What if emerging brands sold on Vinted? Theoretically, it can be done, but it is unclear how beneficial it would be.

Vinted was born and grew thanks to second-hand fashion. With its spread, however, an increasingly large number of people have started to use the platform as a real e-commerce, completely bypassing full-price retail in search of better quality at heavily discounted prices. This has led to the emergence of professional sellers — genuine private e-commerces built entirely on the platform. Now, however, a new question is being asked by some small designers who also resell vintage: why not use Vinted to sell items from their own brand?

Can you sell products from your own brand on Vinted?

In theory, Vinted was created for second-hand items, and for several years questions on sites like Reddit multiplied about the possibility of selling self-made products. In reality, for a long time there seems to have been a certain ambiguity on the subject: in September 2024, for example, a user complained that their products had been banned from the app despite many similar ones being present. The difference, however, lies in the type of account one has.

It is indeed possible to use Vinted to sell products created by oneself or from one’s own brand, but only if one has a Pro account. This means, on the one hand, being able to upload an unlimited and free number of items, with extra visibility, priority complaint handling, support systems for payments across Europe and, above all, no sales commissions; on the other hand, it requires the seller to comply with regulations, have a VAT number and independently manage (which is obvious) all logistics and returns.

One example (though there are many) is @bizziovintage, a reseller of early-2000s vintage pieces but also a creator of upcycled jackets and trousers in the Opium/Y2K style, made by reassembling old jeans, printing graphics on rugby polos and sweatshirts, and so on. In addition to its own e-commerce site, the brand has a Vinted account named @nomistakes where its own creations are sold, mixed with vintage pieces, for a total assortment of around 600 items.

Another case is that of Osmosis, a Lyon-based brand that actually has no online presence whatsoever outside Vinted and “produces” T-shirts and tote bags printed with gothic-themed graphics. The quotation marks around “produces” are intentional because, among the brand’s various items, one can see, for example, clearly upcycled shirts still bearing their original label and then overprinted with new graphics. It is certainly an independent and “amateur” creative project but, in its small scale, it gives a sense of the grey area in which these projects operate — halfway between an authentic brand and the world of homemade goods. A space that was once occupied by Etsy.

Is Vinted becoming the Etsy of clothing?

On Reddit, a user who came across yet another small business asked: «Why is Vinted turning into Etsy?». Ironically, people replied underneath: «Because Etsy is turning into Amazon and Amazon has become an expensive AliExpress. Everything today has become an expensive AliExpress». Jokes aside, although there are no official figures on a “transfer” of small independent brands, there is plenty of evidence of the haemorrhage of sellers affecting Etsy.

In the third quarter of 2025, according to the company’s own report, the number of active sellers fell by 10.9% to 5.5 million, and the stock lost 12% in a single day. The negative trend, however, began back in 2023, the year in which the company’s downward trajectory started. Beyond the reduction in spending in home decor and jewellery categories and beyond the customer erosion caused by Temu and Shein, Etsy introduced measures such as a shop setup fee of 15–29 dollars to discourage casual sellers and stricter controls against mass-produced goods — measures that, however, discouraged a great many new sellers, leading to a net loss of 1.4 million active sellers in one year.

According to YouTuber Meg Hackman, the fact that the platform threw itself headlong into advertising revenue, earning over 700 million dollars in 2024 while worsening the user experience, dealt an almost fatal blow to the business. Another YouTuber, Starla Moore, analysed seller sentiment, citing among the various causes rising costs and ultra-high commissions (up to 12% per transaction plus listing and mandatory ad fees), while on Reddit another user complained about the excessive use of AI and the spread of print-on-demand products that make competition unfair.

Delving into Etsy’s decline would perhaps require a separate article, but the essential point is that in the survey cited by Moore, 70% of users said they wanted to move to platforms with no excessive commissions and clearer shipping policies. There are no official figures, but Vinted has certainly represented (at least for European users, where Vinted has its greatest reach) a very safe harbour given that the app has no commissions for sellers and shipping is handled by external services pre-integrated into the app.

But is selling on Vinted worthwhile for small brands?

The answer to the question is: «It depends». Among the most obvious advantages already mentioned is the complete absence of sales commissions, which allows sellers to keep 100% of the revenue — a rare thing among marketplaces, especially considering that commissions elsewhere can reach 12–15%. Entire collections can be listed without any initial budget. Finally, integration with events such as Refashion 2025 has shown that Vinted can work (even if it is a single case) as a media showcase for emerging designers.

Of course, alongside the pleasures come the duties: beyond a certain sales threshold and regularity, one will have to regularise with the tax authorities, open a VAT number and start managing the online shop as a full-fledged business. On the legal side, the Pro seller must also guarantee the 14-day right of withdrawal and the 2-year conformity warranty, with all related returns and disputes handled entirely at their own expense. Moreover, on Vinted there are no advanced branding tools or analytics that are usually so useful for merchants who want to study business performance.

Finally, since the platform is dedicated to second-hand and mainly used to buy designer items at bargain prices, a new brand risks both being positioned worse than luxury second-hand and appearing overly amateurish and unprofessional in the eyes of potential future customers. Any brand, for example, will still need its own Instagram and its own website, so Vinted might be an inexpensive way to test the waters for a small brand in its early stages. Turning it into an e-commerce in the style of Amazon, however, still seems a long way off.

Takeaways

- Vinted allows the sale of products from one’s own brand, but exclusively through a Pro Seller account that requires a VAT number and independent management of logistics, returns, and legal guarantees.

- The complete absence of sales commissions and the ability to upload an unlimited number of listings make the platform extremely cost-effective for small independent brands.

- Accounts selling upcycled or original creations, often mixed with vintage pieces, do exist and are fairly common, though they currently tend to fall into the “amateur” homemade product or accessory category.

- The simultaneous decline of sellers on platforms such as Etsy, driven by high commissions and increasingly restrictive policies, may have encouraged migration toward zero-fee alternatives like Vinted.

- For an emerging brand, Vinted Pro can serve as an almost-zero-cost channel to test the market and reach an audience, but the platform strongly influences positioning and pricing policies and, due to its second-hand marketplace nature, does not provide advanced branding or analytics tools.