How Does Vinted Make Money? Its Business Model Strategy Revealed
Executive Summary:
Vinted is an online marketplace that enables the purchase, sale and exchange of fashion items among private consumers. The company focuses on second-hand fashion in the female, male, or kids categories.
Vinted makes money via fixed and variable fees as well as advertising for sellers (called Wardrobe Spotlight and Item Bump, respectively).
Founded by two Lithuanian entrepreneurs in 2008, Vinted has become a household name in the fashion industry. The company has raised over $562 million in venture capital funding.
How Does Vinted Work?
Vinted is an peer-to-peer online marketplace that facilitates the purchase, sale and exchange of clothing items. As the name indicates, Vinted primary focus lies in vintage and/or second-hand fashion.
Users can sell clothes in either the Women, Men or Kids category. Sellable items include things such as:
- Jeans, skirts, lingerie, dresses or sweaters
- Shoes, i.e. sandals, heels, boots, or flip-flops
- Bags, including shoulder bags, fanny packs, handbags, backpacks and more
- Accessories, for instance watches, sunglasses, belts, jewelry, or hats
- Beauty products such as perfume, hair and nail care, or makeup
- Entertainment items such books or consoles
If a user finds an item of his/her liking and they agree to the price set, they can simply proceed to purchase the product. Vinted will then equip the seller with a prepaid shipping label, making it easy for sellers to ship the products.
Furthermore, as the operator of the marketplace, Vinted takes care of the payment and refund process while ensuring that the buyer receives their products in the desired quality and time.
The items itself can be listed and sold for free, so what you earn is essentially what you keep. On the buyer’s side, Vinted also offers protection such as free refunds as well as access to its customer support team.
Vinted itself can be accessed by visiting the platform’s website or by downloading its mobile app (available for both Android and iOS devices).
A Short History Of Vinted
Vinted was founded in 2008 by Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas in Vilnius, Lithuania. As with every idea worth pursuing, the concept of Vinted originated from a conversation Janauskas shared with a friend at a bar.
They chatted about creating a website that would allow people to trade their used fashion items with each other. Soon after, Janauskas and Mitkute (who joined him later on as co-founder) created a prototype and released it into the world.
Without any dedicated marketing efforts, the pair saw their platform grow on the backbone of users engaging in their forum-style community.
While coding on his project one night, a couch-surfing guest of Janauskas from Munich, Sophie Utikal, prompted him on what he was working on. His explanation excited Utikal so much that she wanted to take that concept to Germany.
The pair agreed that Janauskas would take care of all technical work (as he himself is a software engineer by profession) while Utikal would handle all promotional activities.
Today, Vinted operates under the brand name Kleiderkreisel in Germany and is one of the company’s top-performing markets. Similar to Lithuania, the platform mostly grew by word of mouth.
That same model was replicated in countries such as the Czech Republic or Great Britain. The success drew a lot of attention towards the startup, which ended up receiving an investment from Lithuanian angel investor Mantas Mikuckas. Soon after, Mikuckas joined the company as COO in 2013.
By 2015, the company was able to expand into the US on the backbone of a €25 million funding round. A year later, the company attracted over 12 million users, with another 11,000 joining daily. Over 22 million items were listed across the 11 countries it was involved in.
Despite all these positive growth numbers, Vinted’s journey hasn’t been without obstacles. In the early 2010’s, users of Kleiderkreisel revolted heavily against the company imposing fees on selling (selling on the platform had been free of charge prior and monetization occurred through display ads).
By 2016, the company was burning tremendous amounts of cash with prospects of eventually becoming bankrupt. Insight Venture Partners, one of the company’s investors, hired Thomas Plantenga to work out a mitigation plan with the company.
As a result, Vinted closed down its offices in San Francisco, London, Munich and Paris while reducing headcount from 240 to 150. Furthermore, the company decided to focus on two core markets: France and Germany.
The turnaround became a great success, which allowed Vinted to raise additional capital in two more funding rounds. As for Plantenga, he became the company’s new CEO in 2017 and manages the company’s strategic direction to this date.
2020, in particular, became an extremely successful year for the platform. The coronavirus pandemic, which forced people across the world into locking down at home, also led to a surge in customer demand.
The growth allowed Vinted to raise another round of funding in May 2021. Investor poured in a whopping €250 million in a round that valued Vinted at $4.5 billion.
Days after the fundraise, Vinted announced that it would also expand its platform to Canada. The platform was even able to strike lucrative advertising deals, for instance with Channel 4’s Hollyoaks.
Unfortunately, not everything was always going according to plan. In November 2021, dozens of its users issued complaints after Vinted asked them to send a scanned copy of their ID cards to release seller funds. As a result, privacy regulators in Lithuania, Poland, and France began to corporate to monitor Vinted’s adherence to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
Months later, in May 2022, a Polish consumer protection agency fined Vinted 5.3 million zloty (€1.14 million) after it allegedly had failed to provide adequate information about the conditions of access to the money earned by sellers. Vinted said it would appeal the decision.
Today, Vinted employes over 1,000 people across the world. Furthermore, the platform boasts over 45 million members.
How Does Vinted Make Money?
Vinted makes money by charging buyers a fixed and variable fee on every successful transaction facilitated through their platform and through advertising.
The fixed fee is used to cover fixed costs such as payment processing or providing the shipping label and is equal to $0.70 for every transaction.
Additionally, a variable fee of 5 percent is applied. If the article sells for $100, then the buyer pays an additional $5 in buying fees.
Interestingly enough, online marketplaces normally charge sellers instead of buyers. In fact, selling on Vinted is completely free!
Many of Vinted’s competitors , which include platforms like Poshmark or Depop , are charging its sellers for helping them facilitate transactions.
Additionally, Vinted has two other monetization streams, which are:
- Closet Spotlight
- Bumping listed items
Closet Spotlight is a paid feature that promotes a seller’s wardrobe (list of products they offer) to other users with similar fashion preferences.
For seven days, buyers will see 5 listings from a seller’s wardrobe in special spots on their newsfeed. Three items include the most favored products from the seller’s wardrobe while the other two will match the buyer’s newsfeed preferences.
Closet Spotlight costs $6.95. The fee is paid every time a seller intends to promote his or her listings.
Item Bump is a paid feature that guarantees sellers more visibility for their items, which allows to speed up the selling process. When a listing is “bumped”, it is shown to more potential buyers in their feed and search results over a span of 7 days.
Fees for item bumps can range anywhere between $0.5 and $5, depending on the category of given item, the price of an item, and amount of products that are currently bumped on the Vinted platform.
Vinted itself operates an online marketplace business model . As such, it connects buyers and sellers on a proprietary platform in which it takes care of product assortment, payment processing, and sometimes even shipping.
Additionally, it enables sellers to create public profiles that contain reviews and other data points, which further increases trust. Nevertheless, where it differs is that it actually charges buyers a fee in exchange for its Buyer Protection Services.
This allows customers to get their products refunded if something is wrong. Additionally, it also increases supply on the platform since sellers can offer their items at zero cost.
And the more items are listed on Vinted, the greater the choice for buyers, which attracts more of them in turn.
Vinted Funding, Valuation & Revenue
According to Crunchbase , Vinted has raised a total of $562.3 million in six rounds of venture capital funding.
In its latest Series F round, announced in May 2021, the company raised €250 million at a valuation of more than $4.5 billion.
Notable investors of Vinted include the likes of Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel, Insight Partners, Sprints Capital, or Burda Principal Investments.
As with any venture-backed startup, Vinted does not disclose any revenue metrics to the public.
Who Owns Vinted?
Vinted, as previously indicated, remains in private hands and is thus not obligated to disclose its ownership structure to the public.
It can, however, be assumed that its investors do hold a significant stake in the company.
Accel, Burda Principal Investments, EQT, and Sprints Capital have each led funding rounds and participated in multiple others. Especially the investors who provided money at an earlier stage, such as Accel, should likely owns a significant chunk of Vinted.
Moreover, CEO Thomas Plantenga, who has been with the firm since July 2016, is probably the biggest personal shareholder. After all, he was responsible for turning the company around. Plus, externally hired CEOs are often compensated with generous equity packages to motivate them further.
As far as founders Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas are concerned, they probably do not owns much of the firm anymore. They both became operationally less involved once Plantenga stepped in, which means that they probably sold off a significant portion of their equity.
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How Does Vinted Make Money? Vinted Business Model In A Nutshell
Vinted is an online shopping marketplace with a strong secondhand component. The company makes money via its buyer protection service. The buyer pays a fee to Vinted in exchange for services like customer support, insurance, and tracked shipping; Shipping costs; Wardrobe Spotlight (helping users boost the visibility of their items). And Bumping listed items.
Origin Story
Vinted is an online community marketplace headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania.
The platform was created by Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas in 2008 during the prototype testing of a website where women could trade clothing.
The need for a prototype arose after Mitkute found herself with too many clothes while trying to move house.
Over a few drinks in a bar, Mitkute and Janauskas discussed the creation of a website where users could buy and sell their pre-loved fashion items.
Janauskas was initially skeptical that the idea would be successful, but after consulting a few female friends, the software expert agreed to take part in what was then a hobby project.
After launch, Vinted started to grow organically with the co-founders having to do very little marketing .
Expansion plans for the platform began one night when Janauskas was coding while hosting a couch-surfing guest in his home.
The guest, a German from Munich named Sophie Utikal, pressed Janauskas for more details about the business .
After becoming passionate about the potential of Vinted, Utikal proposed that it expand into Germany.
Utikal took care of the advertising and promotional efforts, while Janauskas registered a German domain name and worked on platform localization.
The site now operates in Germany as Kleiderkreisel and, like its counterpart in Lithuania, grew organically through word-of-mouth.
Angel investment
After repeating the process in the Czech Republic, Vinted started to attract the attention of investors.
One of these who left a lasting impression on Janauskas was Lithuanian angel investor Mantas Mikuckas.
In an interview with Tech.eu, he noted that “ We were really on the same page in terms of wanting to grow Vinted globally – and not just into a local/national platform for classifieds, which most other investors were interested in .”
