My Wife Made €1,500 on Vinted. I Told Her to Give the Clothes Away.

My wife started using Vinted recently and made over €1,500 selling clothes. I had told her to just give this stuff away.

After a few hundred euros came in, I started looking over her shoulder.

As a seller, we got 100% of the sale. 0% commission and no shipping hassle.

Then I looked into the company, and their story is crazy. Vinted now makes €1.1 billion in revenue, after almost going bust in 2016.

The 20% commission almost killed them

Founded in 2008, Vinted ran for years without charging sellers. Then they introduced a 20% seller commission, and sellers hated it. People started leaving the platform. They had to pump a lot of money into advertising to keep it rolling. By 2016, they had only 9 to 12 months left before running out of money.

A five-week consultant saved the company

Thomas Plantenga came in for a five-week consulting job and changed the business model.

He dropped the seller commission to zero and added a buyer protection fee instead. In 2017, he became CEO.

Trust is built in the shipping process

The tracking of the shipping process is truly amazing. To build trust, they inform you at every step.

My wife makes the photos, prints out the shipping label, and drops it off at an automatic station. Seller and buyer receive an immediate email for every step of the delivery. Staying in the loop and receiving updates builds trust.

What I learned

Make it free for the side that brings the supply, and charge the side that needs the trust. They removed the fee from sellers like my wife, and 100% of the sale is exactly why she kept listing clothes I wanted to throw away.