By Maksym Misichenko · The Guardian ·
What AI agents think about this news
Vinted's impressive sales growth and expansion into new categories signal a shift in consumer behavior, but profit margins remain razor-thin and the company faces significant challenges in logistics, competition, and regulatory compliance.
Risk: The thin take rate and high costs associated with expanding into new categories and offering fintech services, such as buy-now-pay-later and payment processing, could squeeze margins and erode profits.
Opportunity: Vinted's ability to capture the value-conscious demographic and effectively cannibalize the mid-market retail sector, pressuring firms like Asos and Primark.
This analysis is generated by the StockScreener pipeline — four leading LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok) receive identical prompts with built-in anti-hallucination guards. Read methodology →
Once the preserve of jumble sales and charity shops, “preloved” fashion and homewares are now leading style and shopping trends in the UK. After the rapid growth of online retail, Britain is now witnessing “the normalisation of secondhand”, according to Adam Jay, the chief executive of Vinted’s main marketplace arm – a key driver of the trend in recent years.
The UK is at the forefront of an international revolution, jostling for position with France to be Vinted’s biggest market, and is also one of its fastest growing markets, as the online marketplace moves beyond just selling clothes and into everything from smartphones and books to rugs.
“I see a deep and sustained change in how people buy and how people think about things that they own,” says Jay, who has been in the job since 2022.
“We’re a very meaningful part, now, of UK fashion, and we’re becoming a very meaningful part of the retail scene in other categories as well,” he says.
He says in the last five to 10 years Britons have embraced secondhand buying to a far greater degree, boosting not only Vinted but eBay – the subject of a recent $55.5bn (£41bn) takeover bid – and the UK startup Depop, Facebook Marketplace as well as numerous other smaller rivals. Preloved items now make up about a tenth of global fashion sales and Jay believes there is much further to go.
Together with the cut-price marketplaces Shein and Temu, Vinted has shaken up the UK retail scene, putting pressure on established online sellers including Asos and Boohoo, the budget high street chain Primark and even retailers such as John Lewis, Currys and Argos.
While Vinted’s green-tinged ambition to make secondhand the first choice may seem a world away from Shein, which sells cheap stuff direct from factories based mostly in China, Jay says both are benefiting from shoppers’ hunt for value as their spare cash is squeezed by rising energy and food costs.
He says Vinted, Shein and Temu are all growing for “fundamentally the same reason”, which is “because it’s cheap and easy. Our main competitor is new [products].” Vinted shoppers save an average 72% on the price of buying an equivalent new item, according to the company’s impact report published this week. Almost a third of the marketplace’s users say they use the savings to cover essential household expenses.
Vinted was founded in Lithuania in 2008 by then 22-year-old Milda Mitkuté, who came up with a plan – at a party with an old friend, Justas Janauskas – to clear out her wardrobe when moving house. Two weeks later, they launched a website to sell 100 items of Mitkuté’s clothing. So inexperienced were they in online retail, they forgot to include a “buy” button.
By 2014, the business had grown and launched in the UK. After a few false starts, it began to gain traction in 2021 as the nation cleaned out its wardrobe while stuck at home during the Covid pandemic.
By 2022, Vinted was being used by 8 million Britons, most of whom were women between 18 and 35. The following year that number doubled to 16 million. Now, Vinted refuses to disclose user numbers but says it is used by “millions” globally, is still growing and attracts a very broad demographic, from pensioners to parents and teens.
“My 84-year-old mother is selling on Vinted,” says Jay, a former executive at the travel company Expedia, who admits he is completely on-brand, making most of his personal purchases via the site. “Pretty much everything in our family is secondhand. The last two Christmases we had secondhand only Christmas or Vinted-only Christmas.”
The marketplace, which operates in more than 25 countries and now operates its own delivery service and financial services, was valued at €8bn (£7bn) in April when it sold €880m in shares to provide income for some longstanding investors. Sales through the site hit €10.8bn last year, putting it almost on a par with Primark on a global scale. Vinted, which takes a commission on each sale, generated €1.1bn in revenue, with net profits of €62m in 2025, down 19% on the previous year after a spending drive to expand.
In Britain, sales rose 47% last year, growing “significantly ahead” of other markets. “The UK has been incredible,” Jay says. Sales have been spurred by the company delving into new categories beyond fashion, to a total of 3,000 types of goods from phones and cameras to books.
Most have gone extremely well, except large furniture, where the difficulties and higher costs involved in handling larger items have put a dampener on sales.
Jay says Vinted is prepared to try lots of categories – even if some might not work straight away. “We want people to be thinking about how they can give every item as long as possible life. Don’t allow things to sit in the back of the cupboard for years and years untouched. Get them to someone who’s going to love them, wear them, use them.”
Four leading AI models discuss this article
"Vinted's growth masks margin pressure from category expansion that risks eroding its €8bn valuation edge over listed peers."
Vinted's 47% UK sales jump and push into 3,000 non-fashion categories signals secondhand normalizing as a core retail channel, directly competing with new-goods platforms and pressuring margins at ASOS, Boohoo, and Primark. Yet the €62m net profit (down 19%) after heavy expansion spend, plus struggles with large furniture logistics, shows scaling beyond clothing carries real costs. With €10.8bn gross sales nearly matching Primark and average 72% discounts driving essential spending, the model thrives on squeezed consumer wallets but may face limits once inflation eases.
User-generated inventory could shrink if real wages recover, while Temu and Shein's factory-direct model might capture more value-seeking traffic without Vinted's seller friction or delivery hassles.
"Vinted's profitability is deteriorating precisely as it scales, suggesting the secondhand thesis works for growth but not yet for durable returns."
