When is a jumble sale additionally a billion-euro tech startup? When it has 500m gadgets on the market and 105 million customers.

I’m in Vilnius, Lithuania, on the headquarters of Vinted, the slick, easy-to-use app the place customers can purchase and promote secondhand garments, sneakers and devices. If you happen to haven’t used Vinted but, you actually know somebody who has. Within the UK, it has an astonishing 16 million customers – practically one-quarter of the inhabitants – and is taking over extra established rivals, together with Depop and eBay.

I’m one in every of them. I write this text in a pair of black Aeyde boots, purchased from Vinted for £45 (RRP £325), with a Rejina Pyo coat, purchased from Vinted for £168 (RRP £795), slung over the again of my chair. My son, in the meantime, is dressed at the moment completely in Vinted: a coat for £5, a sleepsuit I purchased as a “bundle” of three for £3. The pricing is absurdly engaging, but it surely’s additionally the pleasurable treasure-hunt thrill of looking out the app for a cut price that retains me coming again.

“The genius of it’s the supply,” says Melanie Monchar, a 52-year-old admin employee from Portishead in North Somerset, who sells garments on the app. “That’s why I switched from eBay to Vinted. As a result of when it’s important to purchase postage and work all of it out, it’s a headache.” Vinted generates an in-app postage label, which can be utilized to drop off or acquire gadgets from newsagents or lockers. Plus, not like eBay, there are not any vendor charges and no fiddly classes to fill in earlier than you may record an merchandise. As a result of there’s a ban on photographs from retailer web sites of the clothes being modelled, you are feeling like what you might be shopping for is extra genuine. (The identical guidelines don’t apply on Depop or eBay, which usually have extra skilled – and costly – resellers.)

Since becoming a member of the app two years in the past, Monchar has made £800, largely from promoting her daughter’s previous garments. “I like the cash I get from it, but it surely’s extra that I really feel so horrible about chucking stuff away,” she says. “To have the ability to promote issues on that haven’t been worn very a lot, and are nonetheless energetic, is wonderful.”

“Our mission is to make secondhand the primary alternative globally,” says Vinted’s CEO, Adam Jay, with the evangelising zeal of a headset-wearing pastor of a megachurch. Jay, who’s British, is clad virtually solely in gadgets purchased on Vinted – solely his socks (a present) and battered trainers had been purchased from a store. He pulls up his Vinted account to point out me his evaluations. (All Vinted customers are reviewed by the individuals they purchase from and promote to.) “5 stars all the way in which,” he says. I ask how a lot he paid for his sweatshirt. He consults the app, earlier than laughing nervously. “I received a £5 low cost,” he says. “I paid £15; it was on for £20.” Customers could make decrease gives within the app.

Vinted is Lithuania’s first “unicorn” (tech converse for a personal startup with a valuation of a minimum of $1bn). However I might be speaking to Jay at any startup the world over. The aesthetic right here is Bay Space, the vibe ostentatiously informal. Within the bustling canteen, employees in denim and flannel shirts eat avocado toast. Everyone seems to be younger and multi-gadgeted: MacBooks beneath arms, AirPods in ears, taking convention calls whereas concurrently tapping away on smartphones. There are nap rooms; a video games room with PlayStations; a music room with guitars, for any impromptu jam periods employees would possibly need; and, for causes that stay obscure, swings.

Though Vinted launched within the UK in 2014, the platform began to generate traction in 2021. It was “traditional pandemic behaviour to wash out your wardrobes,” says Jay. By 2022, Vinted was being utilized by 8 million Britons. The next yr, that doubled.

For shoppers equivalent to Monchar, shopping for new garments appears more and more ethically indefensible in a world overflowing with stuff. In line with analysis commissioned by Vinted, 39% of transactions on the platform prevented the acquisition of a brand new merchandise. However may Vinted kill quick vogue? “I don’t assume it’s penetrated sufficiently to disrupt quick vogue as an trade,” says Dr Elaine Ritch, an skilled in fashion-consumer behaviour at Glasgow Caledonian College. “It’s such an entrenched mannequin and retailers are so intelligent at utilizing advertising ways to encourage that frequent compulsion.”

