The £1.6B Secondhand Fashion Platform

Simon Beckerman is a man who, frankly, says he's unemployable. He started a magazine at 22 (in 1998), designed a sunglasses brand worn by Rihanna and Kanye West, launched Depop at an Italian incubator in 2011, sold it to Etsy for $1.6 billion, and then promptly had a nervous breakdown as he lost control of his creation before he was even ready. He then started Delli-a marketplace for food-from-scratch again. And two years after Etsy sold Depop for $1.2 billion to eBay (effectively a paper loss), while Beckerman was three years into his next act...

The Man Who Called Himself Unemployable

Simon Beckerman has not had a straightforward route to technology or business. His parents are of an Italian-British background, so he was brought up across two cultures, two creative movements, two viewpoints of the world. In 1998, while many were coming online for the first time, Simon founded PIG (People In Groove). Not a tech startup, not a software firm, just a print magazine that served and nurtured the creative underworld, the independent designers, musicians, artists, makers who exist outside the established fashion and media industry. The commercial scale of PIG was not huge.

Its cultural relevance to the right people, though, was not insignificant, and in doing so, Simon gained something far more valuable than income: an in-depth, visceral understanding of a specific individual type who would buy and sell creatively, not based on the transaction but based on identity. Simon also had a sunglasses company, worn by celebrities and championed by both Kanye West and Rihanna, and worn by Justin Bieber. "Unemployable," Simon describes himself as, which perhaps is not true. Not unemployable in a matter of talent, but unemployable within someone else's blueprint. The attribute, a liability in most companies, is the very quality that makes Depop possible.

The Incubator, the Idea, and the Problem He Saw Personally

In 2011, Simon was at H-FARM, an Italian technology incubator and startup hub near Venice. H-FARM was an odd concept: an abandoned farm converted into an innovation campus for entrepreneurs to experiment with new ideas, provided with money, expertise, and facilities. Simon turned up with a simple realization. PIG showcased incredible people and incredible clothes, and readers loved looking at it. However, there was no simple way of buying it. The gap between liking and having is huge. He was building a way to fill that gap. What started as a way for readers to buy PIG items rapidly outgrew its own conception.

Simon realized that it was not only PIG readers that suffered from that gap; a generation of young, visual, social media-native and individuality-focused people who invested their sense of self in clothes had no channel to trade them among themselves. eBay served the eBay generation. Etsy served those who wanted handmade or crafty things. They did not address the kind of underground scene that Simon knew through a decade of PIG. Depop aimed to answer the demand for both, bringing Instagram's visuality together with a transactional system, not as a shopping website, but as a social environment to buy and sell. Depop launched in 2011; later it would be based in London.

The Controversial Reality of the Secondhand Fashion Market

This is the one stat every fashion brand doesn't want you to pay attention to: the global resale clothing market was $197B in 2023 and is expected to be $350B by 2027. At a growth rate twice that of primary fashion retail, the revolution in secondhand fashion is not niche. It is a fundamental redefinition of the relationship an entire generation has with clothing, ownership, and consumption. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that fashion is responsible for 92 million tons of textile waste each year. WRAP research states the average item is worn only seven to 10 times before disposal.

ThredUp research shows Gen Z shoppers are 166% more likely to buy secondhand items than older consumers. Depop landed the movement at the dawn of its awakening and rode its rise. In 2024, Depop counted 35M users, overwhelmingly under 26, across its markets of the UK, USA, Australia and Europe. Simon effectively built a leading peer-to-peer fashion re-commerce market for Gen Z, before we even broadly recognized Gen Z as a consumer market. His ability to predict this, not through research but via the lessons of running a magazine for the creative underground for ten years, was Depop's single greatest asset.

Depop vs The Competition: An Honest Comparison

It's an extremely busy market of resale and thrifting peer-to-peer right now, and here is a brutally honest comparison between Depop and its leading contenders.

Depop 2024 - 35 million registered users. Headquartered in London and has offices in Milan, New York, and Los Angeles. Sold for $1.625 billion by Etsy in 2021 and by eBay in Feb 2026 for $1.2 billion. Has its strongest user base among Gen Z users, with users being most active in fashion, streetwear, and vintage. Social-first, sellers will build profiles, curate a feed, and build their following. Buyers often follow a seller and their personal taste just as much as an individual piece of clothing. User experience has consistently been highlighted as high for the community and visual quality. Often criticized for having high fees for sellers (10% + payment fee), user protection being applied unevenly, and an often frustrating in-app search for specific products. Who would it best be suited for: Gen Z, for buying and selling where individuality and a community feel are key, as well as a transaction.