After securing capital from Mikuckas, Vinted professionalized its activities, employing extra staff and paying more attention to social media and marketing .
In January 2013, the company raised a further €5.2 million from Accel to fund its expansion efforts and product development.
That same year, Mikuckas joined Vinted as its COO.
United States expansion and brush with bankruptcy
In 2015, Vinted announced a €25 million Series C funding round led by German media group Hubert Burda.
This was used to expand into the United States and then into the United Kingdom. By the following year, the platform boasted 12 million users in 11 different countries .
Like many companies that expand too fast, too soon, Vinted burned through most of its cash and faced potential bankruptcy in 2016.
Strategy consultant and eventual Vinted CEO Thomas Plantenga was brought in to steady the ship, with the company reducing its overseas presence and instead choosing to focus on the core markets of France and Germany.
Vinted’s core platform gave users the ability to buy, sell, and swap clothing or accessories in 15 countries. According to the company, it now has a community of around 50 million men and women .
In May 2022, Vinted announced that it would be expanding the platform with two additional categories:
- Pets – incorporating various subcategories for dog, cat, fish, bird, and reptile accessories. Some of the most popular items include clothing, collars, leads, beds, toys, travel carriers, and aquariums.
- Entertainment – featuring movies, musical articles, books, video game consoles, video games, and a “Retrogaming” subcategory with board games, puzzles, skill games, and tile games.
In addition to giving users more opportunities to sell used items, the move was also seen as a way for Vinted to promote sustainable consumption habits and take advantage of the increase in pet ownership in some parts of Europe.
Sales of second-hand items have also increased because of record inflation across much of the world coupled with high energy prices.
Vinted revenue generation
Vinted revenue generation used to be reliant on charging seller fees for every completed transaction.
However, the company has moved away from charging consumers to list or sell their clothing items. It now makes money in a few different ways that are explained below.
Buyer protection/service fee
The buyer pays a buyer protection fee to Vinted in exchange for services that include:
- Purchase protection – Vinted will refund buyers if an item arrives damaged, differs significantly from the product description, or does not arrive at all. Refunds will be offered provided the buyer informs the company within 2 days of the item being marked as ‘delivered’.
- Fraud protection – Vinted’s fraud protection ensures no malicious actor can make unauthorized purchase on a buyer’s behalf. In the company’s words, “ we put an extra layer of safety to your purchases”, which means Vintedwill check transactions at random with purchase verification measures.
- Customer support – the company’s customer support team is always available to help buyers with disputes and other issues.
The fee for these services is 5% of the item price (excluding taxes and postage cost ) plus an additional fixed amount of $0.70.
It is important to note that this fee is a mandatory charge to protect the integrity of the Vinted payment process.
Shipping costs
The buyer also bears the cost of shipping, with prices dependent upon the size of the package and the type of courier service used.
Vinted passes the freight cost to the buyer and likely makes no money from the arrangement.
However, some believe it turns a profit because it can ship in bulk and receive a discounted price from the courier.
Nevertheless, in Canada for example, home deliveries are handled by Canada Post by default, but buyers can also choose from other options should they so desire.
In addition to increased flexibility, these options may reduce shipping costs in some instances.
Indeed, parcels delivered to a local drop-off shop or locker are likely to be markedly cheaper than home delivery.
Wardrobe Spotlight (UK)
Wardrobe Spotlight is a feature unique to Vinted UK, helping users boost the visibility of their items in the marketplace.
For a full week, Vinted customers can have items from their wardrobe shown in dedicated spots in the news feed of other members. These members will also have easy access to the rest of the seller’s range of items.
This extra visibility is also targeted. In other words, it will be shown to members with similar body sizes and brand preferences.
Vinted charge £6.95 for the service and to be eligible to participate, users must have 5 or more items for sale for the duration of the seven-day period in which Wardrobe Spotlight is enabled.
Bumping listed items
Similar to Wardrobe Spotlight, users can purchase a bumping service to get their items to appear in the news feed or search results of other members.
This feature is well suited to clothes from desirable brands that are in good condition and can attract a premium.
The bumping service occurs once a day or until the item is sold, with users able to choose between a 3-day and 7-day calendar period.
When users bump an item, it is shown to more users in their news feed and also in catalog search results.
The visibility of the bump itself can be adjusted according to various criteria such as clothing type, size, and the specific brands other Vinted members follow on the platform.
Vinted charges $0.95 per item for a three-day bump in the United States.
Third-party advertising
As the largest online marketplace devoted to online pre-loved fashion, Vinted is attractive to advertisers who want to take advantage of significant levels of unique traffic across the company’s app and web-based presence.
Interested third parties can register for Vinted’s self-serve platform where they can create and organize their ad campaigns.
Those wanting to learn more about ad placements and pricing are encouraged to email the company to discuss their options.
Who owns Vinted?
Vinted’s ownership status is not publicly disclosed. However, various firms have taken equity stakes in the company across a total of seven funding rounds to date.
These include:
- EQT Growth.
- Burda Principal Investments.
- Insight Partners.
- Lightspeed Venture Partners, and
- Sprints Capital Management.
Reports also suggest that co-founder Milda Mitkute owns a significant share of the company.
Vinted vs. Depop
As we saw, Vinted is an online marketplace where users can buy, sell, or even exchange new and second-hand clothing and accessories.
The company became Lithuania’s first tech unicorn in 2019 and is now available in 16 countries such as Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and Poland.
Depop instead, is a P2P social eCommerce company where users buy and sell predominantly used and vintage fashion items.
It was founded in Italy in 2011 and now has a presence in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.
Understanding the difference between Vinted and Depop
At first glance, it appears there is little difference between Vinted and Depop.
Both provide basically the same services, but the two platforms have an approach that differs in a few key areas.
Revenue generation and fees
Vinted does not charge sellers to list items in its marketplace, with buyers required to pay a buyer protection fee and cover the cost of shipping.
As a consequence, Vinted buyers expect sellers to offer a lower price for items since they are the ones wearing the costs.
Depop sellers, on the other hand, are charged a fee that equates to 10% of each sale.
This money is used to provide buyer and seller protection and pay the company’s employees.
Since Depop payments are handled by PayPal , some sellers are also charged a PayPal fee.
How it works
Depop’s marketplace feels more like a social media app where buyers scroll through a feed as they would on Instagram.
With a high discoverability factor on the platform, sellers have access to a broader audience and buyers will not realize they needed a particular item until stumbling across it.
Depop also encourages sellers to create professional offers and is thus better suited to small businesses.
Vinted’s marketplace is not as aesthetically pleasing or familiar as Depop’s, but this is not to say that it isn’t effective.
The platform has a much smaller list of available categories for sellers and instead focuses on making the buyer experience smooth and efficient.
For these reasons, Vinted is more suited to individual sellers who are less worried about making a profit .
Both Vinted and Depop reward sellers with more sales if they engage with their respective platforms.
In other words, the more sellers like items, follow other users, and list products for sale, the more visible they will become and increase their earning potential.
There are also differences in strategy between the two platforms.
Depop is skewed toward vintage fashion items with “cool” or “unique” looks that appeal to its mostly younger and trendier target audience. It is mostly active in the United States.
Conversely, the Vinted marketplace targets consumers who desire a place to sell or swap their preloved items.
As a general rule, Vinted’s audience tends to be older when compared to Depop. Vinted also has more international reach than Depop with a strong European focus.
Connecting the dots on differences between Vinted and Depop
- At first glance, there appears to be little difference between Vinted and Depop. Both provide basically the same services, but the two platforms do vary in a few key areas.
- Vinted does not charge sellers to list items in its marketplace, with buyers required to cover shipping and pay a small buyer protection fee. Conversely, Depop charges sellers a fee worth 10% of the total sale.
- Depop’s marketplace is more akin to a social app such as Instagram where users can scroll through a feed and discover new items. While it is more expensive to sell on Depop, the platform is better suited to small business owners than Vinted because of its broader reach and extra product categories.
Key takeaways:
- Vinted is an online community marketplace founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2008. The idea for the platform came when founder Milda Mitkute needed to offload excess clothing during the process of moving house.
- Vinted does not charge its users for listing or even selling their unwanted items. Instead, their revenue generation is dependent on buyers who must pay all of the transaction and shipping costs.
- Vinted also makes money with its Wardrobe Spotlight service. For a relatively small fee, users can pay to have their listings made more visible in the news feeds or search results of buyers.
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Founded in 2008 by two entrepreneurs, the Lithuania-based clothing exchange marketplace Vinted now employs over 1,200 people across offices in various European cities, including Vilnius, Berlin, Prague, Amsterdam, and Utrecht.
From its humble beginnings as a way for one of the founders to downsize her wardrobe, to one of the world’s biggest second-hand clothing marketplaces serving 16 global markets, Vinted certainly has an interesting story and business model that make it worth taking a look at.
What Is Vinted?
Vinted is an online marketplace where people can sell clothing and wardrobe accessories to one another, with an emphasis on used and vintage clothing, as the name implies.
However, users are also free to sell new clothing items on the site, and it’s a great place to buy rare or out-of-production apparel that you can’t find anymore in retail stores.
Vinted’s goal is to make second-hand fashion the first choice for online shoppers, ultimately prolonging the lifespan of existing apparel and reducing waste related to the global fashion industry.
The company’s slogan is “Don’t wear it? Sell it!”
How Does Vinted Make Money?
Since Vinted doesn’t charge sellers a commission on their deals, you may be wondering how Vinted makes money.
Well, Vinted has four main revenue streams: buyer protection fees, closet spotlights, bumping listed items, and third-party advertising.
Below are more details on how each of these parts of Vinted’s business model work.
1) Buyer Protection Fee
Although Vinted doesn’t charge sellers anything, it does charge buyers a fixed buyer protection fee of $0.70 on all deals, plus an additional variable fee of 5% of the total sale price.
This buyer protection fee covers things like damaged or lost items, items that are different than described, fraud, and more. If everything goes well with an order, Vinted keeps this fee as revenue.