Nevertheless, Ritch believes that Vinted can enchantment to a cohort of younger shoppers who would possibly in any other case be drawn to quick vogue. “Loads of what quick vogue retailers promote could be very homogenised,” she says. “Individuals who need extra of an individualistic fashion transfer in direction of secondhand vogue.”

When the educational Dr Isabel Palomo Dominguez focus-grouped Vinted customers for a 2023 analysis venture, she discovered many used Vinted as a result of “they had been bored of the everyday garments you should purchase in common shops”.

That is additionally the enchantment for Arjun Gossain, 26, a civil engineer from Studying. “You simply get far more of an array of stuff,” he says. Gossain has at all times been into vogue, however earlier than Vinted he would purchase gadgets from excessive avenue shops equivalent to Zara and H&M. “I felt a bit caught, like I had no different choice,” he says. “That is the one stuff I can afford. Nevertheless it saved breaking or shrinking, so I had to purchase one other. It was a little bit of a cycle.” Now he buys gadgets from costlier manufacturers, equivalent to Dickies, Carhartt and Levi’s, via Vinted, for a similar worth as quick vogue.

As we converse, he rummages via his wardrobe, pulling out his favorite Vinted discover: a forest-green Levi’s jacket that his accomplice purchased him for £37. “It’s simply constructed to final,” he says. “I can’t see it ripping in just a few months – and if it did, I’d get it repaired, as a result of I prefer it a lot.”

However Vinted isn’t a no-guilt purchasing resolution. There may be an environmental value each time a parcel thuds via a letterbox, even when it’s much less damaging than shopping for new. In line with McKinsey, highway freight accounts for 15% of Europe’s CO₂ emissions. The so-called “final mile” of supply, when parcels transfer from a neighborhood hub to entrance doorways, is especially polluting. “We will criticise the truth that it’s delivered, and there’s mileage in that, and the couriers is likely to be working for the gig economic system … but when one thing is getting worn and utilized by a couple of particular person, that’s extra of what we want,” says Ritch. “We have to take advantage of the sources already in circulation.”

Maybe Vinted’s legacy shall be to rebrand secondhand purchasing not solely as socially acceptable, however aspirational. Vinted’s co-founder Milda Mitkute says that, for her dad and mom in Soviet Lithuania, “you purchased secondhand since you didn’t have cash”. Within the post-Soviet period, Mitkute was the primary member of her household to journey via Europe and take part in Lithuania’s new shopper tradition. “Clothes was my expression,” she says. Mitkute laughs as she remembers how her bursting wardrobe lurched from “bling-bling fashion to goth”.

In 2008, Mitkute, then 22, was at a home occasion when she ran into Justas Janauskas, an previous pal who had programming expertise. Mitkute informed him that she was transferring home and needed to filter her closet. Two weeks later, they launched an internet site to promote 100 gadgets of Mitkute’s clothes. It was an beginner effort; initially, they forgot to incorporate a “purchase” button.

Lithuania is a small nation, so phrase shortly received out. Vinted grew exponentially, but it surely wasn’t making any cash; Mitkute and Janauskas may barely afford their server payments. In 2011, the Lithuanian businessman Mantas Mikuckas got here on board as an angel investor. “He stated: ‘Guys, do you perceive what you’ve gotten created?’” Mitkute remembers. “We stated: ‘Sure, it’s a platform for ladies to promote gadgets.’ He stated: ‘No. It’s a lot larger.’” Vinted is now backed by quite a few enterprise capital funds and Mitkute is a family title in Lithuania.

We’re having our dialog in a glass-walled assembly room. Each couple of minutes, Mitkute smiles and waves at passing workers. However she is not employed by the unicorn she co-founded. When she had her first baby, seven years in the past, she went on maternity go away and selected to not return. Having youngsters and Vinted was “an inconceivable factor”, she says. “As a result of Vinted is an enormous, large baby. As a lot time as you’re going to offer to Vinted, it’s going to take.” She has a monetary stake within the firm, however shouldn’t be on the board. “It’s very blended emotions,” she says.

Vinted’s journey from scholar venture to a global operation that employs greater than 1,800 individuals has proved fraught. Its annus horribilis was 2016: the corporate closed 4 workplaces and reduce workers. “It was a tumultuous yr,” says Jay. “We modified a whole lot of issues concerning the enterprise mannequin.” One essential determination was to take away vendor charges. In addition they developed the app’s in-built transport performance. “These issues actually received elevate off,” he says.

