When does a software company cost one billion euros to launch? when it has 105 million people and 500 million items for sale.
At Vinted’s office in Vilnius, Lithuania, where users can buy and sell used clothing, boots, and gizmos, I am currently. Even if you have n’t used Vinted yet, you undoubtedly know someone who does. It has an astounding 16 million people in the UK, or almost one-quarter of the people, and is battling more well-known competitors like Depop and eBay.
One of them is me. I’m writing this article while wearing a pair of black Aeyde boots that I purchased from Vinted for £45 ( RRP £325 ), along with my Rejina Pyo coat, which I slung over the back of my chair. In the meantime, my son is only wearing Vinted clothing now: a coat I paid £5 for, and three sleepsuits I purchased as part of the “bundle” for £3. Although the prices are excessively alluring, what keeps me coming back is the enjoyable treasure-hunt joy of using the app to look for a deal.
Melanie Monchar, a 52-year-old administration worker from Portishead, North Somerset, who sells clothing on the game, says,” The genius of it is the delivery.” ” For this reason, I moved from auction to Vinted. Because it’s a hassle to get mail and figure everything out. An in-app shipping label created by Vinted can be used to cut off or pick up items from lockers or newsagents. Additionally, unlike auction, there are no seller charges and no cumbersome groups to complete before listing a product. You feel like what you are buying is more real because there is a moratorium on pictures of the clothes being modelled from business websites. ( Depop and eBay, which typically have more skilled and expensive resellers, do not follow the same rules. )
Monchar has made £800 since joining the game two years ago, primarily by selling her mother’s used clothing. She says,” I like the money I get from it, but it’s more that I feel awful about throwing things away.” It’s amazing to be able to sell items that have n’t been used very often but are still vibrant.
With the evangelistic zeal of a megachurch pastor wearing headsets, Vinted’s CEO Adam Jay states,” Our mission is to make vintage the second choice globally.” Only his socks ( a gift ) and worn-out trainers were purchased from a store; the British man is dressed almost entirely in Vinted-purchased clothing. He opens his Vinted accounts and displays his ratings for me. ( Every Vinted user is evaluated by the customers they purchase from and sell to. ) Five constellations all the way, he declares. I enquire about the cost of his sweater. Before laughing tensely, he consults the game. I received a £5 reduction, he claims. I paid £15, but it was only worth £20. In the application, users can make lower presents.
Vinted is Lithuania’s first “unicorn” (technically speaking for a private startup with an at least$ 1 billion valuation ) However, Jay and I may be speaking at any company anywhere in the world. The vibe is extravagantly casual, and the aesthetic is Bay Area. Workers wearing cotton and wool shirts eat olive bread in the busy canteen. Everyone is fresh and tech-savvy: Macs under hands, AirPods in ear, taking conference calls while simultaneously tapping away on phones. There are sleep areas, a games room with PlayStations, audio rooms with violins for any unexpected jam sessions employees might want, and swings—for reasons that are still unclear.
Despite being introduced in the UK in 2014, Vinted began to gain popularity in 2021. According to Jay, it was” typical pandemic behavior to clear out your clothes.” Vinted was being used by 8 million British by 2022. The next year, it increased by two.
In a world filled to the brim with goods, buying fresh garments seems increasingly morally unjustifiable to customers like Monchar. Vinted conducted research that found that 39 % of platform purchases did not result in the purchase of a new product. Could Vinted, however, end hard fashion? According to Dr. Elaine Ritch, a specialist in fashion-consumer behavior at Glasgow Caledonian University,” I do n’t think it’s penetrated sufficiently to disrupt fast fashion as an industry.” ” Retailers are so skilled at using marketing strategies to promote that frequent desire, and it’s such a deeply ingrained type.”
However, according to Ritch, Vinted may appeal to a group of young people who might not otherwise be drawn to strong style. She claims that a lot of the merchandise sold by rapid fashion retailers is extremely homogenized. ” People who prefer more individualized style gravitate toward vintage clothing.”
For a 2023 research project, academic Dr. Isabel Palomo Dominguez focused on Vinted people and discovered that many of them did so because” they were bored of the usual clothing you can buy in ordinary stores.”
Arjun Gossain, a 26-year-old legal expert from Reading, is also appealing in this case. You simply receive a little wider variety of things, he says. Gossain has always been in style, but before Vinted, he did shop at high-end retailers like Zara and H&M. He claims,” I felt a little trapped and as though I had no choice.” ” This is the only item I can purchase.” I had to purchase another because it kept shattering or shrinking. It was somewhat of a period. He then purchases products from more expensive manufacturers through Vinted for the same value as fast trend, including Dickies, Carhartt, and Levi’s.
As we speak, he searches his closet for his favorite Vinted item—a forest-green Levi’s suit that his partner paid him £37 for. It’s simply made to next, he claims. ” I ca n’t see it ripping for a few months; if it did, I’d have it fixed because I adore it.”
Vinted, however, is not a guilt-free buying option. Even though it’s less harmful than buying new, there is an ecological price every time a package thuds through the letterbox. McKinsey estimates that road freight makes up 15 % of all of Europe’s CO2 emissions. When packages move from a regional hub to top windows, the so-called “last hour” of delivery is especially polluting. Ron asserts,” We you criticize the fact that it is delivered, and there is fuel in that. The shippers may be working for the job market, but if something is being worn and used by more than one person, that is more of what we need.” ” We must utilize the resources that are already in use.”
