A YouTuber who specialises in hunting for charity shop bargains says the rise of Vinted has changed the game forever. Charlotte, who runs the Pink Peach Finds channel, told Wales Online that the app's convenience means good items rarely reach charity shops anymore.
In a new video, Charlotte explained: “For many, the rise of one platform has reshaped secondhand fashion. And according to thousands of comments under my videos, it's reshaping charity shops, too. The good stuff never gets donated anymore. Everyone just sells online until one name kept appearing again and again. Vinted.”
Vinted's growth and impact
Charlotte notes that the twin pressures of the Covid pandemic and the cost of living crisis fuelled Vinted's rise. In 2022, around 4.8 million people visited Vinted each month in the UK. By 2024, that number had jumped to 11.4 million – almost one in four adults online on Vinted every single month. Across Europe, the company was valued around £8 billion by 2026, and analysts estimate the platform hosts well over 200 million items at any given time. In 2025 alone, people bought and sold £9.4bn worth of second-hand goods on the platform – more than £25m every day.
“Suddenly, that bag of clothing in the spare room wasn't clutter anymore,” Charlotte says. “It was money. And money you could very easily unlock from your sofa in just a few minutes. That changed something much deeper for people. How people value their belongings. People began to mentally price their stuff. They know what it’s worth – because Vinted shows them.”
Changing charity shop experience
Charlotte has visited hundreds of charity shops across the UK over the past few years and has detected a significant change. “Somewhere along the way, something has started to feel very different,” she says. “The shops aren't empty. Far from it. Most are packed with items and stuff, but the quality of those products seems to be changing. Increasingly, rails are dominated by ultra-fast fashion and plastic tat. Meanwhile, the brands that you dream of finding about in a charity shop, Ralph Lauren, Barbour, quality vintage pieces, are much harder to find.”
She told Wales Online: “I was a regular charity shop shopper long before Covid. What's interesting is that I didn't notice an immediate change once the lockdowns ended. Looking back, I'd say the biggest shift has really been over the last three or four years. For me, that's because Vinted really came into its own at around the same time the cost of living crisis started to bite. I think the combination of those two things has had the biggest impact.”
