Vinted long followed a straightforward strategy: attract more users to scale up sales and achieve profitability. After posting its first profitable year in 2023, the platform is now at a pivotal juncture, with ambitions to expand into the luxury segment, diversify through electronics, and develop B2B services via its logistics offering, Vinted Go. Adam Jay, CEO of Vinted Marketplace, sheds light on these strategic shifts and what’s next for the company in an interview with FashionNetwork.com.

FashionNetwork.com: Vinted has achieved its goal of becoming profitable. What is your strategy for the company’s development going forward?

Adam Jay: Achieving profitability was indeed a significant milestone. Vinted has grown tremendously over the past few years. I would say our current model really took shape around 2016, when we introduced our new selling proposition, which made selling items free of charge. That marked the beginning of the growth phase that has driven our expansion over the recent years, propelled by two primary avenues.

The first was our geographic expansion into new international markets. We are now present in 22 countries and have entered five new markets in the past 18 months, which we expect to complete by the end of this year. The second key driver has been developing and enhancing our core proposition—primarily the buying and selling of fashion items.

FNW: After moving into the luxury segment, what led you to officially introduce electronics to your platform?

AJ: Two years ago, we began investing in the luxury segment. Today, we are exploring new categories because we see a clear demand from our buyers and sellers: they want the ability to buy and sell more diverse products. In fact, users have long been quite creative in selling items unrelated to fashion through our platform.

We launched the electronics category in August, and I believe it will continue to grow steadily. However, it does present specific challenges. It’s crucial, when you’re selling electronics in a consumer-to-consumer environment, to have robust mechanisms in place to ensure trust in the platform, confidence in the product, and security in the transaction process. That’s our current focus.

From there, you can imagine that other product categories would naturally be considered in the months and years to come. I believe this will play a key role in the next phases of our growth strategy.

FNW: Does the development of your own logistics network, Vinted Go, fit into this strategy? Will it expand beyond France?

AJ: We’ve made substantial investments in France to establish this initial logistics network. France serves as a launch market for the implementation of our own shipping capabilities. Currently, we have over 5,000 collection points, consisting of both automated lockers and partner retail stores. We believe we can deliver an exceptional logistics offering, both in terms of core service quality and cost-efficiency for buyers. Our goal is to keep platform, shipping, and buyer protection fees as low as possible.

If our logistics offer proves successful in France over time, we will certainly consider rolling it out to other European markets. Nevertheless, this wouldn’t stop us from continuing to partner with local logistics providers, ensuring a coordinated approach alongside our proprietary systems.

FNW: Luxury, electronics, logistics… Is Vinted looking to diversify to find new growth drivers?

AJ: That’s not exactly how we see it. For us, Vinted’s mission is straightforward: we want second-hand to become the first choice for consumers worldwide. This has been our guiding principle for many years, and it remains so. It’s true for fashion, for luxury fashion, for electronics, and for other categories we may venture into in the future. We firmly believe that we have the capability to develop compelling propositions as we extend our business into new product categories.

FNW: Does this mean that Vinted is transitioning from a fashion platform to a broader, more generalist marketplace?

AJ: In a way, yes. I believe fashion will always be the core of Vinted’s offering—there’s no doubt about that. This is largely because the purchase frequency in fashion is quite high, making it a solid anchor for our consumer base. Fashion was the foundation upon which Vinted thrived as a marketplace, which explains its success.

However, yes, we envision a natural expansion into other product categories, building around fashion as the nucleus of our activity.

FNW: Are there specific consumer demographics that are currently underrepresented on Vinted, which you are looking to target?

AJ: It’s very simple—I want Vinted to be for everyone. And, to some extent, it already is. That said, we have a noticeable skew towards younger consumers and a predominantly female user base. But men make up half the population, and there are also older generations who could greatly benefit from selling and buying products through Vinted. So, our ambitions are broad. Expanding into certain categories could spark or accelerate interest from new demographic groups. Electronics is a great example—people who feel comfortable selling second-hand electronics are often quite different from those who are confident in buying and selling second-hand fashion.