2) Closet Spotlight
Vinted’s closet spotlight feature is a way for sellers to promote certain items to users who might purchase them, based on their fashion preferences.
Sellers pay $6.95 to use the closet spotlight feature, after which five items chosen automatically from the seller’s catalog appear in special spots on buyers’ news feeds for the next seven days.
Sellers must have at least five items in their catalog for this feature to continue running, and a close spotlight will pause if a seller’s number of available items drops below five.
Vinted shows sellers different statistics for their closet spotlights, including how many users saw them, clicked on items, and saved items as favorites.
3) Bumping Listed Items
Another way Vinted earns money from sellers is through bumping listed items. Like closet spotlights, bumping items is a way for sellers to get more visibility for their wardrobes by paying a fee.
The exact cost to bump an item varies depending on different factors, such as the item’s category, its price, and the total number of items currently bumped on Vinted. The fee can be anywhere from $0.05 to $5.
When a seller bumps an item, they can choose to purchase the bump for three or seven days. Naturally, if an item gets sold, it no longer appears as bumped.
4) Third-Party Advertising
The fourth way Vinted makes money is by allowing third-party advertisers to serve up ads on the site’s news feeds and listing pages.
Vinted offers advertisers a self-service platform through which they can register and create campaigns. The site does not list pricing, but Vinted most likely charges advertisers different fees based on impressions and clicks.
Where Did Vinted's Idea Come From?
Way back in 2008, Lithuanian entrepreneurs Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas founded Vinted in Vilnius, Lithuania.
The initial idea for Vinted arose because Mitkute was moving and had too many clothes to take with her. Janauskas and her discussed building a website for trading used clothing items between peers, and thus Vinted was born.
The two co-founders quickly got to work building an MVP for Vinted, which was originally a forum-style website where users could post items they wanted to get rid of and make deals with one another.
In the beginning, Vinted’s user base grew mainly by word of mouth, and the site became so popular within a short amount of time that Vinted began expanding its business model to other European countries, starting with Germany.
This early success caught the eye of Lithuanian angel investor Mantas Mikuckas, who backed the company and became COO in 2013.
Just a couple of years later, in 2015, Vinted raised €25 million and used it to expand outside of Europe into the US, opening an office in San Francisco.
However, despite a rapidly growing user base of millions, it wasn’t long before Vinted ran into cash flow problems and was forced to shut down its offices in the US and several major European cities.
Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise, as Vinted was able to refocus on a few of its core markets and turn the company around.
Vinted brought on a new CEO, Thomas Plantenga, in 2017, and by 2020 were again experiencing high levels of success, in part due to the coronavirus pandemic creating more demand than ever for online shopping.
Vinted now has a user base of more than 45 million people globally and has a gross transaction volume of approximately €1.3 billion, while still remaining true to the company’s original idea.
How Does Vinted Work?
At the core of Vinted’s business model, there are two types of users: buyers and sellers. Anyone who wants to buy or sell clothing and accessories on Vinted just has to create an account on the platform.
Vinted sellers can list apparel in several different categories, including men’s, women’s, and children’s apparel.
Pretty much any type of apparel or accessory can be listed for sale on Vinted, including tops, bottoms, shoes, bags, hats, belts, jewelry, sunglasses, beauty products, and more.
There is no fee to list items on Vinted, and sellers get to keep everything they make through the platform. Shipping is paid through Vinted by the buyers.
When a seller creates a profile on Vinted, they must take photos of the items they want to sell and add detailed descriptions of their goods. These listings then appear in the news feeds of other vinted users, who can follow certain sellers and add items to their favorites.
Vinted is a prime example of what’s often called a “social selling platform” — it works a lot like Instagram, but for selling second-hand fashion goods.
When a buyer finds something they like on Vinted, they can easily purchase it for the asking price or make an offer below the price it’s listed at. Sellers can then accept or reject these offers, or make a counter-offer for a different price.
When a sale is made, Vinted generates a prepaid shipping label for the seller, who then simply has to pack the items they’re selling, stick the label on the package, and send it off to the buyer within five days.
Vinted provides buyers with purchase protection in case anything goes wrong with their purchases, and sellers only get money deposited into their Vinted accounts after buyers have received their orders.
Vinted also handles marketplace refunds whenever necessary. In the event that a package goes missing in the post, Vinted typically refunds both the buyers and the sellers, so neither party loses money.
How Much Money Does Vinted Make?
As a privately-held, venture-backed company, Vinted is not required to and does not make its revenue figures public. The company’s last reported revenue, in 2018, was €32.9 million.
Is Vinted Making a Profit?
Since Vinted’s revenue and expenses are not verifiable, it’s hard to say whether or not Vinted is currently making a profit.
In order to confirm this information, we would need to wait for Vinted to hold an IPO and start making its financial reports public.
At the time of writing this article, Vinted has not announced any plans to go public.
How Much Money Has Vinted Raised?
According to Vinted’s Crunchbase profile , the company has raised a total of $562.3 million across six funding rounds.
Most recently, Vinted raised €250 million in a Series F funding round in May of 2021.
Notable Vinted investors include Accel, Insight Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, EQT, Burda Principal Investments, and Sprints Capital.
What Is Vinted’s Ownership Structure?
Vinted is a privately-held company, meaning that its co-founders, executives, and investors each hold different stakes in it.
Vinted’s key investors and leadership team include co-founders Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas, COO Mantas Mikuckas, and CEO Thomas Plantenga.
The company is also backed by various venture capital films, including those mentioned above.
While it cannot be verified how much of a stake each of these individuals and firms has in Vinted, it’s likely that Platnega, acting CEO, is the largest individual equity holder.
It’s also likely that each of the venture capital firms that have led funding rounds own significant equity in the company.
Since Platenga and Mikuckas lead Vinted’s daily operations and growth and co-founders Mitkute and Janauskas are not as involved in the company as they used to be, it’s possible that the co-founders have sold off large chunks of their equity in recent years.
How Much Is Vinted Worth?
Vinted’s most recent valuation was $4.5 billion. According to TechCrunch , Vinted surpassed a valuation of $1 billion in 2019, which would mean that the company has steadily risen in value by about $1 billion per year over the past several years.
Who Are Vinted’s Competitors?
Vinted’s main competitors include other online second-hand fashion marketplaces, such as Depop, Poshmark, Tradesy, thredUP, and The RealReal.
Founded in 2011, three years after Vinted, Depop is a peer-to-peer social fashion selling platform that is quite similar to Vinted in many senses.
Like Vinted, Depop started as a way for people to buy and sell second-hand clothes. However, the platform has since evolved into a place where people can set up shops for their own brands as well.
What makes Depop’s business model different from Vinted’s business model is that Depop charges sellers a 10% commission on the total sale price of every item sold.
This 10% fee, known as the “Depop fee,” is the main way Depop makes money, and is in addition to standard transaction fees for payments made through PayPal (which is required to sell items).
Depop is headquartered in London, with additional offices in Manchester, New York, Los Angeles, and Sydney.
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Poshmark is another social marketplace for buying and selling used clothing items. The company launched in 2011, the same year as Depop, in Redwood City (Silicon Valley). Poshmark also has offices in Vancouver, Melbourne, and Chennai.
Poshmark allows both buyers and sellers to create profiles and like, comment, and follow others on the social selling platform.
The platform is also known for its proprietary feature called “posh parties.” These are virtual shopping parties centered around certain themes or brands.
For example, there might be a Nike posh party where sellers who have Nike items can promote their goods and people interested in shopping for Nike apparel can buy them.
Poshmark has an even higher fee for sellers than Depop — the platform charges them 20% on all sales above $15, and a flat fee of $2.95 on any sale below $15.
Poshmark went public on January 14, 2021, with a valuation of $3 billion.
Tradesy is a fashion resale marketplace built by women, for women. Founded in 2009 in Santa Monica, the platform focuses strictly on women’s apparel and accessories, such as bags, shoes, and clothing, from designer brands.
Tradesy charges sellers a flat fee of $7.50 for any sale under $50. Sellers pay a commission of 19.8% on all sales above $50.
San Francisco-based thredUP bills itself as an “online consignment and thrift store for your closet, your wallet, and the planet.”
Unlike other second-hand clothing marketplaces on this list, thredUP actually stores all the inventory they sell in warehouses across the US.
So, instead of sellers listing and shipping out their own items, they send bags of items to thredUP for selection and listing.
thredUP sorts through the apparel goods they receive and selects items they want to keep and sell. Sellers can pay to have unselected items returned, or else thredUP resells or recycles them.
The company then does all the work of taking photos, listing, and selling the items, charging commissions anywhere between 20% and 90% of the sale price. The more an item sells for, the less commission thredUP charges.
If items don’t sell within 60- or 90-day listing windows, sellers have to pay $5.99 to have them returned.
Like Poshmark, thredUp has been a publicly-traded company since 2021.
The RealReal
The RealReal is a luxury consignment marketplace with both online and brick-and-mortar stores. The RealReal sells consigned clothing, fine jewelry, watches, fine art, and home decor.
All products sold by The RealReal are vetted and authenticated by the company’s team of luxury fashion authenticators, art curators, horologists, and gemologists.
The RealReal’s business model is similar to that of thredUP, in that they keep a smaller percentage of the cost of items that sell for more.
For example, the company keeps 45% and gives 55% of the price back to sellers on items that sell for up to $1,500. For more expensive items, such as fine watches, The RealReal pays sellers back up to 80% of the sale price.
Wrapping Up on How Vinted Makes Money
Looking at Vinted’s business model is interesting because, as you can see from the descriptions above, it’s actually quite a bit different from their various competitors’ business models.
Whereas Vinted’s competitors charge sellers varying fees and commissions for selling their second-hand clothing and other items through the platforms, Vinted only makes money from sellers who pay to promote their listings.
Since we don’t have statistics on Vinted’s current revenue and profits, it’s hard to say for sure how this business model is working out for them. But the company has shown major growth over the last few years, which indicates that their unique business model may be working out.
Despite no indications that Vinted will go public any time soon, it will be interesting to see if it will follow in the footsteps of Poshmark and thredUP with an IPO in the years to come.
