Audio File:& Download MP3Transcript:& An Interview with Alexandra Wilkis Wilson Founder and Chief Merchandising Officer, Gilt Groupe Date: March 21, 2011 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes: Interview with Alexandra Wilkis Wilson [intro music]

Lee Kennedy: & Hi. This is Lee Kennedy, board member of the National Center for Women in Information Technology, or NCWIT. I'm also CEO of Bolder Search. This is a part of a series of interviews that we're having with fabulous entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, and all of whom just have terrific stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me here today is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry.

 Larry Nelson: & Hi. I am so happy to be here. This is going to be an excellent interview. I know my wife in particular, who is also my business partner, is very anxious to hear this interview. Lee: & Great. Today we're interviewing Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, who is the founder and chief merchandising officer of the Gilt Groupe. It's an innovative company that's revolutionized the fashion industry and e‑commerce in general. Alexandra has been featured on "Forbes Fortune," "The Wall Street Journal," and many times on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox. Welcome, Alexandra. We're thrilled to have you today. Alexandra Wilkis Wilson: & Thanks for having me. Lee: & Before we start, Alexandra, can you tell us a little bit about the Gilt Groupe and what's new there? Alexandra: & Sure. We launched Gilt Groupe in November 2007. We were inspired by a love of fashion and the excitement of the New York City sample sale. We wanted to bring this excitement online for the first time in the U.S. Today, three and a half years later, we have really grown into a lifestyle business where we sell, on our website, every single day, beautiful merchandise, curated by our teams of buyers and merchants across many categories. We sell women's, men's, home decor, children's, beauty. We have a set called Jet Setter, which is all about luxury and high‑end travel around the world. Our newest launch is called Gilt City, where we offer local experiences. We are live there in New York, L.A., San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Chicago, and also in Tokyo, because I forgot to mention we have Gilt Japan as well. Lee: & Wow. That is exciting. Larry: & Great. Alexandra: & We've been busy. Lee: & We'd love to hear how you first got into technology, and then what technologies do you think are cool today? Alexandra: & Prior to founding Gilt Group, I had never worked in technology officially, in any capacity. I had been working for Bulgari and Louis Vuitton after business school, in much more of a bricks‑and‑mortar environment. My co‑founder, Alexis Maybank, is the reverse of that. She had worked at eBay. She was a very early employee there, and scaled from about 40 to 5,000 employees over the five‑year period, so she had terrific e‑commerce experience. However, I would say I've always been a pretty early adopter of using new technologies as a consumer. Lee: & It sounds like you two had a good combo in your backgrounds. Alexandra: & Absolutely. Lee: & The second part of the question was, what do you think is really cool in as far as technology, gadgets? Alexandra: & There are so many technologies that I think are cool today. Probably my most recent purchase is Apple TV, which I just love. It's a chance to bring together a lot of different forms of media together from having our photographs, to Netflix and movies and music, all kinds of different sources that we use on a day to day basis, whether it's on the computer or TV. It's all in one place. Of course, I have an iPad. As soon as iPad launched, I had one, and actually I'm proud to say that when iPad launched, Gilt had a great app from day one. I love this app. If you haven't taken a look at it, you should download it. It's free,