There’s not a great deal about Vinted’s business model that is innovative or revolutionary. The buying and selling of used clothes is a practice as old as time. Markets across the globe have been awash with excess clothing for generations, while more recently second-hand shops proliferated on high streets, offering treasure amongst the tat.
All that the Lithuanian-founded company managed to do was make that buying and selling far easier than ever before. It’s a tweak, not a reinvention, but it’s one that has been a game changer for the millions of people who use its platform every day. Tags make searching for exactly what buyers want a doddle. Deals with logistics companies mean that senders can ship their goods cheaply and conveniently: usually by doing little more than scanning a QR code and leaving the item in a secure locker. Vinted takes care of the rest.
It’s no wonder that the service became Lithuania’s first tech unicorn in 2019 after raising 128 million euros in a funding round on a one billion euros valuation. It has now raised well over 700 million euros across seven funding rounds and is worth around eight billion euros. It has acquired Dutch and German competitors, as well as a Dutch delivery company. More recently, it announced plans to enter the US market. Not bad for a firm founded by a Lithuanian woman moving house who simply wanted to give away some clothes.
Vinted is proof that the reach of companies from small countries are not bound by either their tiny home markets nor the limited reach of their home country’s brand. There’s no formal measure for such things, but Vinted as a brand is almost certainly far better known than Lithuania as a country, just as Skype was far more famous than Estonia. Gorenje is bigger than Slovenia, and Škoda is arguably better known than Czechia.
What unites these countries is ambition and, in the case of start-ups such as Vinted, a mentality that thinks global from the very start, and which have the know-how to successfully do business beyond their own borders.
No name, no margin
Alas, much of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia and the Caucasus hasn’t got that memo. The region is full of companies making world-class products that arrive on international shelves as anonymous commodities. Uzbekistan’s textile mills supply European fashion houses, but the labels sewn in say Zara or H&M, not Tashkent. Georgian wine exports to America have grown at a compound annual rate of 15.5% since 2021, and the country’s winemakers were promoted in 21 countries through 58 exhibitions in 2025. But ask a sommelier in New York to name a single Georgian wine brand and you’ll likely get a blank stare. The country’s 8,000-year winemaking tradition is becoming fashionable, but its individual producers remain obscure.
This matters commercially, not just sentimentally. Branded exporters typically command price premiums over over generic equivalents. When a Kazakh grain trader ships wheat as a bulk commodity, the margin is wafer-thin and the buyer couldn’t care less where it came from. When a firm builds something recognisable (such as a name, a story, a reason to choose it over the alternative) the economics shift entirely.
Cracking the code
There are exceptions of course, and they’re instructive. Kaspi.kz, Kazakhstan’s fintech super-app, became the first company from the country to list on Nasdaq in 2024. It now has over 15 million monthly active users in a country of 20 million, processes 166 billion US dollars in annual transactions, and is pushing into Uzbekistan and Turkey through acquisitions. Its market capitalisation hovers around 16 billion US dollars. Nobody confuses Kaspi with a sleepy Central Asian bank anymore. Georgia’s Spribe, a gaming company, has attracted 40 million players worldwide from its base in Tbilisi. Neither waited for their home country’s reputation to precede them. Both built credibility through product quality and canny international positioning. Kaspi by listing in New York, Spribe by targeting markets where Georgian origin was irrelevant to the purchasing decision.
The politicians of the region have cottoned on, at least in theory. Trade ministers from five Central Asian states met late last year to discuss a ‘Made in Central Asia’ regional trademark, to be launched at a forum in Samarkand later this year. It’s a reasonable instinct, collective branding worked for ‘New Zealand lamb’ and ‘Colombian coffee’, but it skips a step. Regional labels help when individual brands already exist to carry them. Without those, the label is just a sticker on a shipping container.
Brand first, country second
The more interesting play runs in reverse. Strong company brands don’t just sell products; they sell their country of origin. Before Skype, most Westerners would have struggled to place Estonia on a map. After Skype (and then Bolt, Wise and the e-residency programme) Estonia became shorthand for small-country digital ambition. Lithuania was, to most Europeans, one of those Baltic places that might be near Poland. Vinted, alongside fintech firm Revolut (whose Lithuanian banking licence anchors its European operations), is doing more for the country’s international profile than any amount of government-funded nation-branding campaigns.
The flywheel effect is real. Once a country is known for producing one successful global brand, the second becomes easier to build. Investors pay attention. Talent stops emigrating. Trade delegations get their meetings returned. Estonia went from one unicorn to several in a decade. Lithuania is on the same path. The question for Uzbekistan, Georgia, Albania and their neighbours is whether they’re willing to back their most promising companies with the same ferocity. Not with subsidies and trade-fair booths, but with regulatory frameworks, diaspora networks and market-entry support that help founders think beyond their borders from day one.
Vinted’s founder Milda Mitkute just wanted to shift some old clothes. She ended up putting Lithuania on the map. There’s a lesson in that for every ambitious company in the region, and for every government that thinks nation-branding starts with a slogan rather than a product.
Photo: Dreamstime.