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How does Vinted make money? (business model explained)
By Ricky Willis | last updated 2nd March 2022
Your child’s growing faster than your vegetables in the garden, and you’re fed up with the baby clothing scattered around your house. Maybe you want to sell without the selling fees. Maybe you want to buy something that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
The Vinted business model is a game-changer for sellers and buyers alike. It presents an effortless batch of retail therapy, turning second-hand into the first choice.
Now you’re probably thinking this is too good to be true.
If it’s cheaper than heading out into town, then how does Vinted make money?
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Table of Contents
How does Vinted work?
Selling clothes has never been easier.
Vinted is an online marketplace for selling clothing and purchasing second-hand items. To make things simple, there are two types of people in the Vinted business model.
On the red side, you’ve got your buyers. On the blue side, you’ve got your sellers.
The seller will receive a prepaid shipping label once they’ve sold something. They must print this and stick it onto their package.
The buyer pays for the prepaid shipping label. Part of the business model is Vinted’s buyer protection fee which ensures protection if anything was to go wrong in the process.
The price for the shipping can depend on various factors, such as where the buyer lives.
Once the buyer has made the payment, the shipper has five days to send off the item, with proof of delivery being sent to the buyer.
This payment remains frozen until the buyer has said the item has arrived without any damage.
Through the Vinted business model, tracked shipping means protection for the seller as well as the buyer.
An official investigation can take place if a package has gone missing. In most cases, the buyer and the seller will be refunded if neither is at fault.
The Vinted payment process involves the money going into a Vinted account once the delivery has been approved. The seller can choose to keep the money in there to buy their own second-hand clothing or can transfer it to their bank account.
It’s a great way for sellers to sell clothes without having a percentage of their earnings taken from Vinted. So if Vinted doesn’t take anything from the seller, then how does Vinted make money?
How does Vinted make money?
Buyer protection fee
One of Vinted’s revenue streams is that the platform charges its buyers with buyer protection fees . This is a 5% fee of the item, which will protect you with the likes of fixed costs such as tracked shipping costs, customer support and insurance.
The buyer protection services are compulsory, and you can’t avoid paying for this.
Shipping costs
The buyer has to pay for the shipping of the item.
This will depend on the size of the package and also the courier used.
Depending on where the buyer lives, they can choose to get it delivered to their home (which is usually the most expensive option) or to their local drop-off shop/chosen locker.
Top Tip: Choose the local drop-off shop/chosen locker. Although it’s not delivered to your door, you can choose the destination closest to your home. It’s usually less expensive, by quite a bit, and is a painless operation.
For example, having it delivered to your door could cost £3 compared to a £1.60 delivery to a chosen pick-up point. If you’re buying a £1 top, you could be put off by the delivery that’s three times the price of the item.
Wardrobe Spotlight service
Vinted operates a platform called wardrobe spotlight for potential buyers to look into the seller’s fashion items.
If the items in a seller’s wardrobe are mainly a size 12, then any buyers looking for size 12 clothes will be presented with the seller’s wardrobe.
Their wardrobe will be in the spotlight based on the buyer’s newsfeed preferences. This is a great technique for sellers to boost their wardrobe and generate sales.
The wardrobe spotlight is a huge reason for how Vinted makes money. A lot of sellers get tempted to choose this, especially if they haven’t generated any sales.
It’s the luck of the draw sometimes if your item gets noticed. Having the wardrobe spotlight in place can further increase your chances of being seen by targeted buyers.
Bumping listed items
This is essentially the fast track pass at Thorpe Park. For a small fee, sellers can boost their items to the top of a buyer’s search.
The item bump is amazing for perfectly good clothes that are worth a lot of money because Vinted puts the clothes out there for many more people to see.
Otherwise, your item could be the scraps of scrolling unless it’s specifically searched for.
It’s the online shopping key to sales that everyone needs in the fashion industry. It can cost as little as £0.75 per item to be bumped for three days. It doesn’t sound like a long time, but there’s a greater chance of your item being seen, liked and potentially brought.
Of course, this depends on the item you’ve uploaded. More people are likely to search for a well-known brand compared to an unknown branded item.
Third-Party advertising
A business model for other companies is to ask Vinted for advertisement.
Vinted’s business models include third-party ad networks, which benefit both Vinted and the advertising company.
This is a huge reason for how Vinted makes money.
Want to take it to the next level? Read how to start a clothing business
Vinted’s funding and valuation
To no surprise, Vinted received venture capital funding, and the business blew up in just a few weeks. It received funding from notable investors like insight partners, Lightspeed venture partners and Burda principal investments.
Having investors like these turned a local business into a global phenomenon.
Vinted’s profit and revenue
Being a private company, Vinted is not required to make its revenue model statistics public.
Vinted’s revenue model relies on its buyers and uses the business model of promotional tools such as advertising.
The paid promotional tools are one of the business models that generate its revenue through the buyers advertising their own clothes and also by other companies paying for advertisement.
The Vinted platform is like no other, with over 45 million users.
It was announced in May 2021 that the company had an estimated value of over $4.5 billion – it’s a billion-dollar business.
Read next: how does WhatsApp make money?
The history of Vinted
The company launched in 2008. Vinted’s journey began in Lithuania and was quickly merged with a German business.
It was once a slow fashion business for friends and family, but news of this company spread as quickly as warm butter.
Just like your babies, the company never stopped growing, making its mark globally in many different countries.
Buying pre-owned clothing became the go-to for shoppers around the world.
The company’s strategic direction is handled and overseen by Thomas Plantenga, who had previously been hired to save the company from mitigation.
Since the pandemic hit, Vinted has grown even more.
Lockdown was the birth of many sellers who had the time to go through their wardrobes and come to the revelation that they owned too many clothes.
It generated the buyers that noticed their 10-year-old’s jacket looked like it should be on a 5-year-old.
A new way of shopping was created. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Vinted was generating more sales than ever.
Read next: Best places to sell your clothes online in the UK
The marketplace is based in Lithuania but can be used in the UK by downloading the app.
Yes, you get a refund if your item doesn’t arrive or is damaged.
If you’re selling something that’s worth a lot or you really need to make a fast sale, then bumping the items is worth it. Type in something that you’re selling onto Vinted. Then see all the top items that come up first; it will say underneath “bumped” if the item has been bumped. You can then look at how many times that item has been liked compared to items that aren’t bumped. This should help you make a decision on whether your item is worth bumping.
No, this is mandatory.
Final thoughts
Okay, we’ve all been there with a wardrobe that spits fabric at you because it’s stuffed to the brim with t-shirts, trousers and other clothing.
Yet, you still can’t find an outfit.
People are fed up with buying brand new clothes which, more often than not, are never worn again.
Vinted’s business model is a sustainable platform that everyone should try out.
Read next: How does Signal make money?
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How does Vinted make money by selling Pre-Owned clothes?
I had bought a new dress and a pair of boots for my next day at work. I remember vividly getting a call from my supervisor saying to resume work from home until further orders. Slowly, the days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months (and now years), but still, I have not got the chance to flaunt the dress and the boots. As I pen down this piece, I could not help but think of the pile of clothes I had somehow crammed in my cupboard.
We all have a biased fondness for something or another. For some, it is food; for others, it is luxurious cars or trips; for me, it is clothes. I own many, but none if I have to step out (sounds familiar?)
The impact of fast fashion on the environment has been buzzing around for years. The actual wildfire spread(both in reality and metaphorically) during the pandemic when we started to ponder how much our closets cost the environment. As per the report curated by the World Bank , the fashion industry accounts for 10% of annual global emissions and, at this pace, it could reach 30% by 2030.
As it turned out, I am not alone. In 2008, Milda Mitkute found herself in the same chaos. Too many clothes, most of them unworn, and no storage place. The idea to start Vinted clicked to Milda when she discussed this concern with her friend and now the co-founder Justas Janauskas .
Initially, the launch of Vinted was just for the family and a few friends. The word spread soon and, Vinted became an instant hit in Lithuania. In the following year, the business expanded to Germany under the name- Kleiderkreisel . (The company later merged the Lithuanian and German users under the same brand – Vinted.)
After tasting success in Lithuania and Germany, the business was rolled-out in the Czech Republic. In 2011, Mantas Mikuckas became one of the early investors in Vinted and later became the COO. In the coming years, Mantas helped expand the business into global markets. Although Vinted is operational in around 15 international markets, this Lithuania-born unicorn has a maximum fan following in France.
In 2013, during Series A funding, Vinted raised €5.2M from Accel. Five years running, Vinted had started to grab the attention of investors. So far, Vinted has raised $562.3M in six funding rounds. The leading investors of Vinted are Accel, Insight Partners, Burda Principal Investments , Sprints Capital , Lightspeed Venture Partners , and EQT . This story will help you understand the business model and how does Vinted make money by selling used clothes?
Business Model of Vinted
Vinted’s mission is to make second-hand number one choice worldwide. As told by Natacha Blanchard, Consumer Lead at Vinted, the focus is to accelerate the transition from a take-make-waste economy towards a circular fashion economy. So what is Vinted, anyway?
Vinted is a C2C e-commerce marketplace, or you can say re-commerce, where individuals can buy, sell or swap their pre-owned, pre-loved clothes and other fashion accessories – this does sound like a perfect solution for the over-flowing wardrobe and the clutter. It is as simple as buying a new cloth from any other e-commerce site.
The members of Vinted or Vinties, as extolled, upload the photos and add additional details of the item on the platform. As the buyer proceeds to purchase the product, Vinted equips the seller with a pre-paid shipping label to ship the product. In simpler words, the buyer bears the shipping costs.
Vinted’s sustainable business model has the basis of Circular Economy . The clothes once produced can be moved from one individual to another as long as one needs to keep them, instead of being used once and later dumped in a landfill. You must be surprised to know that 87% of the total fiber input used for clothing is incinerated or disposed of in a landfill!
What is a circular economy and How is H&M Bringing the Circular Economy to the Apparel Industry?
