You’ve got a closet full of clothes you don’t wear anymore. You want to sell them. Your options:
Depop → list your items, they take 10% when you sell
Poshmark → list your items, they take 20% when you sell
eBay→ list your items, they take ~13% when you sell
Vinted → list your items, they take 0% when you sell
Zero commission. Zero listing fees. The seller keeps everything the buyer pays for the item. Vinted makes its money on the other side of the transaction: buyer protection fees and shipping services.
That one decision (charge buyers, not sellers) is the reason Vinted has more inventory than any other secondhand marketplace in Europe. When selling costs nothing, everyone lists. When everyone lists, the selection is massive. When the selection is massive, buyers show up. When buyers show up in huge numbers, Vinted can charge them for protection and shipping and still be cheaper than buying new.
2025 results (reported April 9, 2026):
→ Revenue: €1.1 billion, up 38% YoY
→ GMV (total value of goods sold): €10.8 billion, up 47% YoY
→ Net profit: €62 million
→ 100M+ members across 26 European countries
→ Larger by transaction volume than most traditional clothing retailers in Europe
→ Became the #1 clothing retailer in France by sales volume, ahead of Amazon
Founded in 2008 in Vilnius, Lithuania by Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas. Started as a local clothing swap forum. Now valued at ~$8B and testing US market entry.
The setup
The secondhand clothing market in Europe was fragmented for years. Every country had its own dominant platform:
→ Leboncoin in France → Kleinanzeigen (formerly eBay Kleinanzeigen) in Germany → Wallapop in Spain → Marktplaats in the Netherlands
Most of these were general classifieds (think Craigslist) where clothing was just one category among many. None of them specialized in fashion. None of them invested in making the buying experience feel trustworthy or modern. And most of them charged sellers, which meant casual sellers (people cleaning out closets, not professional resellers) often didn’t bother listing.
Thomas Plantenga became CEO in 2016 and made two strategic bets:
Bet 1: Go pan-European instead of staying in one country. While competitors focused on single markets, Vinted launched across the continent. The same person in Berlin and the same person in Paris can now buy from each other. This is unusual for C2C (consumer-to-consumer) marketplaces, which typically stay local because of shipping logistics and language barriers.
Bet 2: Kill seller fees entirely. Make selling free. This was 2016 and it was radical for the category.
Both bets worked.
💡 Strategy Playbook: In a two-sided marketplace, make the supply side free. Monetize the demand side. You’ll have more inventory than any competitor who taxes sellers.
The play
1. Zero seller fees = the biggest closet in Europe
The core problem in secondhand clothing marketplaces is supply. Not demand. There are plenty of people who want to buy cheap, unique, or sustainable clothing. The bottleneck is getting enough sellers to list enough items to make the selection worth browsing.
Most platforms tried to solve supply by marketing to sellers or building seller tools. Vinted solved it by removing the cost of selling.
Think about the psychology. You have a jacket you paid €80 for and haven’t worn in a year. On Depop, you list it for €25, sell it, and Depop takes €2.50. You walk away with €22.50. On Vinted, you list the same jacket for €25 and keep all €25.
The €2.50 difference seems small. But for casual sellers (which is the majority of the secondhand market), the zero-fee promise is the reason they choose Vinted over anything else. It removes the last bit of friction between “I should sell this” and actually doing it.
The result: Vinted has more listings than any secondhand marketplace in Europe. 100M+ registered members. €10.8B worth of goods sold in 2025. The inventory depth means buyers can find specific sizes, brands, and styles they want, which drives repeat purchases, which brings more sellers in because things actually sell.
The classic marketplace flywheel, but turbocharged by making one side completely free.
2. Buyer protection fees fund the whole thing
So where does the €1.1B in revenue come from if sellers pay nothing?
→ Buyer Protection = a fee charged to the buyer on every transaction, typically around 5% of the item price plus a small fixed amount (€0.70). This covers a guarantee that the item will arrive as described. If it doesn’t, the buyer gets a refund.
→ Shipping = Vinted partners with carriers across Europe (500,000+ pick-up and drop-off points) and charges buyers for delivery. In some markets, they’ve built their own logistics network called Vinted Go (currently live in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal).
→ Promoted Listings = sellers can pay to boost their items in search results. This is optional and doesn’t contradict the zero-fee model because it’s voluntary, not a tax on every sale.