However Vinted shouldn’t be but worthwhile: it posted a pre-tax loss in 2022 of €47.1m (£40m). In October, the FT reported a attainable share sale earlier than an IPO. All Jay will say, with a decent smile, is that “profitability will come”. Finally, he has to ship returns for Vinted’s buyers. May he foresee a state of affairs through which Vinted’s monetary and sustainable targets battle? “We actually don’t have this commerce off, as a result of the 2 issues are so deliciously hand in glove,” he says.

I ask whether or not Vinted plans to certify as a B Corp – a business enterprise recognised for its social affect – given the corporate’s lofty targets. “The necessary factor is that we’ve an actual affect on sustainability, whether or not or not we’ve the badge of a B Corp,” he says.

Within the UK, Jay’s mission could also be made harder by HMRC, which from 1 January will tax income of greater than £1,000 a yr on gross sales made via platforms equivalent to Vinted and eBay. Some customers have stated that the “side-hustle tax” might make reselling clothes on-line extra effort than it’s price.

Jay additionally has the unenviable job of overseeing a group of 300 in-house and a pair of,000 outsourced help employees, whose job it’s to resolve disputes between consumers and sellers. There’s a “title and disgrace Fb group” for dangerous consumers and sellers, says Monchar, “which is sort of a cleaning soap opera”.

Vinted expenses consumers a charge of between 3% and eight% of an merchandise’s worth. In trade, consumers are assured that in the event that they obtain an merchandise that’s considerably not as described, they may get a refund, supplied they contact customer support inside two days of supply. (After that, the order routinely closes.)

The No 1 gripe Vinted customers have with the platform is that even when an merchandise isn’t listed accurately, consumers must pay for returns, except the vendor agrees in any other case. “It’s the precept of it,” says Tamara Newton, 28, a scholar from Darwen, Lancashire. She just lately purchased a pair of trainers for £15. They had been listed as in good situation; nonetheless, when the trainers arrived, “the scent was horrendous as quickly as I opened the field”. She requested a refund, however Vinted help informed Newton that she must pay for return postage. “The vendor broke Vinted’s phrases and situations, however the shopper is the one who has to pay for the return,” she says. “It put a bitter style in my mouth,” Newton says. She closed her account.

“If one thing is flagged, then we are going to examine and attempt to arbitrate within the fairest attainable method between the customer and vendor,” says Jay. Nevertheless it appears instinctively unfair that consumers ought to find yourself out of pocket when the vendor is at fault.

Disputes are the platform’s curse, or primary enchantment, relying on the way you take a look at it. The Instagram account @DMDrama paperwork fraught and sometimes hilarious Vinted interactions to its 617,000 followers. Highlights embrace a possible purchaser who provided 17p for a single pair of child socks, a consumer who discovered a chunk of broccoli in a pair of sneakers and a pair locked in a tense six-page message thread over a minuscule stain on a £1.50 high. The worst offenders, says @DMDrama’s nameless founder, whom we are going to name Tom, are “the Y2K girlies who love Brandy Melville – they’re very sassy”, or “the streetwear cool youngsters who get a great deal of cash from mum and pop to spend on Supreme”.

His expertise moderating the account has taught him that “web tradition is completely wild”. He describes the lies, so frequent and unoriginal. “Somebody has died, or one thing to do with hospitals” are frequent excuses for not posting gadgets on time – as are ladies claiming to be in labour. As soon as, says Tom, somebody messaged a vendor pretending to be Steve McFadden, the actor who performs Phil Mitchell on EastEnders, asking for a reduction. “I do see a few of these tales,” Jay says, laughing. “They get despatched round internally.”

However nonetheless, there’s a severe message right here. As much as 73% of all clothes manufactured globally leads to landfill or is incinerated. Vinted alone can’t break the chokehold of this trade, however it’s a begin. “We’re nonetheless so early on this journey of constructing secondhand the primary alternative,” says Jay. “It’s nonetheless a really small proportion of general consumption. That’s the factor that retains me up at night time. That’s what motivates me.”