I'm surprised anyone would write this off. It's a trendy eBay for a specific niche (used/"vintage" clothes). If you can get it to scale (obviously not easy) it seems like it's an easy win and easy to monetise. On the surface a much better investment opportunity than a lot of the stuff we see on HN.

I've used depop a fair amount, I think it's a big leg up over eBay because of it draws some useful features from social media.

The feed allows you to follow and discover sellers whose style suits you, and stay informed of their offerings. You can see who they follow, and so on.

I took a quick look through it. I didn't really get it though. If it's used clothes, why are there people selling large quantities like a business? That doesn't seem like a compatible idea?

The prices seemed lower than average new retail prices by a bit, but not much. There's no obvious way to signal clothes were purchased from depop as far as I could tell...

The only conclusion I can draw is that the used aspect has to be a sort of gimmick used to define the store brand, but in reality most of the money is made on niche sellers doing original products chasing a very long tail of fashion.

Am I terribly wrong?

I live in Japan, thrift stores here sell rare stuff you literally can’t find new in stores, and have scouts who scour the planet for rare finds and ship them back to sell from stores. Sometimes clothes are altered to combine or remix classic styles, too. Prices can match or exceed new goods. And people happily pay for it, there are probably as many used clothes stores as there are for new ones. I’d imagine businesses like this can sell a large catalog on sites like Depop.

I think you’re thinking of used clothes like other used goods - a budget, subpar alternative - but think of it more like, achieving a look from a different era, or collecting something unique, and then it makes more sense.

Yeah they are more like classic cars or relics/jewlry. I wonder if a time piece related site could do well, or if the buyer base is too small.

I don’t dislike fashion because I’m a humble bragging genius. I dislike it because I think it’s bad for the world. It preys on and fuels women’s insecurities to sell them throwaway products made by borderline-enslaved Cambodians. A guy making $1.63 billion doesn’t change that — the mentality that “it makes money so it’s good” is precisely the sick mentality behind this whole blight upon the world. I know you are right that there is more growth in this industry, but that growth is going to make the world a worse place.

> It preys on and fuels women’s insecurities to sell them throwaway products made by borderline-enslaved Cambodians.

It sounds like you've never used Depop or learned about it before writing this comment. Depop is the exact opposite. It's a solution to what you're framing as a problem. Depop is a way to recycle clothing rather than throwing it out and buying more - it is actually a reaction to the exact fast fashion you're complaining about.

The first R is reduce. The second is reuse. Our cultural obsession with fashion completely bypasses each of these.

Depop is reuse. Progress is made on the margins. Absolutist judgement of something a lot of people like does nothing to help.

I think depot would count as reuse, right?. Honestly, I'm stoked whenever we manage to make it past "recycle."

I'd be happier if they announced that recycling was fake and everything you throw in the blue bin is trash.

Perhaps, but I think it can be argued that it encourages more consumerism. The market for second-hand selling may encourage those sellers to buy more new.

Fundamentally the idea of an everchanging fashion is problematic, not just environmentally but also otherwise.

Oh, but those R’s are hard and not fun.

What’s really fun is throwing all anything plastic including wrappers, #5, #7, any metal, any paper basically anything but food into the blue recycling tub that someone comes to pick up and then I can smuggly look down on people that “don’t even care about the planet”, I’m doing my part by blankly assuming all my “recycling” isn’t going into a landfill!

... I wish I would still count the number of people that think that, but it’s too many.

I try to “not buy shit”, and Im pretty sure it’s a lot harder than wishcycling.

Unfortunately that's not necessarily the case. People run full on dropshipping businesses on Depop under the guise of handmade/second hand clothing. There is also widespread "thrift hauls" on Depop where 20 something rich people ransack thrift stores which are staples in low-income communities and sell on Depop for 10x. Depop doesn't do anything to counter the hypercapitalist and wasteful fashion industry - its just another component to it.

