Thomas Plantenga

Under chief executive Thomas Plantenga’s leadership, Vinted has gone from financial distress to a frontrunner in the crowded online resale space. Crowned Lithuania’s first tech unicorn in 2019, the app founded eleven years earlier by Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas, swung into profit in 2023.  By 2024, Vinted counted key fashion markets like France, the UK and Italy among its top markets, while operating in a total of 20 countries including the US. Through these and other achievements, Plantenga proved the viability of the second-hand fashion e-commerce model at scale.

Plantenga, who was born and raised in the Netherlands, joined Vinted in 2016 after being hired as a turnaround consultant. Eventually he rose from his temporary post to chief strategy officer to co-CEO and finally group CEO in 2017, while taking the Vilnius-based company from the precarity of running on mere months of cash flow to a €3.5 billion ($3.8 billion) valuation in 2021. Among other things, he did this by acquiring competitors like Germany-based Rebelle and Spain-based Chicfy; centralising operations; introducing new features; and expanding to new markets. In the years prior to joining Vinted, Plantenga worked with a range of firms including Bookaboat, OLX, Sellit/Wallapop and FJ Labs, living in several countries including Brazil, Argentina, Kenya, Spain and the US. Plantenga has a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering and biomedical engineering, and a master’s degree from Eindhoven University of Technology.