The relentless squeeze on household budgets is reshaping how consumers buy clothes, and few businesses are reaping the rewards quite like Vinted.
The Lithuanian-founded online marketplace has reported annual revenues of €1.1 billion, a 38 per cent jump on the previous year, as shoppers increasingly swap the high street for the second-hand rail. Gross merchandise value, the total worth of goods sold through the platform, climbed 47 per cent to €10.8 billion, underscoring the sheer scale of the shift towards pre-owned goods.
Founded in Vilnius in 2008 by Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas, Vinted arrived in Britain a decade ago and found its stride during the pandemic. The UK is now the platform’s second-largest market behind France, with more than 16 million registered users, a remarkable footprint for a business that many mainstream consumers had barely heard of five years ago.
Much of that popularity rests on a simple commercial proposition: unlike eBay and Depop, Vinted charges sellers zero commission. That model, which allows sellers to pocket every penny of their sale price, has attracted everyone from celebrity users including Paul Mescal, Ferne McCann and Alexa Chung to ordinary households using the platform as a genuine income stream.
The company has also been busy broadening its offer well beyond wardrobe clear-outs. Buyers can now pick up computer games, books, crockery and vinyl records, while category expansion into sports equipment and collectables has opened fresh revenue streams. A push into new territories, Latvia, Estonia and Slovenia among them, has further widened the top line.
Not everything in the results made for comfortable reading, however. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax and amortisation slipped 5 per cent to €151 million, while net profit fell 19 per cent to €62 million. Vinted attributed the margin pressure to heavy investment in Germany, where it has battled fierce local competition, and to the expansion of Vinted Go, its in-house logistics arm, into Portugal and Spain.
Vinted Go, launched in 2022 with a pilot of parcel lockers around Paris, now operates across five markets and has ambitions that stretch well beyond its parent platform. The division has begun handling deliveries for third-party retailers, positioning Vinted as a would-be player in the broader European logistics market, a bold strategic bet that will take time to prove its worth.
The wider second-hand sector is consolidating rapidly. Depop, the Gen Z vintage fashion favourite, recently changed hands from Etsy to eBay at a notable discount, roughly $1.2 billion against the $1.6 billion Etsy paid in 2021. Vinted, meanwhile, has been on an acquisition spree of its own, snapping up Denmark’s Trendsales, Sweden’s Rebelle and the Netherlands’ United Wardrobe to cement its position as Europe’s dominant resale marketplace.
For Britain’s growing army of second-hand sellers and bargain hunters, the message is clear: the thrift economy is no passing fad. With household finances still under pressure and sustainability concerns adding moral weight to the trend, platforms such as Vinted look well placed to keep growing, provided they can balance expansion costs against the profitability investors will eventually demand.