Vinted was established in Lithuania in 2008 and is now based in Vilnius. Over 80m users in 19 European countries. The leading used marketplace in mainland Europe. Sellers pay no fees. Buyers pay a small protection fee per sale. User experience: quicker and less social than Depop. More about efficient resale than community. Better search than Depop when hunting for particular items. Less aesthetically curated than Depop. Zero seller fee model makes Vinted a far more appealing proposition for casual sellers who do not wish to give away 10% of each sale. Good for: European sellers wanting maximum money from simple reselling.

ThredUp is an online, US-based consignment and thrift store. Unlike other thrifting sites, buyers purchase directly from ThredUp's selected stock, rather than directly from the seller. Clean, quick, well-organized browsing experience, but unlike the Depop model, completely separated from the social marketplace. Who is it best suited for: buyers based in the US who are looking for a curated vintage experience without the peer-to-peer element.

Vestiaire Collective: Luxury and high-end resale platform founded in Paris. Specializes in designer items, rather than vintage or streetwear. User experience: professional authentication, larger average transaction size, less rapid buying and selling compared to Depop. For those wanting to buy and sell high-end and luxury secondhand fashion.

eBay now owns Depop, following the February 2026 acquisition. The original peer-to-peer marketplace, currently home to over 132 million active buyers worldwide. Fashion is the biggest category for eBay;eBay Authenticate verifies luxury items. User experience: larger and higher-volume offering than anyone, less curated/less social/less aesthetically consistent than any competitor; The eBay brand doesn't hold the same cultural authority among Gen Z that Depop does; The rationale behind eBay buying Depop: It could buy Gen Z cultural clout it would never be able to cultivate itself. The platform's best use case: buyers who value range and cost more than a community and more curatorial experience.

The honest verdict: Depop wins on Gen Z's cultural street cred and the social commerce model; Vinted wins on value for European sellers; ThredUp wins on curation and browsing for US buyers; Vestiaire wins on luxury authentication and eBay on sheer volume. EBay's February 2026 acquisition of Depop is most compelling-the biggest traditional market acquiring the most culturally relevant Gen Z platform precisely because it doesn't know how to build it itself.

First Milestone: From Magazine Readers to Millions of Users

At first, growth happened with Depop almost entirely organically. Simon never advertised. He took advantage of the PIG magazine audience (the 'seed audience') and relied on the loops doing the work. Since the product was visual and social by nature, every Depop listing was "shareable," every purchase was a "recommendation," every seller's feed was "content marketing." By 2013, there were over a million items on the platform, simultaneously growing rapidly across several countries. Investors started taking notice. Balderton Capital, one of the more prestigious European tech VCs, invested early in the company, followed by HV Capital. The virality of the user base and genuine community aspect of the product, alongside a very clear "Gen Z audience," had investors high confidence in a market that hadn't been officially termed. As we saw in our piece on how to turn customers into brand advocates, the most impactful growth is users actively promoting a product because it speaks to their sense of self. Depop never had to ask users to be ambassadors, as they were.

The Burnout That Nobody Talked About Publicly

Here is the portion of the Depop story that the press reporting conveniently glossed over. Simon Beckerman didn't depart from Depop a victor. He departed, forced by his own body. As Depop was scaled and professional management was brought in to actually operate it, Simon found himself increasingly removed from actual decisions; the company that grew out of his magazine project at an Italian incubator was no longer his to shape. The resulting trauma of the whole experience manifested in ways he hadn't noticed at first. Then, one day he told his investors and executive team he wouldn't be able to continue to work anymore. He'd suffered severe gastritis-a painful inflammation of the lining of the stomach-which he later attributed to months of escalating panic and mental anguish over having lost control of Depop. He took a year off from his position on Depop's board. Not a planned sabbatical. An involuntary withdrawal.

This is the portion of Simon Beckerman's story that distinguishes it from other entrepreneur exit stories. Most entrepreneurs have a final exit cheque and a proud LinkedIn post; Simon has the section of his journey after it. He shows what it costs when you invest yourself wholly in building something, and then discover it growing into something else entirely. As we outlined in our article about what makes lasting founders outlast burnout, the most interesting companies were founded by entrepreneurs who found it most traumatic to relinquish the role of builder in favor of that of the observer. Simon's testimony is one of the most sincere public renditions of the cost of that transition.

