Lithuanian Startup Vinted Spins Secondhand Clothes Sales into Gold with Cutting Costs and Targeted Ads

Vinted was founded in 2008 by 3 Lithuanian college students as a free platform for users to buy and sell secondhand clothes. It grew quickly but struggled to make money.

In 2016, Vinted hired Thomas Plantenga as CEO to turn things around. He cut costs dramatically and invested heavily in advertising, especially TV ads.

The ads succeeded in bringing in more users and inventory. Vinted also optimized shipping and kept seller fees extremely low to incentivize listings.

Today Vinted has over 100 million users globally and broke even for the first time in 2022, generating over $600 million in revenue.

Vinted aims to move upmarket into luxury resale, broaden across Europe, and eventually consider another attempt at the US market.