54 THECUTAUGUSTSEPTEMBER,
many more users are kids like Luella or Lindsay, so fluent in
social media, so comfortable in self-starting that they’ve blos-
somed into independent businesses. This is high school now.
“When I’m selling clothes, I really like how I do my own thing,”
says Lindsay. Then she pauses to
reconsider. “I love it and I hate it,
because it gives me a whole new
responsibility. I’m 13, turning 14. I
can’t get a job yet. It’s a lot to handle
sometimes.”
But for those who succeed, or
grow up to, the rewards can be sig-
nificant. Luella’s heroes include the
usual pop stars and YouTube demi-
lebrities but also Bella McFadden,
better known as Internet Girl, the
reigning queen of the platform. A
24-year-old Canadian thrifter with a mild goth vibe and an audi-
ence of 571,000, Bella dropped out of college to move to L.A.
and devote herself to being Internet Girl full time; she has since
become Depop’s No. 1 seller in the U.S. The company wrote a
letter that helped her secure an O-1 visa for individuals with
extraordinary ability. How extraordinary? “My income is in the
six figures,” she tells me.Depopgrew,unexpectedly,from an obscure Italian culture-
and-design magazine of the early aughts calledPig. Pig’s co-
founder, Simon Beckerman, had a vision that the community of
readers and makers who connected in and overPigmight be
interested in exchanging things as well as ideas, and in 2011 he
launched Depop for them to do so. It hummed along for a few
years until the arrival in 2014 of Maria Raga, a former Groupon
executive. “The moment when he founded it up until 2014 is a
completely different company,” says Raga, who credits Becker-
man with the platform’s original vision. “He definitely had the
idea to build a platform. What he probably didn’t anticipate was
that so many young people would take it for their thing.” Raga
began seeking investment more aggressively and in 2016
became CEO. Now the site has raised $105 million over several
funding rounds; its latest round, a $62 million series C, secured
this June, was led by General Atlantic, a private-equity firm that
had previously fluffed Snapchat when it was the hoped-for con-
duit to the large consumer bases of the future.
Depop’s growth has almost nothing to do with advertising;
it has gotten big mostly from user-to-user word of mouth. (Per
the terms of service, Depoppers must be 13 or older to sign up,
and all payments are transacted by PayPal, whose user agree-
ment stipulates 18-plus, but par-
ents seem willing to offer their own
PayPal up for their child’s fun and
profit.) It is in expansion mode, and
the company is not yet profitable,
says Raga. Only several months
ago, its New York employees moved
into their own floor of a co-working
space in Little Italy.
Even so, its trajectory is startling.Suddenly, Luella was a mogul in
training, sourcing her own merch,
taking her own photos, updating the
merchandise rack in her room, and
writing her own ad copy. “I have two
closets,” she says proudly. “One is my
personal closet. And the second one is my Depop closet.”
Strangers shop from her. Friends shop from her (they get a
discount). In six months of Depopping, she has made $1,500. A
lot of people have very closed minds about thrift shopping, Luella
thinks.It’s gross, it’s old, it’s used.But she sees every piece’s poten-
tial. Recently, she found a DKNY mini-backpack at Goodwill for
$3 and sold it on Depop for $70. “It’s really easy,” she says. “Liter-
ally anybody can do this.”
Depop is a marketplace and a community, but it is also, in
its way, a siren pitched at a frequency easiest for teens and the
recently teenage to hear. According to the company, 90 percent
of its over 15 million active users are under 26. The number of
items sold in the U.S. doubled last year, and there are now 5
million U.S. users. In the U.K., where Depop is headquartered,
it is estimated that one in three 15-to-24-year-olds is registered
on the platform. On the Gen-Z seismograph, its tremors reg-
ister like TikTok,Riverdale,and K-pop.
Outside, traditional retail is hurting: Mass-market and mid-
tier chains are closing locations or shuttering altogether. Barneys
has filed for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the resale market is expected
to double in the next five years—which would make it bigger than
fast fashion, according to some projections—as a new generation,
one with sustainability and individuality on the brain, hunts out
the perfect, must-have, no-one-else-has-got-it piece.
So Luella is professionalizing, and fast, investing in studio
lighting and art-directing shoots with her friends as models.
Out in the world, she’s her own advertisement. “People are
always like, ‘Where did you get that?’” she
says. “And I’m like, ‘It’s one of a kind,
sorry!’”
Depop is far from alone in the “market-
place space.” There is eBay (the megalith of
the field), sprawling Poshmark, craftier
Etsy, the streetwear-heavy Grailed. But
Depop feels like a secret just for Gen Z, and
they love it for that. In a poll of more than
100 teens conducted this summer byNew
York’s The Strategist, Depop was the No. 1
favorite resale platform.
Luella has lots of friends who Depop.
So does Lindsay Bernbach, a 13-year-old rising high-school
freshman in New York City, who says that within her close-
friend group of 15, all the girls use it (and even, she suspects, a
few of the boys). She knows people “at least two grades above
me” who do, she says. “Maybe even more.”
Like Instagram, Depop has lured celebrities and grown its
own, but the democratic flatness of its landscape ensures that
anyone can be an entrepreneur. Young, digitally savvy celebri-
ties are on the platform (Maisie Williams, Brooke Candy);
Instagram- and YouTube-famous influencers are too (Devon
Lee Carlson, Emma Chamberlain, Madison Beer). But many,FEATURES | Depop@luellaroche$ 7@hipsterhut$ 20@loserthrift
$ 150@emmarogue$ 36Instead of buying what the po