EXCLUSIVE Vinted users reveal top tips for buying and selling as company's profits triple amid second-hand clothing boom

Daily Mail​

04-05-2025

Many high street fashion retailers have suffered greatly in recent years as shoppers head online and turn their backs on traditional brick-and-mortar shops.
But business is booming for Vinted, the popular app where users buy and sell second-hand clothes, as more shoppers opt for cheaper used items instead of new.
The growing Lithuanian-based company revealed this week that it has more than tripled its net profit to £65million in a year after revenue rose by over a third.
It follows a dramatic rise for a business founded in 2008 which reached profitability for the first time last year and is now valued at more than £4billion.
Vinted has benefited from consumers cutting their spending on clothing and looking for new ways to make money by selling their own unwanted items.
Brits using the platform regularly take to social media to share their success stories and pass on their tips to other aspiring sellers who want to make fast cash.
Among them is Chloe Chandler who buys and sells on Vinted every day and gained 1.5million views for a TikTok clip captioned: 'How I made over £4k selling on Vinted.'
Her tips include checking an account before buying, avoiding fancy packaging, quickly picking up packages once delivered and avoiding spraying perfume on items.
@expressyourselfclothing_
how to make £10k on Vinted. #fyp #vinted #sidehustle #money #sales #vintage #fashion #tipsandtricks
♬ Write This Down (Instrumental) - SoulChef
Another successful Vinted seller is Ellie Paige who has earned nearly £10,000 on the website. One of her main tips for sellers is ensuring their photos are clear and bright.
If an item has been up for two weeks without selling, she also advises deleting it and reuploading it with new pictures, and says sellers should accepts all offers as long as they are reasonable.
ANALYSIS: How Vinted keeps both buyers and sellers happy
By SARAH COLES
The pre-loved market is booming.
Buyers appreciate being able to regularly refresh their wardrobe for less, and in a more sustainable way.
It has the benefit of fast fashion without the guilt and waste, and with less risk of clothing falling apart in the washing machine.
Meanwhile, sellers are able to clear the clutter and make some money.
Vinted identified that people were put off by sellers' fees.
When you sell second-hand, you already feel the pain of the difference between what you paid for an item and what you're selling it for, so selling fees add insult to injury.
When you buy second-hand, you're getting a bargain, so you're less concerned by adding a little extra to pay for postage and buyers' protection.
Moving the cost from the seller to the buyer encouraged more sellers, and once there was more choice on the platform, it kept buyers loyal too.
SARAH COLES is head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown
Vinted seller Irem has earned £100,000 from shifting her old clothes on the app and has 26,000 followers on TikTok , where she offers advice to those using the website.
She advises sellers to avoid allowing customers to reserve items, and counter offers by £2 or £3 so customers still feel they are getting a good deal.
British celebrities also use Vinted, with model Alexa Chung teaming up with the platform to sell personal luxury fashion pieces from her wardrobe in the UK from this Sunday.
Katie Price, Molly-Mae Hague and Steps singer Claire Richards are among the other stars to have sold items on the platform.
And Vinted users have helped the company's revenue for 2024 hit €813.4million (£691.41million), a 36 per cent rise from €596.3million (£506.8million) in 2023.
Net profit at Vinted jumped 330 per cent to €76.7million (£65.2million) in 2024, up from €17.8million (£15.1million) the previous year.
Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown, told MailOnline: 'The pre-loved market is booming. Buyers appreciate being able to regularly refresh their wardrobe for less, and in a more sustainable way.
'It has the benefit of fast fashion without the guilt and waste, and with less risk of clothing falling apart in the washing machine. Meanwhile, sellers are able to clear the clutter and make some money.'
She also pointed out that Vinted identified that people were 'put off by sellers' fees', adding: 'When you sell second-hand, you already feel the pain of the difference between what you paid for an item and what you're selling it for, so selling fees add insult to injury.
'When you buy second-hand, you're getting a bargain, so you're less concerned by adding a little extra to pay for postage and buyers' protection.
'Moving the cost from the seller to the buyer encouraged more sellers, and once there was more choice on the platform, it kept buyers loyal too.'
One of the firm's main competitors - eBay - scrapped selling fees in the UK for private sellers across all categories last October, excluding motors, as it fights back against Vinted and other similar rivals such as Depop.
That move came after eBay UK also scrapped selling fees for clothing in April last year.
Vinted's adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) were €158.9million (£135.06million) last year, more than double the €76.6million (£65.11million) in 2023.
The company now plans to expand into more countries in 2025, having launched in Croatia, Greece and Ireland last year for a total of 22 markets in Europe.
Vinted started letting users buy and sell second-hand electronics on the platform last year such as headphones, laptops and fitness trackers.
Bosses said they would be adding more categories in future, although the brand is still mainly known for clothing.
Vinted was valued at €5billion (£4.25billion) in a secondary share sale in October last year.
The company is Lithuania's first 'unicorn', a term for a privately-held company with a valuation exceeding $1billion (£750,000).
Announcing the financial results on Tuesday, Vinted chief executive Thomas Plantenga said: 'This performance is the result of our hard work to deliver products that bring high value for members at the lowest possible cost.
'We do this by having a relentless focus on cost control, building complex infrastructure ourselves, and innovating to bring new services and solutions at scale. It's this mix of scale, innovation, cost control that helps us succeed.
'At Vinted, we aim to build an ecosystem of businesses that can change the way society consumes. Given the potential size of the market, we know there's a huge opportunity ahead and lots of work to be done to get there.
'We see our current position as a solid foundation to build this future on, and we'll continue to learn and improve. We are at the start of the journey and aiming high.'
Vinted also said this week that it was launching an investment arm, Vinted Ventures, aimed at funding other second-hand retail startups.
Vinted Ventures will offer funding of between €500,000 (£425,000) and €10million (£8.5millon) to Series A and Series C stage companies.
Meanwhile the group has expanded its logistics arm, Vinted Go, which previously existed in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
This year it took the service into Spain and Portugal in 2024, offering users locker-based and pick-up/drop-off shipping options.
The platform also brought out a payment arm called Vinted Pay in Lithuania last year, which could expand abroad in future years.
Vinted's chief financial officer Maurizio D'Arrigo said: 'These results not only reflect Vinted's wide adoption across Europe, but also our substantial contribution to the second-hand economy.
'This, along with securing our secondary share sale and €5billion valuation, demonstrates our robust financial position to be able to continue to scale and reinvest into the business, fuelling further growth.'
The average number of employees across Vinted Group rose by 19 per cent last year, reaching over 2,200 employees by the end of the year - with most based at its headquarters in Vilnius.