Vinted may leave behind a legacy that will rename used clothing as both desirable and morally acceptable. Milda Mitkute, a co-founder of Verted, claims that for her parents in Soviet Lithuania, “you bought secondhand because you did n’t have money.” Mitkute was the first part of her home to visit Europe and take part in Lithuania’s fresh customer lifestyle during the post-Soviet era. She says,” Clothing was my expression.” As she recalls how her overflowing wardrobe abruptly transitioned from “bling-bling fashion to goth,” Mitkute laughs.
At a home party in 2008, Mitkute, next 22, ran into Justas Janauskas, an old friend with programming knowledge. He was informed by Mitkute that she was moving and needed to organize her drawer. They started selling 100 pieces of Mitkute’s apparel on a website two weeks later. They first failed to contain a “buy” option, so it was an amateur effort.
Lithuania is a small nation, so expression spread rapidly. Vinted expanded rapidly, but it was n’t profitable; Mitkute and Janauskas could hardly pay their server bills. Mantas Mikucka, a Ukrainian business, joined the company in 2011 as an angel investment. Folks, do you know what you have created? he asked. Mitkute is able to recall. Yes, it’s a program for women to buy things, we replied. He replied,” No. It’s considerably larger. Mitkute is well-known in Lithuania, and Vinted is currently supported by a number of venture capital funds.
We are conversing in a conference room with crystal walls. Mitkute waves and smiles at passing personnel every few minutes. But the dragon she co-founded no longer employs her. Seven years ago, when she gave birth to her first child, she took pregnancy left and decided not to come back. She claims that having children and Vinted was” an unattainable thing.” Vinted is a great, great kid, that’s why. Vinted will need as much time as you’re willing to give him. Although she is not on the table, she has a financial stake in the business. She remarks,” It’s pretty mixed sensations.”
Vinted’s transition from a scholar project to an international company with over 1,800 employees has been difficult. 2016 saw the company close four agencies and lay off employees, making it a horrifying year. Jay declares,” It was a turbulent time.” ” We made many changes to the organization model.” The removal of owner charges was a crucial choice. Additionally, they created the phone’s built-in shipping features. Those items really took off, he claims.
Vinted, however, is not yet profitable; in 2022, it reported a pre-tax loss of €47.1 million ($ 40 million ). The FT revealed a potential share price prior to an IPO in October. With a small smile, Jay will only assert that “profitability may come.” In the end, he must provide Vinted’s owners with results. Was he predict a scenario where Vinted’s economic and environmental objectives clash? Since the two things go so perfectly together, he says,” We honestly do n’t have this trade off.”
Given the bank’s noble objectives, I wonder if Vinted intends to guarantee as a B Corp, or industrial company recognized for its cultural impact. Whether or not we have a B Corp symbol, he says,” the important thing is that we actually have an impact on ecology.”
HMRC, which may begin taxing profits of more than £1, 000 annually on sales made through systems like Vinted and eBay on January 1st, may make Jay’s vision more challenging in the UK. Some people have claimed that the” side-hustle income” may make it more difficult than necessary to resell clothing online.
Jay also has the unpleasant task of managing a 300-person staff and 2, 000 contracted support staff, whose job it is to mediate disputes between buyers and sellers. According to Monchar, there is a “name and sorrow Facebook party” for dishonest buyers and sellers.
Vinted charges customers a fee of 3 % to 8 % of the cost of an item. In exchange, consumers are given the assurance that they will get a refund if their purchase is significantly different from what was described, so long as they get in touch with customer support two days after delivery. ( After that, the order closes on its own. )
The biggest complaint Vinted people have with the program is that customers must pay for earnings even if an item is n’t listed properly, unless the seller agrees normally. Tamara Newton, 28, a scholar from Darwen, Lancashire, says,” It’s the process of it.” She just spent £15. on a pair of trainers. Although they were described as being in good state,” the taste was horrible as soon as I opened the box” when the instructors arrived. She asked for a refund, but Vinted help informed Newton that she would need to cover the cost of returning mail. According to her,” The seller violated Vinted’s terms and conditions, but the customer is the one who must pay for the return.” Newton says,” It gave me a nasty taste in my mouth.” Her profile was finished.
According to Jay,” If something is flagged, we may look into it and make every effort to mediate fairly between the buyer and seller.” But when the owner is at fault, it seems innately harsh for the buyers to be left out of pocket.
Depending on how you look at it, disagreements are the system’s curse or major draw. The Instagram accounts @DMDrama records tense and frequently amusing Vinted relationships with its 617, 000 fans. Highlights include a potential customer who paid 17p for just one piece of baby socks, an individual who discovered some broccoli in some shoes, and two users who had their shoes locked in tense six-page message threads over tiny stains on £1.50 tops. The” Y2K gals who love Brandy Melville- they’re really sassy” or” the trendy great teenagers who get lots of money from mum and dad to spend on Supreme” are the worst offenders, according to @DMDrama’s anonymous leader, Tom.
He has learned that “internet tradition is completely crazy” from his experience moderating the account. He talks about the rests, which are so common and uninspired. Women who claim to be in labor frequently use the mistakes” One has died, or something to do with hospitals” to post things late. Tom claims that when a seller posing as Steve McFadden—the actor who portrays Phil Mitchell on EastEnders—was messaged and asked to disregard something. Jay says, laughing,” I do see some of these testimonies.” They are circulated privately.
However, this concept is nonetheless grave. Up to 73 % of all clothing produced worldwide is thrown away or burned. Although Vinted is a start, it don’t free this business from its shackles on its own. Jay remarks,” We are still so earlier in this quest of making second the initial decision.” It continues to make up a pretty little portion of total consumption. That’s what keeps me awake at nights. That is what drives me forward.