The company till mid of the last decade had been performing well. Vinted reached 11 countries with 12 million users and 22 million listed items. The business was growing organically. However, there was no rock-solid business model or strategy for Vinted.
Unfortunately, in 2016 the company had hit rock- bottom. Vinted was on the brink of bankruptcy when Insight Partners, one of the investors, hired Thomas Plantenga to save the sinking ship, and he did. Thomas shut down the business in a few global offices, laid off a quarter of the workforce, and made an innovative change in Vinted’s C2C business model.
The plan was a hit! The company grew fourfold between 2016-18, garnered 22 million users, sales shore up, and investors came back knocking on Vinted’s door. As the fanfare continued, Thomas Plantenga got appointed as the CEO of Vinted in 2017.
Headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania , as of May 2021, Vinted stands at a pre-money valuation of €3.5bn , with 50+ million users across 15 markets : France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Luxembourg, UK, Canada, Portugal, Italy, and the USA.
Vinted is the first tech unicorn of Lithuania!
How does selling second-hand make money for Vi nted?
Earlier, Vinted used to charge the sellers for every transaction. From the time Thomas Plantenga took over the reins of Vinted, he has pivoted strategy game. It is interesting to note that Vinted is among a few C2C companies that has turned around the tables of traditional e-commerce. Instead of charging the sellers, Vinted charges the buyers.
Following are the revenue streams that make money for Vinted:
- Buyer Protection Service Fee: Instead of charging the seller, Vinted charges the buyers 5% of the item price and a fixed amount of €0.70. The fee charged is in exchange for the services such as customer support, integrated secure payment system, and refund policy for delivery issues or articles not significantly as described. Thus, in a way, it is free to sell your clothes in Vinted.
- Wardrobe Spotlight: This unique paid feature spotlights the items listed by the seller in the marketplace. For seven days, the listed items are visible in the feed and catalog results of the fellow members.
- Item Bump: This is another interesting paid feature offered by Vinted. Item bumping enhances the visibility of the listed items in the marketplace. An item bumped will be visible to more members once a day for three consecutive days or until sold.
- Advertisement: Vinted also gains money by allowing third-party companies to promote their brands and products on its platform.
Success Recipe of Vinted
The success of Vinted’s business model relies on two factors – mass closing options on the platform and the ability to offer secure and fast sales.
Needless to say, the pandemic also fueled the success of vintage, second-hand clothing as most of us no longer felt the need for much of our clothes. The monetary benefits realized by the users by selling their clothes on Vinted are also a key aspect in its success.
As per Cross-Border Commerce Europe , Vinted is the crowned number one second-hand marketplace in the EU and UK.
Is the future Secondhand?
During the last couple of years of the global pandemic, consumers all over the globe have started to embrace slow fashion and second-hand apparel. The pandemic has forced all of us to stay at home, purge our wardrobes and rethink our expenditures. The prediction is that second-hand clothing sales will be twice, from $36 billion to $77 billion in 2025.
According to the insightful survey conducted by ThreadUp , in the year 2021, there were 52.6 million sellers, first-time buyers of second-hand clothes surged 33 million, and around 223 million consumers are said to be open to second-hand shopping. Undoubtedly, second-hand is here to stay and grow by 2X bigger than fast fashion by 2030.
As for Vinted, the future holds strong prospects. The company has acquired two firms – United Wardrobe in 2020, the largest second-hand marketplace in the Netherlands, and Chicfy in 2019. With United Wardrobe, Vinted will be penetrating international markets, and; with the acquisition of Chicfy, Vinted has reduced the competition in Spain. Moving forward, Vinted will be offering services such as buying and selling for charities of choice.
With the strong backing of investors, active leadership at the helm, and awareness of consumers on sustainability and affordability, Vinted is here to make a bigger and better impact.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Vinted (@vinted)
Also, check out other insightful stories by the author
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Bazaar Expert
How does Vinted make money? – The Vinted Business Model
Do you want to know what the Vinted Business Model is and how does Vinted makes money? If so, you are in the right place! Let’s dive right into it.
Table of Contents
Vinted: Company Profile
What is vinted.
Vinted is an e-commerce platform which is based in Vilnius, Lithuania. It is a marketplace for buying and selling used clothes and accessories. Users can also sell their own used clothing for women, men and children. Men also buy and sell clothes on Vinted. However, more women than men are selling clothes on Vinted now.
Vinted’s main focus, as the name suggests, is on vintage or pre-owned clothing. Re-selling old clothes is a great way to recycle! You can save money by buying used items and also selling clothing.
You also help the environment because there’s less waste going into landfills. Vinted helps people reduce their carbon footprints by not creating new items but reusing old ones instead.
Vinted has gained success worldwide, and the Vinted business model enables global consumers to make second-hand their first option making a name for itself in the world of fashion. The website offers free shipping, returns, and easy payment options.
Vinted charges a fee based on promotion for the type of item being sold. Users can gain more exposure for their items with Wardrobe Spotlight and Item Bump.
How was Vinted started?
Vinted was founded in 2008 by Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Mitkute was a shy person who had learned one important rule, not to follow others and lose her individuality. She was invested in forming her dreams and understanding herself. Her father had died when she was six, and she grew up with her mother, sister and grandmother.
Mitkute’s grandmother believed that education was the key to a successful future and encouraged Mikute to study hard and be at the top of her class.
Mitkute had never dreamed of being a businesswoman. When she moved from her native town to the capital to study, she moved her whole closet. Mitkute realized that she had many things that she didn’t wear anymore.
Many items still had the tags on, or she had worn them only a couple of times. She had lots of stuff in her closet, but it still seemed that she had nothing to wear. She then thought that she must not be the only girl in this situation. And she was right.
A few days later, Mitkute was invited to a housewarming party, where she met Janauskas. She mentioned her idea for an online marketplace to sell fashionable used clothing to Janauskas, a software engineer at that time.
The idea for Vinted was born from this spontaneous conversation. Although it could have stayed as an idea, Mitkute and Janauskas were so passionate about the idea that they wanted to try it out. They realized the need for a prototype to sell used clothes.
Within a few weeks, Janauskas and Mitkutte created a prototype for an online marketplace where people could exchange pre-owned clothing.
Vinted was an unexpected success right from the beginning. Members were joining every hour, and media coverage was excellent. News portals, radio stations were calling Mitkute asking for interviews. It was then that they realized that they had started something big.
Mitkute’s simple idea created a billion-dollar business. Her company doesn’t contribute to the global pollution problem by throwing out perfectly good clothes. Instead, it encourages people to recycle.
They help people save money by selling second-hand items. Their main goal is to ensure that everyone has access to affordable fashion.
Vinted then extended the site into Germany, where it runs as Kleiderkreisel these days. France and Germany are the top two countries using Vinted.
Vinted was expanded into the United States in 2010. After about two years, the company launched a mobile app on Android and iOS to complement the desktop version. Vinted now allows users in 12 different countries to sell, buy and trade clothing. Today, the company has a community of around 37 million people that includes both men and women.
How does Vinted work?
Users can choose from three main categories: Children, Men, and Women.
You can sell the following items:
- Dresses, sweaters, jeans, skirts, baby clothing, etc.
- Footwear such as heels, sandals, boots, flip-flops, etc.
- Backpacks, handbags, shoulder bags, fanny packs, etc.
- Any accessory that may include watches, sunglasses, belts, hats, jewelry, and so on.
- Beauty products are also included, such as makeup, perfume, hair and nail care.
Once users find items they wish to buy at reasonable rates, they can purchase them. Vinted issues a prepaid shipping label, and the seller can then ship the item. Vinted ensures that the customer gets quality products delivered on time.
Vinted handles all the payments as well as the refunds. Thus, to use Vinted, users need to create a Vinted account. Once you have the account, you can sell or buy items on the marketplace.
Vinted does not charge the sellers any commission. However, various paid promotional tools can be used by the sellers for advertising their listings.
Vinted’s growth
Lithuanian unicorn startup company Vinted started as an incredibly successful business run by Mitkute, a female entrepreneur. Vinted launched in Germany in 2009, one year after its Lithuanian launch. What had once been a local business was now a potentially global business, and it completely changed the mindset of Mitkute and Janauskas.
Mantas Mikuckas, an investor in Vinted, initially joined as an investor, but after seeing Vinted, he was passionate about the idea, so he joined as a full-time employee. Mikuckas brought in the know-how to take Vinted global. Moreover, Accel Partners invested in Vinted and gave Vinted the freedom to scale the idea globally much faster and enter new markets in a short time.
As a female-owned company, Vinted overgrew, but it has not been without growing pains. By 2016 Vinted was close to becoming bankrupt as it burned cash at an insane rate. Investors then hired Thomas Plantenga to turn the company around.
Plantenga changed the business model in 2016 to lower the costs and make it possible for all users to list clothes, which brought about a dramatic change in Vinted’s growth. Vinted removed all listing fees and scaled back on its pricey international expansion strategy. Vinted has become a significant player in the fashion industry as the market for second-hand clothing is booming.
Vinted Statistics
Vinted’s users : Vinted has 37 million active users across the globe.
Vinted’s employees: Vinted has 773 employees.
Vinted’s revenue: According to the latest report, Vinted’s revenue was $38.9 million in 2018. They don’t need to make their annual reports public because they are a private company.
Vinted’s valuation: Crunchbase shows that Vinted has raised over $562.3M in total VC funding. Investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Insight Partners, Burda Principal Investments, and Sprints Capital. Vinted is now valued at a cool $4.2 billion after closing an all-equity round of $303 million.
So how does Vinted make money?
How does Vinted make money?
As of 2022, the Vinted app has over 45 million users. This app is free to download and use. It has a revenue model that makes money in three different ways:
Buyer Protection Services
When buyers order through Vinted, they are charged a buyer protection fee. Every buyer mandatorily has to pay this fee. This fee is charged to protect buyers from some major issues during the shipment, such as: they may receive damaged items, in shipment some things may be lost, the things they receive may be different from the ones buyers described, fraud, and much more. Vinted’s buyer protection fee is between 3-8% of the item’s price plus $0.42-$1.11. Vinted compensates sellers for commission free purchases by making the buyer protection fees mandatory. Thus, this is one of the significant ways Vinted makes money.