→ Vinted Pro = launched for professional sellers (vintage shops, small brands) who want business tools and analytics. Separate tier with different economics.
The Buyer Protection model is clever because it aligns costs with the party who has the most anxiety. The seller already owns the item. Their risk is low (worst case it doesn’t sell). The buyer is the one sending money to a stranger for something they can’t touch. Charging the buyer a small insurance fee against a bad transaction feels fair, and the trust it creates drives more purchases.
3. Pan-European expansion created a network nobody can copy quickly
This is the moat that matters most long-term. Vinted operates in 26 European countries. They launched in Estonia, Latvia, and Slovenia in 2025, and entered the US in January 2026.
Cross-border transactions are growing fast. A buyer in France can purchase from a seller in the Netherlands. Vinted handles the shipping, the payment, and the buyer protection across borders. This is hard to replicate because it requires:
→ Carrier partnerships in every country → Localized payment processing → Language support for listings and customer service → Understanding of local postal infrastructure and customs regulations → Brand trust in each market
Vinted built this over 16 years. A new competitor starting from scratch would need years and hundreds of millions in logistics investment to match the European footprint.
The network effects compound at the continental level. More countries = more inventory = more buyers find what they want = more transactions = more sellers join. A buyer in Portugal finding a vintage jacket from a seller in Denmark is an experience that only works on a platform with pan-European coverage.
In France specifically, Vinted became the #1 clothing retailer by sales volume in 2025. Larger than Zara. Larger than H&M. Larger than Amazon’s fashion business in France. For a secondhand marketplace to outsell fast fashion in a major European market is a structural shift in how people buy clothes.
The payoff
The numbers from 2025 tell a story of a company that’s past the “is this a real business” stage:
→ Revenue: €1.1B (up 38% from €813M in 2024) → GMV: €10.8B (up 47% from ~€7.3B in 2024) → Net profit: €62M (down 19% from 2024, but they deliberately invested in Germany and new categories) → Expanded into electronics, homeware, sports equipment, and collectibles → Successfully turned around Germany (their biggest challenge market) → Launched Vinted Go logistics in Spain and Portugal → Launched Vinted Pay (their own payment processing, reducing dependence on third parties) → Planning share sale in 2026 at estimated $8B valuation
The profit dip is worth understanding. Vinted chose to invest in Germany (which was underperforming), new categories (electronics, homeware), and infrastructure (Vinted Go, Vinted Pay). They traded short-term profit for faster growth and deeper moats. The €62M in profit on €1.1B revenue is a 5.6% net margin while actively investing in expansion. For a marketplace at this stage, that’s healthy.
The competitive landscape is Vinted vs local classifieds (Leboncoin, Kleinanzeigen, Wallapop) and vs fashion-specific platforms (Depop, Vestiaire Collective, ThredUp). Vinted’s advantage over classifieds is specialization and trust. Its advantage over fashion platforms is zero seller fees and European scale.
The US market entry in January 2026 is the big test. ThredUp, Poshmark (owned by Naver), Depop (owned by Etsy), and Facebook Marketplace dominate secondhand in the US. Different consumer behavior, different logistics, different competitive dynamics. CEO Thomas Plantenga told Bloomberg they’re starting with a UK-US connection to test cross-border demand before committing to a full US launch.
The macro tailwind is real and probably permanent. Inflation across Europe since 2021 pushed millions of consumers toward secondhand for the first time. But even as inflation normalizes, the behavior persists. Once someone discovers they can buy a nearly-new jacket for €15 instead of €80, they don’t go back.
Vinted’s bet is that secondhand isn’t a recession behavior. It’s a generational shift. And they’ve positioned themselves as the infrastructure layer for that shift across an entire continent.
Further reading
Vinted 2025 financial results (Vinted Newsroom, April 2026) ↗ Official announcement. €1.1B revenue, €10.8B GMV, Germany turnaround, category expansion, Vinted Go and Vinted Pay updates.
Vinted revenue tops €1B as secondhand market soars (Just Style, April 2026) ↗ The analysis. Why profit dipped despite record revenue, the cost efficiency thesis, and what “make secondhand first choice” means operationally.
Vinted eyes share sale at $8B valuation (Silicon Republic, Nov 2025) ↗ The valuation story. From Lithuanian swap forum to $8B. TPG-led round in 2024 at $5B. The US market test via UK-US cross-border.
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