Earlier this year, I did one of the most adult things possible within my financial grasp: I renewed my passport. Murderous-looking photo aside, the renewal was notable because I did not really feel the £102 when it left my bank account. And for that, I have Vinted to thank.
This is a technology that has turned the contents of our wardrobes into a vast, national marketplace: we can sell things we no longer want, buy things we do, haggle with strangers, find bargains that would never have existed on our local high street and turn a pile of unwanted clothes into cold hard cash.
No wonder we are flocking to it. An estimated 17.4 million Britons use Vinted, making it the country’s third-largest fashion retailer, behind only Primark and Next. Vinted, Lithuania’s tech superstar, has done something the likes of eBay could only ever dream of: normalised second-hand online shopping.
Yet increasingly, the app is being presented as supposed evidence of something rotten in our consumer culture. The charge sheet is familiar. Vinted encourages compulsive shopping, undermines charity shops, generates endless parcels and packaging, and turns the innocent pleasure of finding a bargain into a dopamine hit.
Dubbed ‘Vinted Brain’ by some, the app has been villainised as an enabler of compulsive shopping. In reality, much of the evidence was really about addiction rather than Vinted itself. The distinction matters. As with alcohol, gambling or food, some people will inevitably develop an unhealthy relationship with shopping and this is, unquestionably, a serious problem.
However, it does not follow that everyone else should feel vaguely guilty for buying a second-hand cardigan. There is a more positive way of looking at it. Rather than the new vice on the block, Vinted is the latest, and perhaps most technologically efficient, expression of the old British instinct: to buy, sell, haggle and make a few quid. In other words, Vinted is what happens when a nation of shopkeepers gets smartphones.
I recently came across a woman on Instagram documenting her family’s attempt to raise enough money for a trip to Japan by buying high-quality children’s toys from her local charity shop and reselling them on Vinted. In one video, she bought a plastic Octonauts toy for 50p and sold it for £10.
One commenter accused her of ‘ripping off’ the charity shop. But why? The charity shop had priced the toy at 50p and received its 50p. She simply recognised that someone elsewhere was willing to pay more. That isn’t ripping anyone off. It is arbitrage. That the arbitrage happens to involve a plastic Octonauts toy makes it no less legitimate.
Vinted is the latest expression of the old British instinct: to buy, sell, haggle and make a few quid
The charity shop is limited by geography. Vinted isn’t. The buyer in Newcastle looking for a particular children’s toy can find a seller in Croydon. Meanwhile, the seller in Cornwall looking to shed their old jumper can sell it to someone in Glasgow. Vinted turns Britain into one enormous jumble sale.
Yes, Vinted may sometimes deprive charity shops of their best stock, but second-hand retail has always depended on where you shop. Anyone who has spent an afternoon charity shopping knows that the quality of the haul varies wildly between neighbourhoods. Head to Chelsea and you might find a vintage Barbour jacket. Venture elsewhere in London and you might have seventeen Primark cardigans to choose from. Experience has taught me that, these days, there is often Shein trash and high-end treasure waiting for you wherever you go.
The potential disruption to a charity shop’s supply does not need to mean a decline in charitable giving. If you want to support a charity, the option to donate directly remains. If you want a cheap jumper, however, you now have options. Sometimes that means the local charity shop and sometimes it means Vinted. Charity shops do not have a moral monopoly on second-hand goods.
The environmental argument is similarly more complicated than either side would like to admit. Vinted is not automatically green because the items being sold are given a new lease of life. Buying a wardrobe of dresses you didn’t need still has an environmental impact, not least through the packaging and delivery required to get them to you.
The missing question in the argument that Vinted promotes overconsumption is surely ‘compared with what?’ If you need a new coat, shunning Vinted will not yield you a new one. A coat sold from one wardrobe to another has at least avoided being thrown away and may have avoided the purchase of a brand new one and the resources and energy this necessitates. Although the environmental benefits aren’t absolute, they are not imaginary.
Nor should we ignore the economic incentives. That £60 handbag languishing at the back of your wardrobe is economically useless. Sell it for £30 and suddenly it has paid for dinner, a train ticket or, in my case, a portion of a passport. Equally, with the cost-of-living still looming large, a 50p charity shop flip on Vinted could provide those in need with a lifeline.
Britain is not suffering from an outbreak of Vinted Brain. We are doing what we have always done: buying, selling, and trying to make a few quid. Only now, instead of setting up a stall at the car boot sale, we can do it from the sofa. The nation of shopkeepers has gone digital. Long may it trade.
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