Promoted Listings
Another way through which Vinted makes money is through promoted listings. Vinted does not charge the sellers selling fees or any commission on sales. It makes money by offering sellers various promotional tools.
Promotion is a vital strategy to become successful in any business. These promotional tools help the sellers in making their listings more visible. The Wardrobe Spotlight service and Item Bumps are two of Vinted’s significant promoted listing tools. If a seller purchases bumps, Vinted will promote their listing for about three consecutive days or till that item is sold.
Wardrobe spotlights enable the promotion of sellers’ listing for seven consecutive days. The wardrobe spotlight fee is usually $9.66 per wardrobe spotlight, while that of the bumping listed items is $1.32 per bump. Thus, the promoted listing is an essential way Vinted makes money.
Third-Party Advertising
Another important Vinted revenue model is advertising. On the listing pages and newsfeed of Vinted’s website, third-party ad networks can serve up different ads.
Shipping Costs
When ordering from Vinted, the buyers are expected to pay shipping costs. The shipping costs may differ for the different kinds of shipping services the buyer uses. It also depends on the size of the shipment.
Final Thoughts
Vinted has established a model of high trust, low cost and has managed to grow and bring about change. Our current consumption model is unsustainable, and Vinted tries to make sustainable consumption as easy as possible.
Instead of throwing away something you no longer wear, you can sell it through Vinted. We hope this article has given you insights into the Vintage business model and answered how does Vinted make money.
Frequently asked questions about Vinted
Vinted is an e-commerce platform which is based in Vilnius, Lithuania. It is a peer-to-peer e-commerce platform for pre-owned clothing and accessories.
Is Vinted a free app?
Vinted is a free app that can be accessed and used by anyone.
How many users does Vinted have?
Vinted has 37 million active users across the globe.
Vinted’s revenue model is to earn money through buyer protection fees,Promoted listings, third party advertising and shipping charges. Vinted makes money through the advertising-based and fee-for-services (FFS) business models.
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How Does Vinted Make Money (Business and Revenue Model)
The Vinted business model
What is Vinted, and how does Vinted work?
How does vinted make money.
- Buyer Protection Fees
- Promoted Listings
- Third Party Advertising
Vinted’s profit and revenue
What is the vinted business and revenue model, vinted’s funding and valuation.
How does Vinted make money? Here is a full, in-depth, breakdown of their three (3) revenue streams and the different products and services they offer, as well as the Vinted business model, their year-over-year revenue, and how Vinted works.
Vinted is an online marketplace app for buying and selling new and secondhand clothing, shoes, accessories, and more.
Founded in 2008 by Milda Mitkutė and Justas Janauskas , Vinted now has more than 45 million users with a $4.5 billion valuation.
How Vinted works is: Once a user creates a Vinted account, they can buy or sell items on the marketplace. Vinted doesn’t charge sellers commission fees, but they do offer paid promotional tools to advertise their listings.
Some of Vinted’s competitors include Poshmark , Etsy , OfferUp , Depop , Mercari , The RealReal , Facebook Marketplace , eBay , Nextdoor , and other marketplace apps.
Some of Vinted’s statistics include some 45 million users and €1.3 billion EUR ($1.54 billion USD) in Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV).
So how does Vinted make money off of all their users and gross transaction volume on the platform?
Below is a breakdown of how much money Vinted makes and its revenue model. Including all their revenue streams and how much they charge for their services.
Here are the 3 ways of how Vinted makes money (in 2021):
Vinted has a revenue model that makes money in three (3) ways – Buyer Protection Fees, Promoted Listings, and Advertising.
#1. Buyer Protection Fees
Vinted charges buyers a buyer protection fee on every order made through Vinted. This fee is mandatory and is applied automatically at checkout on top of the item price.
This protects the buyer from things like damaged items, items lost in shipment, items that are significantly different than described, fraud, and more. If a buyer experiences any other the following then a full refund will be issued.
Vinted’s Buyer Protection Fee:
- 3% to 8% of the item price + £0.30 to £0.80 GBP ($0.42 to $1.11 USD)
Note: By making Buyer Protection Fees mandatory, Vinted makes up for offering commission free sales to sellers by charging the buyers instead.
#2. Promoted Listings
Vinted does not make money from their sellers through commissions on sales, so they make money by offering sellers promotional tools to make their listings more visible..
The two (2) promoted listing tools Vinted offers, are: Item Bumps and Wardrobe Spotlight .
Sellers can purchase bumps , which promotes your listing for 3 consecutive days or until the item is sold. Or, sellers can purchase wardrobe spotlights that promote your listings for 7 consecutive days.
Vinted Seller Fees (For Promoted Listing):
- Bumping Listed Items Fee: £0.95 GBP ($1.32 USD) per bump
- Wardrobe Spotlight Fee: £6.95 GBP ($9.66 USD) per wardrobe spotlight
#3. Third Party Advertising
Another revenue model for Vinted is through advertising.
They allow third party ad networks to serve up advertisements on the newsfeed and listing pages of their website and app to their 45 million users.
Vinted’s last reported revenue was €32.9 million EUR ($38.9 million USD) in 2018. Any revenue reported for 2019 and 2020 is unverifiable.
Note: Because Vinted is a privately held company, they are not required to make their annual reporting, such as Form 10-K’s, pubic.
Vinted makes money through a few revenue models that they combine within their company, they are:
- Fee-for-service (FFS) business model
- Advertising based business model
According to Vinted’s Crunchbase profile , Vinted raised $562.3 million over 6 rounds with a valuation of $4.5 billion .
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Vinted Business Model | How Does Vinted Make Money?
- August 18, 2021
Vinted is an e-commerce platform that integrates a strong resale component into its e-commerce functionality. The company generates profits through its buyer protection program.
Vinted business model is based on the revenue from buyers for services such as customer assistance, insurance, and tracking; shipping charges; Wardrobe Spotlight (which can help enhance the visibility of items).
Vinted offers pre-owned apparel on its online marketplace. Vinted allows users to list an item of clothing that they no longer wear (for whatever reason) using a profile, images, and descriptions and then wait for prospective buyers to find it.
You may be able to have another Vinted user buy your apparel and pay for shipping when they are willing to pay the amount you’ve established.
Vinted provides the seller with a pre-paid shipping label, simplifying the shipping process. The seller retains full ownership of the dress after the sale, except for a nominal fee to Vinted.
What is Vinted?
Vinted is an online marketplace where private individuals can purchase, sell, and trade fashion items. The company specializes in pre-owned clothing for women, men, and children.
Vinted makes money by combining set fees and variable fees with advertising options for sellers (called Wardrobe Spotlight and Item Bump, respectively).
Vinted, founded in 2008 by two entrepreneurs from Lithuania, has become a big name in the fashion industry. The company serves over 25 million consumers worldwide and has received more than $562 million in venture capital funding.
How Does Vinted Work?
Vinted is a peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile social marketplace for pre-owned apparel. Vinted, one of the most successful startups in the Baltic republics, allows secondhand to become the primary choice for global consumers.
Vinted offers a marketplace for buyers, sellers, and exchangers of clothing. Vinted’s primary concentration, as the name implies, is on vintage and/or pre-owned apparel.
There are three categories for users to choose from: Women, Men, and Children. You can sell the following items:
- Dresses, lingerie, skirts, jeans, and sweaters are all acceptable.
- Footwear includes sandals, heels, boots, and flip-flops.
- Handbags, fanny packs, backpacks, and shoulder bags, for example
- An accessory can be anything from watches to sunglasses to belts to jewelry to hats.
- Beauty products include perfume, hair and nail care, and makeup.
If a person discovers an item they want and the pricing is acceptable, they can simply purchase it. Vinted will then issue a pre-paid shipping label to the seller, making it simple to ship it.
A marketplace operator, Vinted also handles payments and refunds, ensuring that buyers receive quality products on time.
How Does Vinted Make Money?
Vinted makes money by charging sellers a commission of between $1 and $5 (or 19 percent ) for each item of clothes successfully sold through its marketplace. Revenues were approximately $5 million last year.
Vinted now boasts 12 million users, with an additional 11,000 joining daily. Additionally, the marketplace currently boasts 22.3 million items, with 90 new items added every minute.
Additionally, the corporation claims that an item is sold on the website every 49 seconds.
Vinted earns money by charging their customers a set or variable rate for each successful transaction they handle through their network.
Payment processing and label creation are examples of fixed costs that are covered by the predetermined amount. A fixed amount of $0.7 is attached to each transaction.
There is also a variable rate of 5%. In addition to the article’s price, the buyer must also pay a purchase charge of $5.
Internet marketplaces typically charge sellers rather than customers. Vinted is completely free to use!
Many other marketplaces, such as eBay, Poshmark, and ThredUp, charge sellers for facilitating transactions.
Additionally, Vinted has two additional revenue streams:
- Spotlight on the wardrobe
- Adding new items to the list
Wardrobe Spotlight is a premium tool that highlights a seller’s wardrobe (a list of things they sell) to other customers who share similar fashion interests.
The buyer will see five listings from the seller’s wardrobe in specific areas in their newsfeed for seven days. The seller’s most popular items will appear in three items, and the buyer’s newsfeed preferences will appear in two items.
A premium tool called Item Bump allows merchants to increase visibility for their products, thus speeding up the selling process.
An “update” exposes a listing to a larger number of potential buyers in their feed and search results for seven days.
Bumping an item costs between $0.5 and $5, depending on the category, its pricing, and the volume of products currently being bumped on the Vinted platform.
It makes money from several different sources, which are detailed below.
Buyer protection fee/service fee
Buyer protection charges are paid to Vinted in exchange for customer assistance, insurance, and tracking services.
The fee is 5% of the item’s price (excluding taxes and shipping), plus $0.70.
The Vinted payment process must remain reliable as a result of this fee.
Wardrobe Spotlight (UK)
The Wardrobe Spotlight service is an exclusive Vinted UK feature that allows consumers to raise their visibility on the marketplace.