The $1.6 Billion Exit and the Paper That Changed Everything

The first sign of trouble was in June 2021, when Etsy announced its $1.625bn cash purchase of Depop, the company's largest-ever acquisition. Etsy chief executive Josh Silverman said it was "a bet on the resale fashion market and Depop's Gen Z customer base". Critical to the transaction structure was Depop's ability to retain its brand, team and London headquarters. This autonomy was the key to its cultural relevance; its customer base was highly sensitive to the perceived effects of a corporation taking over, and any sign of Depop's transition into a nondescript marketplace would send users scrambling to rivals. The acquisition was successful for three years: Depop's user and GMV growth continued.

Then, in February 2026, Etsy agreed to sell the company to eBay for nearly $1.2bn in cash, representing a $400m paper loss on its five-year-old investment. In itself, this is a reflection of a shift in Etsy's assessment of where it could get the best returns, rather than a testament to failure at the business level of Depop. However, it's certainly a stark visual; one of the most heralded tech acquisitions of 2021 is being sold off in 2026 at a loss. But eBay has a different outlook; with 132m users, it is desperate to connect with Generation Z, who consider its platform antiquated and culturally bankrupt, whereas Depop's 35m, overwhelmingly under-26 user base, represent the exact market the established platform has struggled to penetrate. This purchase is not a play on Depop's revenue, but a buy-out of cultural clout that cannot be built with money. The brands that create a meaningful connection with an identity, as discussed in our analysis of brand building, become acquisition targets not for their technology, but for their culture-and Depop is the prime example in the secondhand clothing market.

What the User Experience on Depop Actually Looks Like in 2026

The user experience at Depop is divisive and unique: It is loved for those who it was built for, and can be infuriating for anyone else. The social feed means buying a specific item is based either on pure chance or extensive browsing, and the search function-though vastly improved over the last year-is considerably less functional than on more structured sites like eBay or Vinted for buyers who know precisely what they are looking for. Seller experience, on the other hand, is more consistent: It's fast, visually friendly, and aims to support the type of aesthetic curation that leads to seller follows over time. The most consistently raised issue by sellers is the flat 10% Depop fee on top of payment processor fees: at high volume, this difference is substantial, as Vinted currently offers free seller fees. Depop introduced Depop Payments in 2021, which replaced PayPal as the default payment processor; though the features for buyers were largely positive in terms of protection, the changeover process created some period of chaos and seller frustration.

The overall user experience conclusion is that: IF you're a young buyer or seller who wants a shopping experience centered around community and identity rather than transactions, then Depop is probably your number one option. But if efficiency, lower fees, or strong specific item search are more your priority, then it makes more sense to look at Vinted or eBay. It's not a matter of design flaw: it's the desired effect of designing for one particular group over a broader reach. As I argued in my article about the psychology of pricing, in this particular situation, one group does not necessarily equal the whole world.

From Depop to Delli: Starting From Zero Again

By the time the dust settled on the Etsy acquisition, Simon Beckerman was already at it again. He launched Delli in 2021, a marketplace for independent food makers and producers. The argument was no different from the reasoning for founding Depop. Commerce works at its best when it retains the personality of the maker. This was already happening for independent sellers of fashion via Depop. And this would happen for independent producers of food, the makers of small-batch hot sauce, craft oils, handmade treats, and craft drinks that failed to find any real dedicated platform for their products. Delli secured $10.4 million in funding from Balderton Capital and HV Capital – both investors in the early stages of Depop: the same investors and the same premise from the same founder. Delli's sales doubled in 2024 and grew ten times from the year prior.

Customers doubled basket size and returned twice as often as before. Simon resigned as CEO of Delli in 2025, and delegated operational leadership to Marie Petrovicka, Delli's co-founder and a former senior figure at Depop. This time, he described it as an intentional step, not in the way Depop ended up unfolding: "This time it's going to be different," Simon claimed. He'd spent a decade watching Depop evolve beyond him and had some insight into when to leave and why. It had just shifted categories from fashion to food. The question remained the same.

Where Depop Stands in 2026

eBay currently owns all of Depop since purchasing it in February 2026. The site now has 35,000,000 registered users. The majority are Gen Z. These users are distributed across the UK, US, Australia and Europe, with London remaining the company headquarters, and offices in Milan, New York and Los Angeles. Like its structure under Etsy, the platform remains run as the Depop brand with considerable operational autonomy. The business is being led through the transition by the chief executive Peter Semple. For eBay, the question will be, in fact, the same as it was for Etsy for five years: how do you utilize a culturally authentic Gen Z platform, without destroying the very culture that made it authentic? The answer to this will dictate whether Depop becomes a tool for eBay's renaissance or just another expensive lesson in the art of community acquisition. Simon Beckerman isn't part of answering this question-he is with Delli, building something different, from smaller numbers, with the same entrepreneurial drive; commerce functions best if it doesn't strip away the creator's identity. The question is still there, the answer is still being written.