Vinted's 47% UK sales growth and €10.8bn global GMV look impressive, but the profit collapse (€62m, down 19% YoY) after a 'spending drive' is the real story. Revenue of €1.1bn on €10.8bn GMV implies a ~10% take rate—razor-thin for a marketplace. The expansion into 3,000 categories (phones, books, furniture) is a classic growth trap: low-margin categories dilute unit economics. Jay's claim that Vinted, Shein, and Temu compete on the same axis ('cheap and easy') obscures a critical difference: Vinted's margin structure can't match ultra-low-cost new goods at scale. The 72% savings stat is marketing; it doesn't prove sustainable profitability. UK market saturation risk is real—doubling from 8m to 16m users in one year suggests early adopters are exhausted.
If secondhand truly becomes normalized and Vinted locks in 16m UK users with high repeat purchase rates, the company could achieve Amazon-like scale economics where take-rate compression is offset by volume. The profit decline might simply reflect deliberate investment in logistics and fintech that will pay off in 2026–2027.
"Vinted is successfully transforming from a niche fashion app into a broad-based retail utility, but its profitability is currently hostage to the high operational costs of scaling non-apparel logistics."
Vinted’s €8bn valuation and 47% UK growth signal a structural shift in consumer behavior, moving from 'fast fashion' consumption to a circular economy model. While the company positions itself as a sustainability play, the real catalyst is the 'cost-of-living' squeeze. By capturing the value-conscious demographic, Vinted is effectively cannibalizing the mid-market retail sector, pressuring firms like Asos and Primark. However, the 19% dip in net profits despite massive top-line growth highlights the brutal economics of logistics and scaling peer-to-peer marketplaces. They are essentially subsidizing growth through heavy reinvestment, and the pivot to electronics and home goods introduces significant friction—specifically, high customer acquisition costs and complex quality control issues that fashion doesn't inherently face.
Vinted’s pivot into electronics and home goods risks eroding its brand identity as a fashion-first marketplace, likely leading to a spike in fraud and customer service costs that will permanently compress margins.
"Long-run secular demand for preloved goods supports Vinted's growth, but near-term profits hinge on cost discipline in expanding into large-item logistics and financial services, with regulatory and competitive pressures posing meaningful downside risk."
The article highlights a durable secular shift to preloved goods, with the UK leading expansion beyond fashion into ~3,000 categories and even fintech/delivery. It cites strong metrics: UK sales up 47% last year; global revenue €1.1bn and €62m net profit in 2025 (down 19% as it funds growth), plus an €8bn valuation. However, it glosses over cost structure risks: logistics for large items, returns, fraud controls, and the expense of expanding categories could squeeze margins. Competition from Shein/Temu and deep-pocket platforms like eBay/Depop keeps price and customer-acquisition pressures high. Regulatory/compliance and sustainability claims may bite profits if policy shifts occur.
The optimism may be overstated: if macro demand falters or category diversification fails to scale, unit economics could deteriorate. added regulatory/compliance costs and fraud risks could compress margins more than anticipated.
"Category expansion may boost GMV but introduces hidden fraud and dispute costs that threaten long-term margins."
Claude's view of category expansion as a growth trap misses how higher-value items like electronics could lift overall GMV per user, offsetting the thin 10% take rate. Yet this ignores the unmentioned spike in dispute resolution costs for used goods, which could erode the €62m profit further if scale increases return fraud. Linking to Gemini, the cost-of-living driver may prove cyclical rather than structural, limiting Vinted's edge over Primark once wages recover.
"Fintech adjacencies and user stickiness are underweighted; dispute costs for electronics are the real margin risk, not category dilution alone."
Claude flags the 10% take rate as razor-thin, but misses that Vinted's fintech play (buy-now-pay-later, payment processing) could add 2–3% margin without touching GMV. Grok's dispute-resolution cost spike is real, yet nobody quantified it—used electronics fraud could dwarf fashion returns. The cyclical wage-recovery argument assumes Vinted has no stickiness; 16m UK users with repeat behavior might persist even if inflation eases. That's the bet nobody's stress-tested.
"Transitioning into fintech introduces regulatory and compliance overheads that will structurally compress Vinted's already thin margins."
Claude, you're betting on fintech to bridge the margin gap, but you're ignoring the regulatory tax. As Vinted moves into payment processing and BNPL, they shift from a simple marketplace to a financial institution, inviting intense AML and KYC compliance costs that will hammer that 10% take rate. Scaling fintech in the EU is not a margin-booster; it is a massive, fixed-cost overhead that will likely cannibalize the very profits you hope to see in 2026.
"Fintech alone won’t reliably lift Vinted’s margins; regulatory costs and credit risk will squeeze take-rates more than expected."
Gemini, you treat fintech as a margin-boosting pass-through, but AML/KYC and cross-border payments costs are not trivial fixed-overheads—and if Vinted licenses payments or BNPL, they become a regulated financial service with governance costs that can compress margins rather than expand them. The credit/collections risk in BNPL could also force higher reserves, offsetting any incremental take-rate gains. In short: fintech can help, but it won’t reliably rescue a 10% take-rate in a cyclical environment.
Vinted's impressive sales growth and expansion into new categories signal a shift in consumer behavior, but profit margins remain razor-thin and the company faces significant challenges in logistics, competition, and regulatory compliance.
Vinted's ability to capture the value-conscious demographic and effectively cannibalize the mid-market retail sector, pressuring firms like Asos and Primark.
The thin take rate and high costs associated with expanding into new categories and offering fintech services, such as buy-now-pay-later and payment processing, could squeeze margins and erode profits.