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22396051/thrift-store-hauls-et...

This comment is pretty reactionary and maybe doesn't deserve a reply but I've seen variations on this criticism before and as someone that's worked in this space it doesn't make any sense:

> There is also widespread "thrift hauls" on Depop where 20 something rich people ransack thrift stores which are staples in low-income communities

This complaint seems to be based on a profound delusion, which is that the social mission of thrift stores is to provide cheap clothing for people who don't have much money.

The charity aspect of thrift stores, at least historically, has been the money that you give them when you buy stuff there.

So in fact the whole point of the enterprise is to have people who have stuff they don't need donate it to a worthy cause, who sell it to people with money who want it, and then they take the money that they make this way and give it to people who need money or use it to provide needed services etc.

Nobody is "ransacking" a charity by doing the exact thing the charity is hoping people will do, which is giving the charity money that can be used to further charitable activities.

> The charity aspect of thrift stores, at least historically, has been the money that you give them when you buy stuff there.

That's actually completely backwards. The public good that a thrift store provides is to make cheap, essential things accessible to people who can't afford anything else. Goodwill is a nonprofit because there is no profit in making cheap, essential things accessible to people who can't afford to anything else.

I don't know anything about Goodwill, but in the UK there are several charities that run shops and their purpose is as the parent describes - the shops generate revenue for the charity to carry out its work.

The first sentence on the wikipedia page on Charity shop [1] (and "Thrift shop" redirects to the same page) says:

> A charity shop (UK), thrift shop or thrift store (USA) or opportunity shop (others) is a retail establishment run by a charitable organization to raise money.

The Goodwill.org page About Us > Our Vision for Transformation [2] has a section "HOW LOCAL GOODWILLS DELIVER IMPACT" the third item of which starts:

> Goodwill retail operations generate revenue that supports our mission work. [...]

So, it's possible these things are dual-purpose and intended to meet both goals, or that some thrift stores have the goal of raising revenue and some have the goal of making recycled items available cheaply. But certainly parent's point is not backward - at least many thrift stores explicitly operate in order to generate revenue as a form of funding for charitable ventures. People with money buying things from charity shops helps the charities. It's what they want.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_shop [2] https://www.goodwill.org/about-us/our-vision-for-transformat...

If I could edit I would say "this overlooks the impact that thrift stores have on their communities" or something similar.

The difference between Thrift store prices and new garments in many cases is less than it used to be. Look at uncool stores, JC Penny, Walmart, and a few others, and you can get clothing for very little.

I’m not talking about Depop, I’m talking about why I hold the fashion industry in low regard.

Your whole original comment just seems pretty anachronistic in 2021. Especially as Pride month kicks off, I’d caution you against holding on to antiquated views that the fashion industry is only something for women or has to do primarily with their insecurities.

Whatever else it is, fashion to me is about both aspiration and inspiration. It is something that is creative not just for designers, but also their fans and customers. It is fundamentally about encouraging people to imagine themselves in new ways.

It is emphatically not just some one-way broadcast aimed at a certain, supposedly more impressionable, gender.

> I don’t dislike fashion because I’m a humble bragging genius. I dislike it because I think it’s bad for the world.

We could play that game for days, about most industries that feature prominently on HN. This looks like just the sort of narrow focus the original poster was talking about. Why are fashion products worse than new smartphones coming out every year? Because we personally like gadgets more? And if we were talking about a used tech toy marketplace, comments about how new manufacturing was bad would be similarly out of left field, since here's an example of reuse.

According to my reading, HN is full of complaints about new phones (and everything else, e.g. washing machines) being built with “planned obsolescence” as a goal, and praise for Apple for being by far the best in supporting old devices (but of course they could still improve!)

FWIW the iPhone 5s from Fall 2013 is still receiving regular security updates.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212341

Planned obsolescence goes beyond whether phone software gets updated or not. It covers changing designs so that you can tell one generation from another, so that there is social pressure to upgrade despite the phone working fine.