Vinted clients can have items from their wardrobe featured in specific areas in other members’ news feeds for an entire week.
The rest of the seller’s inventory will also be accessible to these members.
It is also targeted to increase visibility. In other words, it will be displayed to members who have similar body types and brand preferences. Vinted charges a service fee of £6.95.
Shipping costs
Furthermore, the buyer is responsible for shipping costs, which may vary depending on the size of the shipment and the type of delivery service used.
The customer is charged for freight by Vinted, and Vinted is unlikely to profit from the contract. Some claim that it makes money because it can send in bulk and obtain a cheaper courier rate.
Bumping listed items
Boost service is also available for Wardrobe Spotlight so that things will appear in other members’ news feeds.
Bumping is available once daily for a specified number of days or until the item sells. Vinted costs $0.95 per item after a three-day price increase.
What is the Funding and Valuation of Vinted?
The Crunchbase website shows that Vinted has raised $562.3 million in venture capital funding over six rounds.
Vinted raised €250 million in its most recent Series F financing in May 2021, with a valuation of over $4.2 billion.
Vinted has received funding from notable investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel Partners, Insight Partners, Sprint Capital, and Burda Principal Investments.
What is the Revenue of Vinted?
Vinted does not disclose its sales metrics to the general public, just like every other venture-backed company.
The company revealed its intention to sell over 1.3 billion dollars of clothing across 11 markets after its Series E funding round. A fee of 3% to 8% would generate between 40 and 100 million euros per year.
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Success Story of Vinted
The company Vinted was founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2008 by Milda Mitkute and Justas Jankauskas. Vinted began with a conversation Jankauskas had with a friend at a pub, as is the case with any worthwhile endeavor.
There was talk about launching a website that offered people a chance to trade gently used clothing.
Mitkute (who would become a co-founder later on) and Janauskas developed a prototype shortly after that.
The platform’s user engagement in its forum-style community grew organically without any marketing efforts on the part of the partners.
He was coding on his project one night when Sophie Utikal, a couch surfer from Munich, asked him what he was doing. Utikal was so inspired by his explanation that she wished to introduce it to Germany.
Jankauskas promised to handle all technical work (he is a software engineer by trade), while Utikal would manage all advertising initiatives.
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Today, Vinted operates in Germany under the brand name Kleiderkreisel, which is one of the company’s most profitable markets. As with Lithuania, the platform grew mostly through word of mouth.
The Czech Republic and the United Kingdom have both adopted this concept.
The success attracted considerable attention to the firm, which eventually received funding from Lithuanian angel investor Mantas Mikuckas. Mikuckas joined the company as COO shortly after that in 2013.
The company had grown from 10,000 users to over 12 million within a year. It listed 22 million goods across 11 countries where it operated. The firm has expanded to the U.S. by the end of 2015, helped by a €25 million fundraising round.
Vinted’s journey has not been without setbacks, despite those encouraging growth figures. Kleiderkreisel users exploded in protest against the company’s fee-based marketing model in the early 2010s (sales on the platform were free of charge previously, and revenue was generated through ads).
The company was facing bankruptcy by 2016 due to a lack of cash. The company hired Thomas Plantenga to analyze the company’s risk and come up with a mitigation plan.
Vinted closed operations in San Francisco, London, Munich, and Paris, cutting its headcount from 240 to 150. The corporation also chose to concentrate on France and Germany, two important markets.
Vinted’s turnaround was a remarkable success, allowing the company to raise further funds in two subsequent investment rounds.
In terms of Plantenga, he was named the company’s new CEO in 2017 and has been responsible for the company’s strategic direction to date.
Key Takeaways From Vinted Business Model
Vinted, an online community marketplace based in Vilnius, Lithuania, was launched in 2008. Milda Mitkute came up with the idea for the platform while she was in the process of relocating.
Vinted does not charge its users to advertise their unwanted products or to sell them. Buyers are responsible for covering all transaction and delivery fees.
Vinted also generates revenue through its Wardrobe Spotlight service. Minimal fee users can pay to have their listings appear prominently in search results or buyers’ news feeds.
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Hi there, I'm Madhav, and I'm thrilled to be able to share my thoughts and experiences with you through my writing. As a writer and blogger, I cover many topics, including business, technology, marketing, and finance. I've always been fascinated by these areas and love exploring the latest trends and developments.In addition to my professional interests, I love to cook, experiment with new recipes, and share my culinary creations with friends and family. There's nothing quite like the satisfaction of creating something delicious from scratch.
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How does Vinted make money?
By Nikita Sheth | Verified by Andrew Boyd | Updated Aug. 18, 2022
- Vinted is an online marketplace for selling and exchanging fashion items with private consumers.
- Vinted focuses on selling second-hand fashion, connecting buyers and sellers through its platform.
- Vinted makes money by charging variable and fixed fees and advertising for sellers.
Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas founded Vinted in 2008, with headquarters in Vilnius, Lithuania. The company is one of the leading brands and websites in the fashion industry, particularly in the secondary market. The company never went public, choosing to raise capital in the VC market instead.
To date, Vinted raised more than $562-million in VC funding, valuing the company at $4.5 billion.
Vinted employs more than 1,200 people and operates in nine countries, including the US, UK, the Czech Republic, Spain, Austria, Lithuania, and Poland.
The company’s biggest markets are France and Germany.
Coming up next
What does vinted do, how does vinted work, how vinted makes money, future growth engine, competitors.
Vinted is an online marketplace operating a peer-to-peer model facilitating the sale and exchange of various fashion items in the kids, women’s, and men’s categories.
The site offers thousands of listings, with prospective buyers browsing listings and purchasing the clothing through the site.
Vinted supports sellers by offering free registration on its platform.
They also offer printed shipping labels making it easy to ship their garments to the buyer.
The model works by connecting the buyer and seller, giving the buyer the chance to negotiate pricing with the seller.
Vinted manages the marketplace, taking care of the backend of the deal.
It controls the payment and refund process, providing the buyer protection on their order and timeous delivery.
Vinted had a rough road to its success.
The company experienced rapid growth in European markets, using the growth to expand into international markets. Vinted launched its marketplace, “Kleiderkreisel,” in 2010, intending to charge fees to users.
However, the company experienced huge consumer backlash for implementing this model.
Previously, it offered a fee-less transaction system, and the market revolted against its implementation of a fee structure. As a result, the company pulled its fee structure.
By 2016, it was burning huge amounts of investor capital to manage its operations, with no income coming to the company from its operations.
On the verge of bankruptcy, Vinted hired “Insight Venture Partners,” one of its investors, to help it cut costs.
Thomas Plantenga suggested the company close its operations in San Francisco, Munich, London, and Paris, reducing its employee count from 240 to just 150 employees.
The platform then introduced its buyer fee model to create cash flow for the company and remove the threat of bankruptcy.
Shortly after implementing this model, the company’s balance sheet returned to financial health.
Vinted makes money by charging buyers variable and fixed fees for processing transactions.
It also runs an advertising model on its site, producing income for the company.
The $0.70 fixed fee covers costs like payment processing and shipping labels.
Buyers also pay a 5% variable fee. This fee structure to the buyer side soothed the potential of a seller revolt on its platform like it experienced in 2010 with “Kleiderkreisel.”
Vinted operates two other monetization platforms known as “Closet Spotlight” and “Bumping.” Closet Spotlight promotes a seller’s wardrobes for a fee.
Bump gives sellers added visibility for their garments, speeding up the selling process for sellers. Fees for bumps range between $0.5 and $5, depending on the item category and price.
Sellers can create public profiles where they can place reviews from buyers and collect other data sets relevant to their accounts.
The company also earns by providing buyer protection on orders, increasing user trust in the platform.
The protection allows buyers to receive a refund if the product doesn’t arrive or it is not the product shown in the listing.
Since Vinted doesn’t charge seller fees, it attracts a huge amount of sellers to its platform.
The company continues to expand into European and international markets.
It maintains its fee structure, allowing for its expansion.
The integration of seller tools to the platform adds value to its offering, attracting more sellers to its site.
Vinted’s competitors include other online marketplaces selling used garments. Some of its top competitors include the following companies.
- Facebook Marketplace (Meta)
- The Real Real
- Tim Chen's net worth
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- Chrishell Stause's net worth
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- Rich Paul's net worth
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How Vinted Used Community-Led Brand Marketing to Grow
“A closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear” isn’t just a commonplace problem — it’s a huge and profitable business opportunity.
To be precise, the global second-hand apparel market is now worth $26.7 billion and is projected to almost triple in size by 2025.
What’s driving this surge? Consumers’ changing attitudes towards mass-market fashion (and the practices driving pollution behind it) are a huge factor. However, we also have to consider the impact of aggressive brand growth efforts utilized by tech startups like Vinted.
Sporting a brand mission of “Sell the clothes that have more to give. Shop for items you won’t find in stores”, Vinted is one of the biggest fashion resale platforms in Europe. Per the latest data, the platform has over 45 million active users and $32.5 million in annual revenue .
So how did Vinted earn the status of Europe’s most popular second-hand clothing marketplace? And what actually fuel’s their brand success? Let’s take a deep dive.
Vinted’s Success Story
Source: Vinted
Founded in 2008 by Lithuanian entrepreneurs Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas, the idea for Vinted was first discussed at a party.
Mitkute was about to move away for college, but her new place could barely fit all the clothes she owned. And that got her thinking: why isn’t there an easy way to sell used clothing online?
In an interview with Nordic Business Forum , Mitkute explained:
“I was invited to a housewarming party where I met Justas. I remember telling him about my idea at around 2 am, and he said: ‘Why not, we should try’.”
In just two weeks, the duo had created a simple website to test their idea… and people loved it.
In the following months, hundreds of members joined their peer-to-peer clothing marketplace. And thanks to Lithuanian media publishers who covered the launch, the news spread fast. From radio stations to newspapers, journalists were calling constantly in to invite Mitkute and Janauskas for interviews.
