverages computer vision to enhance our authentication efforts, with promising initial results from experiments with several brands in the handbag category.

As we continue to collect more data, we are confident that the combination of IRS and computer vision models have the potential to augment our already best-in-class authentication process. While our experts will always play an important role in authentication, we believe leveraging technology and automation will further improve the effectiveness and scalability of our authentication processes and will continue to differentiate our business.

4

Sustainability Achievements: Upcycling and Carbon Neutrality

We are proud of the broader social impact we have through our mission to extend the life of luxury and create a more sustainable future. We focus on our "3Rs" as the key ways we activate our commitment to sustainability: Resell, Revive and Reimagine.

Resell: All of our members, whether they buy or sell with us, are participants in the circular economy and are playing an important role in reducing the impact of luxury goods on the environment. Resale on The RealReal, from our inception through Q1, has saved approximately 896 million liters of water and 18,732 metric tons of carbon.

Revive: We repair and restore items so they can be reworn, reused or resold. We expanded those efforts at the end of Q1 by launching ReCollection, an upcycling program giving new life to items. We kicked off Earth month by launching ReCollection 01, our first upcycled collection, in partnership with A-COLD-WALL*, Balenciaga, Dries Van Noten, Jacquemus, Simone Rocha, Stella McCartney, Ulla Johnson and Zero + Maria Cornejo. By bringing together a diverse group of luxury brands to collectively promote the importance of creating an afterlife for clothing, we hope to inspire people to think about the afterlife of what they own and embrace more conscious consumption. We look forward to collaborating with more brands that share our commitment to and passion for the circular economy.

Reimagine: We are forging relationships with leading global luxury brands like Gucci, Stella McCartney and Burberry to create new business models for a more sustainable future. Together we're expanding the circular economy and establishing new industry standards and best practices.

Our sustainability efforts extend to The RealReal and our footprint as well. On Earth Day, we announced that we became carbon neutral in 2020, a year ahead of our goal, through a combination of efforts to reduce and offset our footprint. We're committed to ongoing progress through a variety of initiatives, including:

• Developing an Environmental Management System to track sustainability objectives, goals and targets;
• Shipping the majority of products via ground to reduce GHG emissions;
• Reducing waste and setting targets of zero-waste certification at our authentication centers;
• Evaluating large-scale renewable energy power purchase agreements (PPAs) to power the majority of our operational footprint;
• Reducing paper consumption in the office and paper usage for marketing materials;
• Increasing usage of Post-Consumer Recycled Content (PCR) and/or 100% Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified materials; and

5