Vinted

Milda Mitkutė and Justas Janauskas started Vinted in Vilnius in 2008 with a personal frustration as their founding insight: Milda had a wardrobe full of clothes she no longer wore and nowhere convenient to sell them. From that friction point, the two founders built what is now Europe's largest secondhand fashion marketplace, active in 26 markets and valued at five billion euros. The problem Vinted addresses is structural within the fashion industry. Billions of garments are produced each year, a significant portion of which end up unworn in closets or discarded entirely. Meanwhile, millions of consumers are looking for ways to shop more affordably or turn their unused clothing into cash. Existing channels — physical flea markets, generalist platforms like eBay, local classifieds — were fragmented, inconvenient, and often felt unsafe or unreliable. Vinted's single most important strategic decision was making selling free. No listing fees, no seller commissions. Revenue instead comes from buyers, through a buyer-protection fee applied at checkout, and from add-on services like integrated shipping labels, listing promotion, and premium features. This inversion of the standard marketplace model — where sellers traditionally paid — dramatically lowered the barrier to listing and flooded the platform with supply, triggering a virtuous cycle: more sellers attracted more buyers, which pulled in even more sellers. The growth numbers reflect the scale of that flywheel. In 2024, Vinted reported revenues of 813 million euros, supported by a member base exceeding 50 million users across Europe. The platform has particularly strong penetration in France, Germany, Belgium, Poland, and its home market of Lithuania, where it has achieved significant adoption among adults under 35. A five-billion-euro valuation places Vinted among Europe's most valuable startups, notable for having grown to this scale from outside the traditional tech hubs of London or Berlin. Beyond the financials, Vinted has ridden — and arguably helped accelerate — a broader cultural shift. For younger consumers, secondhand shopping is no longer a budget compromise but an active expression of identity: smart, sustainable, and increasingly mainstream. That normalization of the used-fashion market may be the most lasting contribution the Lithuanian company has made to the industry it set out to disrupt.