Florence Castetbon is in a good position to observe how Vinted is quietly torpedoing the clothing market. Her Parisian home decoration boutique, Kameme Concept, is a pickup point for packages dispatched by Mondial Relay, and the online retailer is its biggest customer in France. Of the hundred or so packages delivered each day, on average, "70 are from Vinted," she noted after looking at her computer. The second-hand online sales website's customers are "young, old, men, women, every profile is represented," observed the shopkeeper.
The website, which launched in 2008, has become a heavyweight in the clothing industry. According to Cross-Border Commerce Europe, Vinted ranks third among online fashion retailers in Europe, behind Germany's Zalando and China's Shein.
Its runaway success shows no sign of cooling down. According to the Financial Times, the site's shareholders gave Morgan Stanley a mandate to study the sale of €200 million worth of shares and issue new ones prior to an IPO. In an interview with Le Monde, Vinted CEO Thomas Plantenga said that "none of this information has been confirmed." But the company said that such an IPO is "one of many possible long-term options for any developing company." Although Vinted is operating at a loss, it is still in an intense expansion phase and aims to make "second-hand products as easily accessible as new ones," explained its CEO.
Vinted was founded by two friends, Justas Janauskas and Milda Mitkute, in Vilnius, Lithuania, to sell clothes online that the latter wanted to get rid of. The site grew slowly in its early days, despite raising €52.2 million between 2013 and 2015 from investment funds. In 2016, it was given up for dead. As a last resort, the American fund Insight Venture Partners, a shareholder since 2014, dispatched a consultant, Thomas Plantenga, for a consulting mission.
This Dutch specialist in the digital economy came in from New York, changed everything and closed several European offices, leaving only its headquarters and a subsidiary in Berlin. He then became its CEO. At the same time, he made the site free to use for all customers selling their wares and charged buyers a few euros for delivery and protection costs. Thanks to massive advertising campaigns and the slogan "Don't wear it? Sell it!" Vinted quickly expanded its offer and acquired new customers.
In 2018, its revenue reached €24.8 million in France, Spain and Belgium, the same year it raised €50 million from Sprints Capital. A year later, the start-up became Lithuania's first unicorn when it raised €128 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sprints Capital, Insight Venture Partners and Burda, pushing its valuation over €1 billion.
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