BY INVITATION ONLY

For years, sample sales have lured fashion insiders to makeshift storefronts in anonymous locations all over the city, offering dramatic, fleeting bargains on coveted designer brands. For those lucky enough to make the exclusive email list, a Marc Jacobs or Hermes sample sale is a drop-everything-and-run event. Shoppers snag high-end designer's wares for 70 percent off or more, while brands liquidate excess merchandise and create buzz and pandemonium among tastemakers.

Harvard MBAs Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis-Wilson,best friends and dedicated sample sale shoppers barely out of their twenties, saw the industry-changing potential of taking sample sales onto the Internet. In November 2007, they launched their members-only website to a select national group of 13,000 young, high-end shoppers, most invited from their personal networks. The site offered 50-70% off of luxury brands like Marc Jacobs, John Varvatos, and Valentino, all in single-designer "flash" sales lasting just 36 hours. It became an immediate viral hit, as members rapidlyinvited friends to join. Now the founders of Gilt Groupe reveal how they built the web's most famous fusion of high-tech and high-fashion, a radical combination that modernized an industry and changed the way people shop.

The book explains how they launched a simple yet groundbreaking business that catered to their passions. Inthree short years, Gilt Groupe spawned dozens of imitators and grew into a 500-person company with a valuation of $750 million. For the budding entrepreneur, Maybank and Wilkis-Wilson provide straight talk on how to build a revolutionary start-up in any industry. For the young reader seeking career advice, they provide insight into how to advance at work, develop one's own leadership style, and negotiate the conundrums that still face women in business. For the Gilt customer interested in an inside view of the fashion industry, they provide a revealing portrait of key players like Zac Posen, Christian Louboutin, Valentino, andmany others. Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis-Wilson are the founders and public faces of Gilt Groupe. Maybank began her career in Silicon Valley, one of the initial 40 employees of eBay, where she launched eBay Canada and eBay Motors. Wilson spent three years working in investment banking at Merrill Lynch before blazing a trail up Fifth Avenue after business school, working for Bulgari and Louis Vuitton. In 2007, theyteamed up with Kevin Ryan to launch Gilt Groupe with the goal of bringing the exclusivity and excitement of sample sales to a young, internet-savvy luxury fashion clientele. They have spoken at conferences such as The Financial Times Business of Luxury Summit, Digital-Life Design (DLD), and The Wall Street Journal's "How I Built It." They were at the center of a Harvard Business School case on entrepreneurship written by Professors Michael Roberts and William Sahlman.They live in Manhattan with their husbands.