This article was about fashion, so it seems relevant. Other discussions about companies harmful practices often do sound off in the threads about those companies or fields.

I dont think anyone said one was worse than the other until you did - we can actually be against more than one thing at a time and maintain various levels of concerns across more than one thing at a time without constantly bringing up a list of all the bad things in the universe.

> We could play that game for days, about most industries that feature prominently on HN.

Do you have a moment to discuss my new crypto coin? It is specifically good at taking dinosaurs and making them money launder for drug dealers, murderers, and slavers.

All human activity except agriculture and medicine is a waste of time of you want to be strict about it

Fashion is self-expression and your own personal connection to culture. I don’t think nerds on HN generally grok those concepts but many other people in the world do. It’s very important to lots of people and it’s a lot of fun once you know what you’re doing.

The fashion world has abundant problems but it’s still an important industry. Preying on insecurities and using cheap labor is sort of a way of looking at all consumerism though.

People will often say "I don't care about fashion", then I point out that by wearing a dark monochrome tshirt, "silicon valley" hoodie, zip-up vest etc. you are showing that you are most definitely up to date on fashion trends.

Fine with me. If a bunch of smart people are going to lock themselves out of a multi-billion industry because they are too “enlightened” to bother, awesome. Less competition.

> it’s a lot of fun once you know what you’re doing

It's also pretty useful if you have an open mind and no idea what you're doing.

I don't really "do" fashion but I'm grateful for my cerulean sweater!

https://youtu.be/vL-KQij0I8I

Don’t assume that because I don’t like it, I don’t understand it. I do understand the venal emotions of mankind. That doesn’t mean I respect the people who stoke and exploit those emotions for profit. A lot of consumerism is ecologically destructive but only a small amount of it depends on actively harming your customer’s mental well-being. Fashion, Facebook, sensationalist media, etc. are all industries that depend on making people feel worse.

Frankly, you don't understand fashion. Fashion is not a new industry, nor is it parasitic. It's one of the oldest forms of self-expression and it makes lots of people feel better, not worse. Fitting in is always going to be stressful, but it's stressful because it's so important for social creatures like us. Fashion is simply a tool that helps people fit in. If you figured out a way to fit in that doesn't involve fashion, then power to you, but that doesn't invalidate thousands of years of people enjoying clothes.

I want to know more about this, but I have no clue. No clue if I'm fashionable at all. It's more like "Yes" and "No"

I usually recommend guys start with r/malefashionadvice to learn how to fit in, and then later on you can learn how to stand out. (edit MFA is US-centric but some of the concepts are still universal) It’s hard to fashionably stand out without knowing the fundamentals of constructing a basic outfit and knowing a little bit of fashion heritage, which you’ll learn from that subreddit. Once you’ve been there for a few months and learned all the standard MFA outfits, I’d leave and go in your own direction. People there tend to be a bit sanctimonious and rigid. Instagram and Pinterest are good places to find further inspiration once you have a bit of taste to filter out the garbage.

The fun part starts when you graduate from MFA and start to explore your own style. It’s rewarding to put together a visual identity that feels deeply personal, and then get a complement from another cool-looking stranger when you’re out and about. It feels like that person really likes YOU, and they probably do — and now you have the perfect ice-breaker. It’s just like working out; it’s an investment but there’s cumulative benefits in multiple aspects of your life.

> I do understand the venal emotions of mankind.

Thank you, this is now my new catchphrase!

Peak HackerNews

If your main “self-expression” statement is that you want to look like others, is that really self-expression, or were you just brainwashed?

This statement is really kind of funny, because its so stylized, so absolutely stereotypical that there was no way for you to possibly come to it creatively and originally.

Is some one buying momjeans on depop brainwashed, or is it you? If you aren't the one who is brainwashed why is your reply so ritualistic?

