Second-hand marketplace Vinted rules out IPO for now, CEO says

Vinted, Europe’s largest online marketplace for second-hand clothes, is ruling out an initial public offering for now as it focuses on expanding beyond fashion.

It’s easier to deal with five or six investors than to have to appease a large shareholder base, Chief Executive Officer Thomas Plantenga said on Thursday. The Vilnius, Lithuania-based company reached a valuation of €5 billion ($5.29 billion) after completing a secondary share sale last month led by the private equity firm TPG.

“We’re expanding into new countries and we’re expanding our categories. We’re taking a ton of risk,” Plantenga said in an interview at the Web Summit in Lisbon. “I want to play these bets out.”

Vinted is working to expand into other segments of the second-hand market, including phones, toys, gaming consoles and, potentially, luxury watches, Plantenga said. At the same time, the company is investing in efficient shipping, payments and product verification services, he said.

“If you look at second-hand trading platforms, they’ve been there for decades,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is to create a market that’s much bigger than anything that’s online, by consistently taking every friction point and every cost point out of the equation.”

Vinted was co-founded in 2008 by Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas. Mitkute was moving house and wanted a way to sell her used clothes. That led to the creation of a website where users could trade their clothing items. 

When Netherlands-born Plantenga joined the company in 2016 as a consultant, Vinted was close to going broke. “We were burning a bit more than a million euros a month, and we roughly had somewhere in the tune of nine to 12 months of runway,” he said.

A year later, after becoming CEO, Plantenga simplified Vinted’s operations, closed some offices in Europe, and centralized its technology, paving the way to become Lithuania’s first unicorn — a startup valued at more than $1 billion. Last year, Vinted posted an annual profit for the first time, with sales increasing by 61% to a record €596.3 million.

The 41-year-old said he expects Vinted to remain profitable this year and next. For now, Vinted isn’t interested in being acquired, according to Plantenga.

“There’s been soft interest,” he said. “But like when you’re on a rocket ship, you’re not thinking about exiting. So, we’ve not seriously entertained any of that.”