Courtesy of Depop
- Depop is a social shopping app that has been described as a mix of eBay and Instagram. It is targeted at Gen Z shoppers.
- The company announced Friday that it has raised $62 million in a round of funding led by New York-based venture capital firm, General Atlantic.
- Since launching in Milan in 2011, Depop has grown to 13 million users in 147 countries around the world, including the US.
- It plans to use the capital to triple its US customer base.
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Depop is coming for US teens.
The teen-focused social shopping marketplace announced Friday that it has raised $62 million in a round of funding led by New York-based venture capital firm General Atlantic.
The company said it plans to use the money to expand in the US, tripling its user base there. The funding will also be spent on building out its London-based engineering and data science teams and investing in new tools to improve the functionality of the platform.
In a statement to the press, CEO Maria Rega said that the company’s growth in the US "has been almost entirely organic" up to this point. "This latest investment will enable us to scale further and faster in the US and beyond, building a platform that helps to find and grow the fashion stars and trends of the future," she said.
Depop is a social marketplace that offers users an easy way to buy and sell an array of items — from vintage clothing and limited-edition sneakers or sunglasses to books and concert tickets — via its app. It has been described as a mix between eBay and Instagram and would count sites such as ThredUp and Poshmark as its competitors.
Since launching in Milan in 2011, it has grown to have 13 million customers in 147 countries, including the US, where it currently has five million users.
Throughout its rapid growth, it has kept its sights firmly fixed on its core customer: Gen Z.
"This company is for the next generation," Rachel Swidenbank, vice president of Marketplace at Depop, said in a recent conversation with Business Insider.
Around 90% of its users are under 26 and are using the platform the sell used clothes or start their own businesses from their home.
It turns out that flipping vintage clothes and sneakers can be an extremely lucrative business. According to Swidenbank, some Depop sellers can pull in as much as $300,000 a year on the app and have been able to buy houses and cars before they’ve even reached college age. Depop takes a cut of this, making 10% on each transaction.
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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Mary Hanbury)