I think you're mixing up self-expression and being completely unique. Self-expression is about fitting in as much as standing out. It's about figuring out who you are, and how you fit into society. Fashion is about telling the world "this is who I am". It's a really good way to connect with like-minded people.

If you wear a business suit, you'll find company with conservative business people. If you wear all black, heavy boots, and band t-shirts you'll find company with people who are into the local music scene. If you wear Patagonia vests or startup hoodies you'll find company with people who want to code into the evening.

If your interpretation of fashion is "looking like others" then it means that your last encounter with fashion was when you were a high school teenager.

That's a pretty cynical take. Much the same could be said of any industry that relies on manufacturing and marketing. I think there's value in society at large - we are social creatures and relating to each other, mimicking each other, and other forms of communication are deeply tied to how we get along as human beings. I'm not saying fashion is itself necessarily useful at large, and it certainly has the issues you described, but it's at least a byproduct of other things that are highly useful.

Perhaps much of the same should be said of other industries.

>throwaway products made by borderline-enslaved Cambodians

Well good thing Depop helps consumers avoid buying brand new clothing items and encourages giving life to old clothes.

>I don’t dislike fashion because I’m a humble bragging genius. I dislike it because I think it’s bad for the world.

All of fashion is bad for the world? Is that really your take?

I guess at a high level, nearly everything humanity does is bad for the world. If that's your starting point then it makes sense?

Yes, that is really my take.

So, nudity is the answers. Also ban tattoos and hair styles while you're at it. And all self-expression, since that's also subject to the whims of fashion.

Thank you for enlightening us, Mr. Mao.

I know it's not exactly the be-all-end-all solution to the problem, but it does feel like good quality used marketplaces for fashion (like Depop) could help to counter that flow of 'throwaway products'. In addition, in the long run having a more liquid market for potential resale might encourage people to buy better, longer lasting clothes at the offset (but that might be a pipe dream on my part).

I like fashion because of the creativity

I also like that I know where to find people that have the bodies that less attractive women say are not real

Just don't say anything at the tech company, or nod and agree so that your coding academy graduates or state mandated board member doesnt axe your entire division, and then go get greeted by your bubbly atmosphere models after work

I think you have bigger fish to fry than a niche reseller app. www.walmart.com

Come on now, mens fashion is also a multi-billion industry

oh ... wait till you hear about the car industry.

I like to compare greed with steam and capitalism with a steam engine. It's noisy and inefficient, but that's the only tech we have right now.

I'd never visited the site but it looks very nicely executed, especially at creating a consistent vibe out of user-uploaded photos, which isn't easy.

A neat thing about businesses like this is that it takes a skillset that a lot of underemployed people have (cool hunting in thrift stores), and gives them a path to making part of their living out of it aside from the ancillary benefits of that come with being fashionable and cool. It also provides access to wider markets and price discovery for vintage shops in the same way that abehbooks did for used bookstores a decade or two ago, or eBay did for junk sellers at flea markets.

The inevitable downside is that it further compresses globo youth culture and makes it harder to develop a scene, but that horse left the gate a long time ago.

Nothing against the business, but if one were to start a lifestyle business, I can't think of a worse one than a marketplace, where you have to deal with refunds, inventory, legal issues, tons of advertising, upfront losses, etc. You're probably better off actually selling your stuff in these marketplaces, if you wanted a lifestyle business.

When I think of lifestyle businesses, I think of Pinboard, or Appointment Reminder, or a Depop/Poshmark/Etsy storefront.

Website looked like it had some cool stuff. Hard to find good streetwear.

> “lifestyle business” or “not likely to achieve a high ROI” to create what is now a billion-dollar exit.

Why would you believe this? Fad businesses chasing the tweens and 20-somethings is ABSOLUTELY the kind of business that VCs salivate over.

And fashion rises and falls in cycles. Have we forgotten fashion darlings like ModCloth?

The key to the fashion business is knowing when to cash out.

If they can just get the search to work properly I’d use it a lot more!

