Vinted has become synonymous with fashion resale, as British shoppers increasingly turn to secondhand, with Barclays reporting last month that 38% of UK consumers had bought from a resale platform in the past year.
Resale represents an alternative value option to low-quality and environmentally dubious fashion giants Shein and Temu.
With no seller fees, a network of InPost lockers and an algorithm tailored to customers across 25 countries, Vinted has thrived where other secondhand sites have lost hype. The fashion online marketplace now has almost 400,000 TikTok videos celebrating consumers’ #VintedFinds.
“Card data states that Vinted, Shein, and Temu combined represent half of all UK value fashion spent,” said retail analyst Jonathan De Mello. “It shows the pace of change in the sector, and the fact that people are very much value conscious.”
Having hit an €8bn valuation in April, the reseller is now moving beyond fashion, as it eyes product expansion and greater global reach.
Many see the rise of Vinted as a win for sustainability, but the company’s ethos has always gone beyond green ambitions, said De Mello. “It was 100% about making money,” he said. The company started in 2008 as a platform for co-founder Milda Mitkutė to clear out her wardrobe.
“They [Vinted] appeal to a broad spectrum, from affluent consumers who are maybe more green-focused to everybody else who needs to spend money on essentials.”
Last week the site reported that members had saved an average of 72% on original retail prices. Adam Jay, chief of marketplace at Vinted, said this is not merely “a small behavioural shift, but millions of people actively rethinking how they consume”.
Vinted has shaken up clothes retail in the UK, becoming its third-largest fashion retailer with about 17.4m users. Its gross merchandise value revenue – based on the value of the products sold – trails just behind stalwarts Primark and Next, according to the resale platform Continue.
“Vinted thinks that preloved is going to become the first point of call for all different types of transactions,” said Lydia Hartley, co-founder of Continue.
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Vinted has now announced ambitions to sell all manner of household goods and tech, in the style of its resale competitors Facebook and eBay, which recently acquired Depop as part of efforts to lure younger shoppers and remains a bigger player than Vinted – especially in the US.
Quality fashion with budget-friendly listings remains Vinted’s USP, generating €1.1bn in annual revenue in 2025. Hartley says Vinted continues to gain traction, even as traffic to other fashion retailers, such as Shein, is in decline. This month Vinted has had 34m visitors to its website, up from 29m in February, she said.
Jay credits the platform’s simplicity and multi-generational appeal for its success. “For a long time, resale felt complicated or focused only on luxury or niche items. Now everyone from students to my relatives in their eighties, are buying and selling on Vinted.”
Photograph by Getty Images