Vinted Raises $141 Million In A Fundraising Round
News in brief:
- Vinted, a second-hand fashion platform just raised $141 million in a fundraising round.
- The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners
- The company plans to improve its selling and buying process along with expanding their business with the funds raised.
Vinted, a company offering second-hand fashion, has raised $140.9 million (around €128 million) in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and supported by investors like Sprints Capital, Insight Venture Partners, and Accel and Burda Investments.
The Lithuania-based company, operating via both website and mobile app, has surpassed the total valuation of approx. $1 billion. This investment makes the company one of the biggest startups to come from the country to the limelight of the world.
The company has planned to use the funds raised for expanding the features of its platforms along with taking business across Europe. The company also claimed to work on their selling and buying process while focusing on the goal of offering a platform for users to list and buy used clothes.
In the words of the CEO Thomas Plantenga – “We want to make sure we don’t have new products…All our sellers are regular people.” He continued by stating that almost 75% of the company’s customers had never transacted second-hand clothes ever, until the advent of the platform and that “The stigma is no longer there.”
The company holds approx. 180 million products live on its platform, have 25 million registered customers in 11 markets (with a small user base in the US as well), and is managed by 300 employees.
Vinted’s exponential growth is evident from the fact that Europe is a thriving market for second-hand clothes business. This growth has led the company to come to the front and gain the attention of some major US investors – even after its holding back in operating in the country for the concern of strong competition like eBay, Offerup, Poshmark, Letgo, etc.
The company is expecting to sell €1.3 billion in clothes by the end of the year 2019. These expectations are not baseless rather based on the 4x increased sales growth in the last 17 months.
Witnessing the success of this startup’s platform, many organizations will be inspired to invest in mCommerce app development and follow this business niche for their targeted locations. Without a doubt, there is a lot of scope in the second-hand fashion industry; it only takes a keen eye to see it.
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