What Simon Beckerman's Story Teaches Every Founder

Three lessons emerge from Simon's experience, and all three are far more true than the usual story of founders exiting. The first is that your best product insight will come from living in the problem, not studying it. Simon didn't do any market research into the peer-to-peer fashion resale market. He ran a magazine for creative people for 10 years and saw what those people wanted to buy and sell. Living within that will give him insight into the human need that any amount of market research would never have provided. The second is that losing something you build that you love is genuinely difficult to live through. Simon's breakdown and subsequent forced leave from the company aren't the appendices of the Depop story. They're the core of it for any founder who thinks a big exit is a guaranteed win for all people involved. Money came.

Health left. Identity was broken. Recovering meant starting again and with so much more knowledge about what building something costs. And the third, that what a great founder needs to do can't be switched off at Exit. Simon launched Delli while the Depop sale to Etsy was still in process. He couldn't wait. He didn't want to. A truly great founder will never run out of reasons to build something for a community because they understand its specific need for it, in a way no other service currently can. AI, as we discussed in an article about how it is changing remote teamwork and digital platforms, enables a brand to build products based on true human behavior rather than anticipated future market growth. Depop was successful because Simon understood the human need before he understood the technology to build it. Delli is making the same bet, just within another sphere.

Final Thought: The Magazine That Became a Billion-Dollar Marketplace

Simon Beckerman created a magazine in 1998 out of a love for the creative underground. He created Depop in 2011 because those same people wanted to buy and sell the items he put into the magazine. He sold Depop in 2021 for 1.6bn, became ill with the stress, and had a year out from commerce before the acquisition had even properly finished. He then launched Delli, a company which Etsy has now sold to eBay for $1.2 bn (a paper loss showing that the integration task, not his creation, was the issue). What Simon built is now in the hands of the biggest brick-and-mortar marketplace in the world that cannot build the community he has; a tribute to what Simon Beckerman built more honest than any other. His creation is so inherently valuable, two of the world's largest marketplaces now value it billions higher than he did when he sold. It seems he will not be on a beach watching this; he is working at Delli. Starting with small numbers again, asking the same question: 'how do you create commerce that supports and respects the person within'?.

FAQ: Depop Startup Story

Q: Who founded Depop?

Simon Beckerman founded Depop at H-FARM, an Italian technological incubator located in Italy close to Venice. He founded it in 2011 and previously owned PIG magazine (which he started in 1998) and a sunglasses company that had celebrity followers including Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Kanye West.

Q: How much did Etsy pay for Depop?

In June 2021, Etsy purchased Depop for $1.625 billion in cash - the highest acquisition Etsy had ever paid until this point.

Q: Did Etsy sell Depop?

Yes. In February 2026, Etsy agreed to sell Depop to eBay for nearly $1.2 billion in cash, which amounts to a paper loss of $400m on the initial acquisition value.

Q: Why did eBay buy Depop?

eBay bought Depop for its Gen Z customer base and its credibility on the streetwear culture and trends scene. Depop's 35m customers are predominantly less than 26 years old and a demographic that has been proving notoriously hard for eBay to attract organically. This acquisition is essentially buying cultural relevance rather than technology.

Q: What is Delli, Simon Beckerman's new company?

Delli, a market for independent food makers and producers, has been launched by Beckerman straight after the Depop sale to Etsy and has raised $10.4 million from Balderton Capital and HV Capital, two investors in Depop. Their sales quadrupled in 2024. Beckerman resigned as CEO in 2025 to be replaced by Marie Petrovicka, one of the co-founders, as Chief Executive Officer.

Q: How many users does Depop have in 2026?

Depop has 35m registered users, mostly less than 26 years old and distributed across Europe (most importantly, in the UK, USA and Australia).

Q: How does Depop compare with Vinted?

With over 80m users across 19 European countries, Vinted offers a zero-selling fee model and is more attractive to European sellers due to this factor. Depop's seller fee is 10%; the company has 35m users and operates mostly in the UK and USA. Vinted is a value-driven, European-focused proposition. Depop has more cultural authenticity and community features.