Kaeda
Free · Sourced
← All cases
Vinted
C2C fashion resale marketplace · Vilnius, Lithuania · founded 2008
👤 Milda MitkuteJustas Janauskas (Started 2008 to clear Milda's closet. Built a huge free swap community — the raw asset CEO Plantenga (2016) turned into revenue.)🌐 siteLinkedInLinkedIn

Peer-to-peer used-clothes marketplace. Sellers list free; buyers pay a protection fee. 100M+ members, 20+ countries.

Will it work? · our read
Tax the buyer. Which side you tax decides a marketplace. Vinted freed the side it needed most — sellers — and charged the side with less choice — buyers. Simple to say, brutal to time.
01How the money moves
Seller lists an item — free, unlimited, no seller fee
Buyer browses a deep, liquid catalog and checks out
Buyer pays a Buyer Protection fee on top — Vinted's main revenue
02The numbers
€10.8B ($11.7B)
GMV traded, 2025
vinted
100M+
registered members
vinted
€62M ($67M)
net profit, 2025
vinted
Group revenue €1.1B ($1.2B), +38% YoY (2025). Profitable since 2023. Vinted FY2025 results
Net profit €62M ($67M) in 2025; profitable every year since 2023.
03Weight class — CENTStap an axis
ControlEntryNeedTimeScale
Control High
Owns the marketplace, payments (Vinted Pay) and shipping (Vinted Go) — controls the whole transaction end to end.
04The key move
Charge the buyer
Near broke in 2016, Vinted killed all seller fees and moved the cost to an optional buyer 'protection' fee. Free listing grew supply; supply pulled in demand. The cash followed within two years.
fact
The counter-intuitive move
Counter: the secondhand boom lifted every resale app after 2016. Some of the win is tailwind and EU-expansion timing, not only the fee flip.
our read
05Where the moat is
What a copycat can clone in a weekend — and what it can't:
0% seller fee — supply nobody can undercut100M-member two-sided liquidity flywheelOwns payments (Vinted Pay) + shipping (Vinted Go)Local density, won country by country
06How it diesstrong confidence
The version that dies taxes sellers. Fee the listing and supply evaporates — no supply, no buyers, no market. Vinted nearly proved it, burning about €52M ($56M) before the 2016 fee-flip saved it. our read
Show evidence · counter
Evidence: Depop and Poshmark charge sellers and still built real businesses — seller fees aren't fatal, they just cap liquidity and cede the low end.
Counter: Vinted raised about €52M ($56M) yet ran short of cash by 2016; CEO Plantenga said growth stalled as costs rose. (Sifted)
07Against rivals
Vinted0% seller fee
Poshmark20% seller fee
Vestiairebuyer + seller fees
Depopup to 10% seller fee
Bars = approx annual GMV (Vinted €10.8B official; others EST, mixed/pre-acquisition years). Fees approximate. Vinted alone charges sellers nothing. our read
08Who uses it
Closet declutterersGen Z bargain huntersSustainable-fashion buyersCasual resellersVintage & thrift sellers
Would it work for you?
In your market, which side has less choice — and could you make the other side completely free?
Vinted freed the fee-sensitive side. Which side could you make free? We don't score you — you answer.
🚀Use it as a launchpada prompt for your own AI
Copy → paste into your AI → then develop it freely in the conversation.
You are a sharp, honest startup strategist. Use the proven case below as a launchpad for MY idea — help me find my own angle, not copy it. <my_profile> Domain I know: [your domain] My unfair advantage (access/audience): [your edge] Interests: [your interests] Resources & goal: [your resources] · [your goal] </my_profile> <case name="Vinted" model="marketplace"> What it does: Vinted's real product isn't clothes — it's liquidity and trust. Sellers get a free, deep audience; buyers rent a fraud-proof checkout via the protection fee. Why it won (moat): Anyone can copy 0% seller fees overnight. Nobody can copy 100M members of two-sided liquidity, built market by market since 2008. Weakest axis (CENTS): The thin spot: revenue leans on one buyer-protection fee. Push it too high and buyers drift to eBay or Depop; the 'protection' framing invites regulators. How it could die: It dies the moment it taxes sellers. Fee the listing and supply dries up — the exact error that nearly bankrupted it before the 2016 flip. </case> <task> Be a skeptical operator, not a cheerleader. No generic startup platitudes. If my angle is weak, say so plainly. First, a reality check: markets like this mostly fail. State the honest base rate (how crowded/hard is this?) and the ONE specific thing that would have to be true for ME to be the exception — grounded in my profile above. Then a compact table: - Fit — does this pattern suit my edge, or fight my gap? - Angle — my sharpest differentiation vs Vinted (concrete, not "better UX") - Distribution — exactly where my first 100 users come from (this is the hardest part — be specific, not "content marketing") - Risk — its "how it dies" (above) in MY situation Finish with one line: "The single thing to do next." Use only the facts above; if data is thin, say so — never invent numbers. Then stay with me and go deeper on whatever I ask — tech stack, rough cost & time, the smallest MVP to test, pricing, or timing. </task>
✓ Copied — paste into your AI
👤Placeholders like [your domain] auto-fill from your profile — example values for now.Set up profile →
Sourcesupdated · daily
Revenue (€1.1B / $1.2B), GMV (€10.8B / $11.7B) and net profit (€62M / $67M) are first-party from Vinted's own 2025 newsroom results — first-party and verified. The 2016 near-bankruptcy and the buyer-protection / no-seller-fee pivot are well documented, with on-record CEO Plantenga quotes (Sifted). Rival GMV bars are EST and approximate — mixed years and pre-acquisition figures for Poshmark and Depop — shown only for relative scale, not precision. The counter-read (that a secondhand tailwind and EU-expansion timing, not the fee flip alone, drove the win) is our inference, tagged [our read]. We never score you.