Why exit is thought of as a success? It's kind of like a pump and dump scheme. Does it mean founders suddenly lose their vision and abandon their customers to become an actual product for shareholders?

It is a success because it is a concrete milestone that shows the founders have fulfilled their roles to satisfaction. An exit is not the only success, you could also simply transition into being a successful private company, but then there's no clear finish line. Now it is clear, no can argue the founders success, it's written in black and white and made public for all to see, they achieved an undeniably great thing.

Customers are always a product for shareholders, that doesn't suddenly change when a company is sold to other shareholders. And anyway, it could be a good thing, obviously Etsy has great experience with taking care of their customers and their partners and with running a huge business. Who says anyone was abandoned?

> Now it is clear, no can argue the founders success, it's written in black and white and made public for all to see, they achieved an undeniably great thing.

No one can argue the founders' successful profit. I know nothing about this company and have no opinion on it one way or the other, but I know companies that are borderline fraudulent (and I am aware that is a strong claim) that are going public via SPACs and the founders are getting rich despite not having a product or paying customers.

They have exactly 1.63B reasons to sell. You don't get to judge them with zero insight into their business and visions for their lives.

Also, I would openly laugh at anyone who claims that they’d personally turn down 1.63B to keep their business pure. That is an overwhelming amount of money, in the “none of your descendants needs to work” range.

I’d sell out for much, much less money.

Apparently there were many other billion dollar acquisition bids turned down

Mark Zuckerberg Turned Down Yahoo's $1 Billion https://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg...

Discord reportedly rejects Microsoft's $12 billion acquisition offer https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/business/microsoft-12-bill...

Amazon and Alibaba have approached 5-year-old startup Wish, but the CEO seems to want more than $10 billion https://www.businessinsider.com/wish-rumored-to-reject-acqui...

But there's a difference between turning down a bid because you want to maintain control over your vision and because you think your company is just worth more than the offer. The point is just that if you get what you think is a fair offer, and it's a very large offer, it would be hard for most people to say no.

Also of note: Groupon turned down $6B from Google. They now have a market cap of $1.6B 11 years later.

https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/win-win-daily/win%C2%AD-wi...

It's obviously not impossible for someone to turn down a billion dollar offer because they think it's not enough, or to maintain control over their company. But I think people drastically underestimate how easy it would be to not sell out and walk away. The kind of people who will look at that offer and say "no thanks" are far and few between. There is a non-trivial chance that most of us have not met anyone like that.

Mark Zuckerberg also turned down a $15 Billion dollar offer from Microsoft.

On the contrary if I ever built a business that was worth 100 million or more I'd take far less than my share of it if it meant that I could get a clean exit and not have to stay on as an executive for a few years.

Perhaps my mentality is part of the reason why I will never build such a thing.

Not all of that money will go to the founders.

Most of it won't, there's only one founder and from what I understand his share is less than what you'd expect. I imagine all the early employees did pretty well from this though.

This is actually a very valid question. Every situation is different — usually I’d agree with you, and I actually hesitated when describing the success as due to the exit. In this case, however, the exit is likely due to the ability for the combined entity to execute the original vision better than before, and it also allows us to put a dollar number on the value of a space / business that unsophisticated bystanders continue to dismiss as “not a real business” (even on this page!). That makes it a net win for the overall resale platform / circular commerce ecosystem, and makes future innovation in this space easier to finance.

A similar situation occurred with the acquisition of MySpace, which immediately boosted the value of all the other social networks at the time — the space had gone from being a bunch of “worthless websites,” to important next-gen media platforms that might crown the next emperor. Recruitment/funding/etc became a LOT easier after that.

because they suddenly have tens of millions in their and their shareholders' pocket.

Let someone else worry about growth as you cash out

The context of the parent comment is what investors think. Investors — especially VCs — like acquisitions; they get them paid out at the 10x they were looking for, within their fund's time-horizon.