Olivia Shaw

In 2008, Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas built a website to sell clothes to friends. This soon caught the attention of the media and now 15 years later, the website has more than 75 million people selling and buying clothes. The website has created more than 1000 jobs, making sure that every sale flows smoothly, through 16 markets including the UK: Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, US, and Canada. The website works in three easy steps 1. List for free 2. Sell it Ship it 3. Payday! 

On social media, Vinted tagged videos have 2.5 billion views on TikTok and they are the new sponsor the new Big Brother series. In 2018, the revenue for the site ended up being €32.9 million, with a valuation of $4.5 billion! So why has Vinted been such a success? I asked 21 students at Xaverian to tell me about their Vinted habits. 

Most of Xaverians students found their Vinted experience positive: ‘‘A very positive experience and encouraged me to do more online shopping! It was very easy to use as well.’’ I think this is something important to note about Vinted is that it is accessible both sell and buy from and is usually quite cheap. Another positive response was: ‘’everything came looking perfect, have had someone not send the item but I got my money back’’ which I believe is another positive of Vinted, They work hard to make sure that you don’t get scammed, and if you do, you get your money back, within 5 days of the order being cancelled/ confirmed of not being sent.  

Sellers experiences were positive. Most of them were on the same line of: ‘‘very quick and easy.’’, Which as someone who has sold on Vinted is very true. All you need is to take a photo of the item that you are selling, fill in some details about it, pick a price then done! But at the same time, some said that: ‘‘Fine if you are only selling a couple of items at a time, nightmare if it’s lots’’, which is something that a lot of people have to learn the hard way, including myself. This is because a lot of the time you have to go to multiple places to ship the items, depending on the courier that they have chosen.   

Shipping prices however was an issue that Xavs students were more critical of. Shipping is something that really discourages me for using Vinted. A jumper was priced at £3.50 but with shipping it ended up being £8! Quite a few people agreed: ‘‘It can make me question how much I want an item especially when a £1 shirt becomes £4-5’’ The problem is also that you buy the t-shirt for the £1, not thinking shipping will affect it as badly as it can. 

Lastly, I wanted to see what other opinions people have about Vinted. One response that did catch my attention was: ‘‘We should all be buying less new stuff!’’ I like to think this is a positive side effect/consequence for Vinted. Buying second hand has been proven to have many benefits, for example, being able to battle against fast fashion, helping the environment and preserving resources, plus also in the hunt for unique items. 

With this evidence and my own knowledge of the site, I would fully recommend Vinted as a place to sell and buy. A lot of people said similar things: ‘‘Vinted is the best selling and buying app’’, with it beating the likes of Depop. Shipping can be annoying, but I do feel that the positives outweigh this, as buying second hand is a lot more environmentally conscious than if you were to buy new clothes from stores such as Primark and H&M. My best ever buy on Vinted was an Urban Outfitters dress, and I still love it now!