French resale company Vestiaire Collective announced its acquisition of Tradesy, a U.S. pioneer in the fashion resale industry, on Tuesday. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the companies said in a statement that by joining forces, they will “significantly increase the size and reach of their peer-to-peer marketplaces, to the direct benefit of their sellers and buyers.” The combined company will boast “a membership community of 23 million, a catalog of 5 million items and a Gross Merchandise Value exceeding $1 billion,” according to Vestiaire and Tradesy, which assert that customers and sellers, alike, will “significantly benefit from the companies’ alliance.”
“In recent years, Vestiaire Collective has grown at an accelerated pace in the U.S., which has become its largest market,” the company stated on Tuesday, noting that “in particular, since the beginning of 2022, [it] has been growing its U.S. Gross Merchandise Value at a 75 percent year-on-year rate.” As such, the move to consolidate Tradesy into its operations will undoubtedly help to expand Vestiaire’s footprint in the American market and to “unlock strategic local-to-local transactions.” In order to “best serve its expanded customer base and continue to position trust at the core of its business model,” Vestiaire says that it plans to open a new authentication center in the Los Angeles area (its fifth authentication center globally, and second in the U.S.).
The deal – the biggest acquisition in the space following Etsy snapping up Depop for $1.62 billion in June 2021 – comes as cash is flowing into the secondary market space (both from an investment and a consumption perspective) and in light of expected consolidations, as established players like Rebag, The RealReal, Vestiaire, StockX, and others fight for market share in the luxury resale space, which Bain & Co. valued at almost $40 billion as of the close of 2021, an increase of 65 percent from 2017. Bain projects that the preowned luxury market “can keep surging,” and continue to outpace the market for new products if brands address these issues.
Los Angeles-based Tradesy, which operates of an online peer-to-peer resale marketplace for buying and selling women’s fashion and accessories, raised $67 million in a Series D round in September 2021, which brought its total funding at the time to $145 million. Also in September, Vestiaire raised 178 million euros ($209 million) in a venture round that included participation from two new investors, SoftBank Group Corp and Generation Investment Management, bringing its valuation to $1.7 billion dollars, and its total funding to date to $663.3 million. Before that, in a round in March 2021 that was led by Gucci-owner Kering and American investment firm Tiger Global Management, Vestiaire brought in $216 million in funding, along with existing investors, including its CEO Max Bittner, Vogue’s parent company Condé Nast, and the Eurazeo Group, among others.
Maximilian Bittner, CEO of Vestiaire Collective, and Fanny Moizant, founder and President of Vestiaire Collective, will continue to serve in those roles for the combined company, while Tracy DiNunzio, founder and CEO of Tradesy, will become CEO of the combined U.S. operations.
Share
