Adam Jay and the "massive pivot" that saved Vinted

"It's okay to make mistakes and my god has Vinted made mistakes," says Adam Jay, CEO of the company's marketplace arm. The second-hand marketplace wasn't an overnight success. The game-changing decision that saved it from failure? Making selling completely free.

In his first-ever podcast interview, Jay talks to Sir Richard Harpin about how he helped perfect the Vinted playbook and rolled it out into 26 markets worldwide – France was the first success story.

He reveals the mistakes made along the way, the pivots that mattered and the leadership lessons every founder and CEO needs to hear. We break down how Vinted transformed from a struggling start-up into a profitable, fast-scaling platform now valued at €8bn.

In this interview, we cover:

• What Jay did in his first 100 days at Vinted, and why it worked
• How removing seller fees was the turning point for Vinted's growth
• Why it took Vinted seven attempts to succeed in Germany
• Why he thinks businesses should be wary of some AI models

From Avis to Vinted's top job

Jay's route to the top of Europe's biggest secondhand marketplace did not begin in fashion. He spent seven years at Boston Consulting Group, during which time he completed an MBA at INSEAD. A move into travel followed, spending two years at Avis Car Rental before embarking on an almost decade-long stint at Expedia Group, initially as head of product at Hotels.com.

During this time, Jay evolved from product into marketing and then broader general management. He credits Expedia with building "a strong, truly global business, an incredibly important part of the travel ecosystem operating at scale" - qualities he says he tried to take forward into Vinted.

By early 2021, Jay decided to leave Expedia to look for something in particular: a business with a strong sense of purpose. Vinted's core objective – to make second-hand the first choice worldwide – was, in his words, "a beautiful mission".

How does Vinted make money?

Founded by Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas, the Lithuania-based company started with a hope and a dream in 2008. But it took what Jay describes as a "massive pivot" to get the business model right. Dutch entrepreneur Thomas Plantenga joined the company as a strategy consultant in 2016. That same year, the company was in dire straits with €400,000 left on its balance sheet.

They gambled it on a TV advert to explain the change to the French market in the hopes that it would save them from business oblivion. It did. Plantenga rose to Group CEO and oversaw the company's pivot and pioneering business model.

Jay explains: "It is free to sell. The seller gets 100 per cent of the sale value." The buyer pays for the item, plus what Jay calls a protection fee, "which is 5 per cent plus 70p typically", along with the cost of a shipping label.

Vinted's own margin comes from that fee, alongside what Jay calls "value-added services" – boosting listings – and display advertising on the site. The margins are slim, but the scale is huge and the company became profitable in 2023.

Jay is candid about why the fees stay so low: "It's really important that we do operate on those thin margins because that is what actually enables the marketplace," he says. "That is what reduces friction."

In 2025, the model delivered €10.8bn of gross merchandise value, up 47 per cent on the year before and €1.1bn in revenue. 2026 saw the company complete a secondary share transaction of €880m (£763.8m), valuing the second-hand fashion online marketplace at around £6.8bn.

Why Vinted is actually three businesses

Vinted reimagined its business structure in 2022. Not only do you need to own your verticals, you have to segment them carefully too, says Jay. He oversees marketplace, the largest team with around 1,500 people running the peer-to-peer discovery platform. Jay reveals to Sir Richard Harpin that a restructure was one of his first acts as CEO.

"My first 100 days were spent breaking Vinted into what is ultimately three businesses," he says. Alongside the marketplace, the other two were the Vinted Go shipping and logistics arm and a payments business. It's designed as an "ecosystem of connected businesses" to keep costs low.

Where possible, Vinted brings operations in-house to keep control and maximise the slim profit margins. In five markets, it runs its own system of pick-up lockers known as Vinted Go (France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Portugal). Here in the UK, it uses third parties such as Evri, InPost and Royal Mail.

Mistakes, AI and what comes next

Jay is unusually candid about failure. "My biggest learning: it's okay to make mistakes," he says. "You will make mistakes again and again and again." Vinted has got categories wrong, including a costly attempt to sell bulky items like sofas, where shipping costs outweighed the value of the item.

Jay also admits that Vinted has expanded into new countries at the wrong pace. Germany, he says, only succeeded "on about try seven." The company is now testing the US market, "going slowly and steadily", aware that no peer-to-peer marketplace has yet cracked it in the way Vinted has in Europe.

AI, too, is reshaping the platform. Vinted has used machine learning for years to match buyers and sellers, but generative tools are now speeding up listing, from photo to auto-generated description to a recommended price in seconds. Jay is wary of overreach, though: "AI is not free. Don't automatically go for the latest, greatest, fanciest model."

As for the future, a stock market listing "could happen" one day, Jay says, though that decision sits with Vinted's group chief executive, finance lead and board rather than him. For now, he is focused on the job at hand. "I couldn't be having more fun," he says. "I cannot imagine doing any other role where I feel I'm having more impact in the world."

Adam Jay's four lessons for leaders

Treat mistakes as data, not verdicts. Vinted's costly attempt to sell bulky items like sofas failed because shipping outweighed the item's value. The lesson Jay draws isn't to stop trying new categories but to learn fast, adapt and never repeat the same failed idea unchanged.

Structure the business around distinct functions, not egos. Splitting Vinted into three parts in his first 100 days as CEO let each function be judged and improved on its own terms, rather than being buried inside one undifferentiated business.

Adopt AI for the job it's suited to, not the one that's fashionable. Jay's advice is to resist automatically reaching for the latest, biggest model and instead match the technology to the specific use case, in Vinted's case, enabling low-friction transactions between two individuals.

Be willing to relaunch a country you've already failed in. Vinted failed in the UK multiple times before finally landing in 2020-2021, and Germany only worked on its seventh attempt. Try, try and try again applies at the market level as much as the product level, but only if you change something each time.

Find the full conversation with Adam Jay on the Business Leader podcast.