Depop

A London-headquartered peer-to-peer marketplace where people buy, sell and discover second-hand and vintage fashion.

About Depop

Depop is a peer-to-peer fashion marketplace. Anyone can open a shop on the app, list clothes they no longer wear, and sell them to other people, and anyone can browse for second-hand, vintage and unique pieces. It is popular with young shoppers who like to find a style that is individual rather than mass-produced, and it works like a mix of a shopping app and a social feed.

Depop describes itself as "a peer-to-peer circular fashion marketplace where anyone can buy, sell and discover secondhand fashion." Its stated mission is to "make fashion circular by making secondhand as exciting and rewarding as buying new." In plain terms, it wants clothes to be worn many times by many people instead of being thrown away after a few wears, and it wants selling and buying used items to feel fun, not like a chore.

Depop was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in London, at 20 Farringdon Road in the EC1M postcode. It also has an office in New York. It became part of the online marketplace group Etsy in 2021 but says it still operates as a standalone company with its own brand and team. The company reports more than 56 million registered users, and listings on London job boards show that its UK staff work in areas including engineering, machine learning, payments, finance operations, product, data and CRM.

In its own recruitment material, Depop says it has more than 500 people and wants to build "an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome", with diverse perspectives and equal opportunity. It describes a culture of continuous improvement, with things like blameless post-mortems (looking at what went wrong without blaming individuals) and architecture reviews in its technical teams. It uses a hybrid working model it calls MyMode, with flexible, office-based and remote options depending on the role. The Farringdon office is described as dog-friendly and has its own Depop shop and a packing station where staff can send parcels for free. These are the company's own descriptions, so it is worth asking about them if you ever speak to the team.

For anyone interested in working in this part of retail, Depop shows how many different jobs sit behind a shopping app: software and machine learning engineers who improve search and recommendations, product managers and designers, data scientists, payments and finance specialists, and community and marketing teams. We did not find a detailed public list of its teams or the exact balance of roles in London, so check Depop's own careers pages for the current picture.

What they do

• {'desc': 'Buy and sell pre-loved and vintage fashion from other people.', 'title': 'Second-hand marketplace'}
• {'desc': 'Anyone can open a shop and list items to sell.', 'title': 'Seller shops'}
• {'desc': 'A feed and search system to help shoppers find individual pieces.', 'title': 'Discovery and search'}

Key facts

• Founded 2011; headquartered at 20 Farringdon Road, London
• Part of Etsy since 2021 but run as a standalone company (own site)
• Over 500 people; office in New York as well as London (own recruitment page)
• More than 56 million registered users (own claim)

Website: www.depop.com