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European Resale Marketplace Vinted Raises $141 Million, Now Valued At $1 Billion

Vinted, a Lithuania-based online peer-to-peer marketplace where individuals sell secondhand apparel, raised $141 million in a funding round that valued the company at more than $1 billion. The e-Commerce business will use the money to continue expanding in Europe and to build out more features on its platform to improve the marketplace’s buying and selling process.

A current feature is that users can search by seller, brand, size or color to find the products that they want on the marketplace, such as a red cocktail dress or leopard print shoes.

Vinted saw significant growth in 2018, with revenue tripling to more than $36 million. In the past 17 months, revenue has grown 4X. Today, Vinted has approximately 180 million products live on its platform and 25 million registered users in 11 markets, including France, Germany, Belgium and Spain. The company expects more than $1.4 billion in clothes to sell on the site in 2019.

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Vinted’s growth parallels the state of secondhand apparel sales as a whole. The overall resale market has grown 21X faster than the retail apparel market over the past three years and is expected to reach $23 billion by 2023 ($51 billion when accounting for thrift stores and donations), according to the thredUP 2019 Resale Report.

“We want to make sure we don’t have new products,” said Vinted CEO Thomas Plantenga in an interview with TechCrunch. “All our sellers are regular people.”

Approximately 75% of Vinted’s customers have never bought or sold secondhand clothes in their lives before coming to the platform, Plantenga added. Upon taking the CEO mantle in 2016, Plantenga shifted the platform away from mandatory product listing fees, instead offering the option of additional paid services such as the promotion of a user’s closet. Vinted charges a 5% commission only if the shopper conducts transactions on Vinted itself, bundling buyer protection and shipping into the package.

Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round along with Sprints Capital, Insight Venture Partners, Accel and Burda Principal Investments.

Vinted was founded in 2008 by Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas, originating as a web site to help Mitkute get rid of extra clothes.

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