Empowered by this initial wave of organic brand growth, the team doubled down. By 2009, Vinted launched in Germany under the name Kleiderkreisel . Soon, the news about the Baltic startup’s success traveled across oceans — backed by the investments from Accel Partners, Vinted expanded operations to the US and the UK in 2011.
As opposed to the typical B2B or B2C, Vinted operates as a C2C marketplace — providing a space for sellers and buyers to connect. Additionally, they don’t handle shipping or offer consignment services. So, cross-border expansion was easy to orchestrate and Vinted was able to new markets in record time.
But rapid growth comes at a toll. Despite raising several rounds of investments, totaling €52.2 million, Vinted was once again short on cash by 2016. As Thomas Plantenga, then-consultant and now-Vinted CEO, admitted : “company growth stalled whilst the costs were increasing rapidly”.
The company was in peril due to several factors — operational overspending, high customer acquisition costs, low user retention efforts, and mounting complaints around service levels. And to make things worse, Vinted’s brand value was diminishing fast.
So, Plantenga decided to make some radical changes. Under his guidance, the company:
Adopted a “No Sellers’ Fee Model”: This allowed sellers to list an unlimited number of items without paying any selling fees.
Added “Buyer Protection”: An extra “insurance” fee users could pay to acquire more safety and security on the platform.
Set Up 24/7 Customer Support: This was to improve the speed and efficiency of issue resolution and improve the platform's reputation.
Also, Vinted switched gears from aggressive new market expansion to achieving higher brand consideration numbers in two core markets: Germany and France.
With their refreshed brand marketing strategy , Vinted now focused on cultivating a better sense of community. The team noticed that platform users developed connections that resembled more of a social network than an eCommerce website.
Users followed one another, exchanged likes, and partook in many private conversations. So, Vinted decided to capitalize on this behavioral trend and rolled out more community-building features.
This major shift in strategy worked. Within several weeks, Vinted broke over $2 million in sales in one day — and then proceeded to close the largest ever investment round for a Baltic startup.
By 2019, Vinted became the first unicorn startup in Lithuania with a €1 billion valuation. A year later, the platform was acquired by a Dutch competitor, United Wardrobe , for an undisclosed (but likely lavish) sum.
Circa 2021, Vinted is still in its active growth stage. Once again, the brand is raising funds upwards of $303 million with the goal of making an even bigger mark in the circular economy — just like its US competitor thredUP .
But despite having strong positions in European markets and a more refined growth strategy, Vinted still has plenty of challenges ahead. They need to differentiate from a growing number of competitors, improve brand affinity , and fulfill a bigger brand mission they’ve committed to — making second-hand fashion the first choice worldwide.
3 Brand Growth Lessons from Vinted
In the early day, Vinted boasted strong organic growth momentum. Paired with strategic product development, its efforts landed the brand atop several European markets.
But as more brands enter the space, Vinted will need to strengthen its connection with current customers to increase retention while further increasing brand awareness . Thus far, the team has been moderately successful with this task.
So, if your brand is struggling to transition from organic to orchestrated brand growth, here are several tips to keep in mind.
1. Focus on Value Creation
When Plantenga joined Vinted, the app was making most revenue of its from charging a commission on sales — a standard model many C2C marketplaces use.
But with the rising competition and ability to sell goods directly (e.g. via the then-new Facebook Marketplace), Plantenga recognized this wasn’t a viable approach for the long term.
So, he changed Vinted's monetization strategy to the one they use today. Now, the platform makes money from:
listing visibility boosts
buyer protection
brand-sponsored ads (akin to social media)
Buyer protection is the feature that nets Vinted the most revenue. Why? Because it’s value-driven. People are wary of buying things from strangers and some have probably been burned by scams on other platforms.
Thus, buyer protection fulfills several jobs at once:
Motivates more people to shop on Vinted without worrying about fraud
Helps locate and eliminate dishonest sellers through submitted reviews and complaints
Allows Vinted to attract more sellers as product listings can remain fee-free.
And this monetization strategy works to their advantage and even prompts users from other platforms to switch. As one former Depop seller admitted to Refinery29 that she “really hates how Depop takes 10% of sellers’ earnings. On Vinted, the system is more logical and it falls to buyers to pay this fee.”
The Takeaway: Understanding the features customers are willing to pay for is crucial when operating on slim margins. While it’s easy to focus your product development efforts around the highest-grossing features or copy your competition and then try to sell to consumers at any cost — eventually, this can lead to a high rate of resistance and user attrition.
Thus, smarter marketers seek data to understand what prompts consumers to consider, use, and stay with your product . Then, they invest in strategies to maximize the perceived and obtained value from the product through a mix of pricing tiers and premium features.
2. Cultivate and Curate a Community
Shopping is a social experience. It’s not just picking clothes from racks, it’s also sharing “looks” from the changing room with your friend group or texting about the “steal” you’ve just managed.
Vinted was among the first marketplace platforms to take note of the users’ “social” behaviors: “On other platforms, you visit the site when you know what you want, but usually, on Vinted, people seem to be spending time there when they don’t know what they want, or when they have too much time,” Janauskas told Tech.eu about their observations during early company days.
So, they tried to amplify these behaviors through the platform’s shopping mechanics, with Vinted user-profiles resembling social media accounts. They were also among the first to add “likes” and the ability to follow seller profiles. Plus, they encouraged users to add photos and quick “About Me” sections.
Similarly, the team deliberately attempted to preserve the C2C aspect by not allowing resellers onto the platform. Plus, they haven’t made any attempts to partner with brands .
Natacha Blanchard, Consumer Lead at Vinted, says : “We do not allow professional sellers or dropshippers on the platform. We work closely with our members and customer service teams to enforce this. If there is any suspicion of commercial activity, users are warned and may be suspended or blocked permanently.”
On one hand, such a consistent focus on one brand value is good for maintaining brand integrity . Users love Vinted for what it is — an affordable way to buy or sell clothes.
But this singular approach also limits their potential for growth. In the future, if Vinted decides to change its attitude towards pro sellers and pursue alternative revenue streams, this may create brand-damaging community backlash.
The Takeaway: Over 59% of consumers feel that businesses have lost touch with the human element of customer experience. However, Vinted’s carefully-cultivated community plays to its advantage of maintaining a personable, approachable, and likable brand personality.
Still — a distinctive, narrow brand focus can limit the possibilities for future growth. At some point, Vinted may struggle to attract new target audiences unless they come up with a creative angle on their original brand promises.
3. Use Voice of the Customer (VoC) as a Marketing Tool
Apart from cultivating a community on the platform, Vinted also uses social media to amplify its reach to new audiences. But given their business model (a marketplace), coming up with on-brand content can be challenging.
But it looks like the community really came through for them here. For instance, French users have set up a hilarious Best of Vinted Twitter account — which now has over 378K followers (vs 7,800+ on the official Vinted FR account).
The community-run profile curates the best gems from the platform like impromptu Kermit the Frog appearances in the product listings. Or funny dialogs between users (in French) about the possibility of getting a discount because “the listing said that the item was never worn, but now you are sending me pictures, where you are modeling it for me”.
Source: Twitter
Vinted shoppers are also super active on TikTok, where the brand’s hashtag amassed over 705 million views organically . However, Vinted doesn’t have a corporate TikTok — which seems to be a mistake, as many fans use TikTok to vent about their unfortunate purchases and unmet expectations.
Vinted’s use of community voices gets more intentional in TV campaigns and out-of-home ads. For example, in the brand’s recent promos in Poland , France , and the UK spotlight its users as the ads’ protagonists.
In each market, they focus on promoting their key brand differentiators — affordability, ease of use, and access to the circular economy. Such consistency is nice for global branding, but are they doing enough to engage with local audiences?
Given that it’s mostly the community that drives the local online conversations, Vinted might be lacking accurate brand tracking data on local trends.
The Takeaway: Word of mouth and community-led marketing can create a viral buzz around your brand, leading to higher brand awareness numbers. But the problem is that you can’t control the conversation.
Instead, you let both favorable and not-so-favorable brand associations emerge and become part of the narrative. Also, without listening to and interacting with your audiences, it’s easy to miss major changes in sentiment, satisfaction levels, and overall content. And that can ultimately derail your growth.
Final Thoughts
Vinted championed growth by being the “first mover”. They impressed users in Lithuania, Germany, and France — among others — by filling in a vacant niche. As Janauskas recounted: “Similar to Lithuania, Kleiderkreisel was growing organically through word of mouth. We didn’t do any marketing and just focused on the product.”
But as the global and regional pre-loved apparel market gets more competitive — think of brands like Reflaunt — Vinted will need to shake up its marketing mix. Community voices can help you gain popularity — but can just as easily result in cancelation. From off-hand comments to minor mishaps, we’ve seen it happen to other brands like Too Faced , Heineken , and The Honest Company — among others.
To outsmart the competition, Vinted will need to become more intentional with owning and shaping its brand marketing strategy. And we’re eager to see where that will take them!
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COMMENTS
Vinted itself operates an online marketplace business model. As such, it connects buyers and sellers on a proprietary platform in which it takes care of product
Vinted is an online shopping marketplace with a strong secondhand component. The company makes money via its buyer protection service.
Since Vinted doesn't charge sellers a commission on their deals, you may be wondering how Vinted makes money. Well, Vinted has four main revenue
The Vinted business model is a game-changer for sellers and buyers alike. It presents an effortless batch of retail therapy
Business Model of Vinted ... Vinted's mission is to make second-hand number one choice worldwide. As told by Natacha Blanchard, Consumer Lead at
Vinted's revenue model is to earn money through buyer protection fees,Promoted listings, third party advertising and shipping charges. Vinted makes money
Vinted has a revenue model that makes money in three (3) ways – Buyer Protection Fees, Promoted Listings, and Advertising. #1. Buyer Protection
Vinted business model is based on the revenue from buyers for services such as customer assistance, insurance, and tracking;
Vinted makes money by charging buyers variable and fixed fees for processing transactions. It also runs an advertising model on its site
Vinted's Success Story · Adopted a “No Sellers' Fee Model”: This allowed sellers to list an unlimited number of items without paying any selling