Thomas Plantenga bet the future of Vinted on a television advertisement. The secondhand clothing resale app was burning $1 million per month and had less than a year of cash left when Plantenga made an $800,000 gamble on French television. It was May 2016, and Plantenga had recently been hired to save the eight-year-old Lithuanian startup. After its founding at a college party in 2008, Vinted had grown rapidly as people from 10 countries used its platform to buy and sell secondhand clothes.

But it was free for users, barely covering its server costs with advertising, and an attempt in 2014 to bolt on a Poshmark-style 20% sales commission resulted in a user revolt. Traffic almost halved overnight. The Netherlands-born Plantenga, who had never been to Lithuania, signed up for a five-week gig as a consultant in May 2016. He ended up becoming Vinted’s CEO 18 months later.

Seven years later, Vinted is one of Europe’s largest consumer marketplaces, with over $600 million of revenue in 2023. It now counts 100 million users glo­bally. Last year, it posted its first annual profit—at least $20 million—distinguishing it from its loss-making American cousins including The Real­Real (valued at $360 million), ThredUp ($200 million) and Poshmark (sold for $1.2 billion). Vinted became the Baltic nation’s first unicorn in 2019 when it raised $140 million at a $1.1 billion valuation, and sales have since grown sixfold.

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