Vinted acquires Spanish competitor Chicfy

By

Matthieu Guinebault

Published
Oct 16, 2019

Having arrived in Spain a year ago, Vinted has come to an agreement with local competitor Chicfy, which will shut down its portal and invite its users to move their profiles and wardrobes across to the Lithuanian specialist's platform. According to Vinted, the deal, which has been valued at under 10 million euros by the Spanish press, does not involve the purchase of any of Chicfy's operations, teams or metadata. 

Chicfy was hit hard when Vinted first arrived on the Spanish market. Its new competitor took commissions of only 7%, payable by the purchaser, compared to those of 20% applied to sellers by Chicfy, which also had to contend with Vinted's considerable marketing investments. This was enough to push Chicfy to set out in search of a buyer, eliciting an offer from Spanish used goods marketplace Wallapop. It was a golden opportunity for Vinted, whose CEO Thomas Plantenga recently explained that the company would be concentrating its efforts on Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain for the time being. 

"We love the Chicfy community and when we heard that the company was going to shut down its platform, we though we should offer its members a practical alternative and give them the opportunity to benefit from Vinted's attractive offer for buyers and sellers," explained Plantenga. "So our existing Spanish community will develop, which will allow us not only to accelerate our growth in Europe, but also to double down on our commitment to our mission to make secondhand fashion the first choice around the world."

According to figures from The Information, Chicfy reported revenues of 4 million euros and a profit of 400,000 euros in 2017. For its part, Vinted will be counting on its much wider offering to win over the Spanish platform's former users. The Lithuanian portal currently boasts 23 million members in 11 European countries and has plans to gradually make further investments in all of these markets.

At the moment, half of the company's business volume of around 1.3 billion euros comes from France, with another quarter being accounted for by Germany. Recently the platform has been upping the presence of higher-end pieces on its sites in an effort to attract older users, as its CEO explained to FashionNetwork.com a few days ago.