Only 5% of resellable items make it to the rapidly growing secondhand market. This means an estimated $2 trillion worth of clothing remains unused (and unlisted) in wardrobes worldwide. Finnish startup Bought, a potential rival to established secondhand marketplaces like Vinted, is solving this challenge by unlocking the resale value hidden in consumers’ emails.
The company has raised $1.5 million in funding. Lifeline Ventures, known for backing companies like Wolt, Swappie, and Oura, led the most significant pre-seed round for a Finnish startup founded by a team under 30.
The round also includes investments from other key figures in Finland’s consumer business sector, such as Marianne Vikkula (Wolt COO & Marimekko board member), Sami Marttinen (Swappie founder & CEO), Mikko Silventola (Bolt early investor), Pii Ketvel (Wolt first investor), as well as sustainability-focused angel investors Annika Sjöberg and Anniina Sulku
As part of its launch strategy, Bought made an early-stage acquisition. On March 13, the company signed a deal to acquire Zadaa, a pioneering mobile secondhand marketplace in the Nordics.
Zadaa raised a total of $11 million in funding and operates in Finland, Denmark, and Germany. Kymäläinen and Zadaa’s CEO and founder, Iiro Kormi, first met in November 2024 to discuss secondhand innovations but soon realised they had a shared vision. With the acquisition, Zadaa has been integrated into the Bought app, allowing users to transfer their active listings and profiles seamlessly with just a few clicks.
Erik Kymäläinen, co-founder and CEO of Bought, said: “Zadaa has had a fantastic journey. A decade ago, it was the first Nordic marketplace app for used fashion, introducing half a million Finns to secondhand and redefining peer-to-peer commerce. We quickly saw that Bought’s innovation and energy were what Zadaa and its 500,000-user community needed. That’s how the idea of continuing Zadaa’s story within Bought came to life.
Bought was born from the founders’ own frustration
Bought’s founders have long been passionate secondhand consumers, but selling has always felt daunting. Bought co-founders Olli Warro and Anna Müller are both second-time founders. Warro co-founded the health-tech startup Medified, which was acquired by the Swedish company Mindler in 2022. Müller was one of the founders of the goFika app. Co-founder and CEO Erik Kymäläinen led Wave Ventures between 2022 and 2024, raising Europe’s largest student-led VC fund.
“For the past five years, I have almost exclusively bought secondhand. Yet, no matter the platform, selling has always felt overwhelmingly difficult for me. Eventually, I thought, this can’t just be me. There must be a better way. That frustration led to Bought,” said Erik Kymäläinen, CEO and co-founder of Bought.
While secondhand marketplaces like Vinted (valued at $5 billion) have established dominance in Europe with over 65 million users, Finnish startup Bought takes a fundamentally different approach by focusing on the supply-side problem. The recommerce market is experiencing explosive growth, with the global secondhand apparel market expected to reach $350 billion by 2027, growing three times faster than the overall apparel market.
The problem is widespread. Only about 5% of resellable fashion items make it onto current resale platforms. This means an estimated $2 trillion worth of clothing remains unused (and unlisted) in wardrobes worldwide.
“Even though secondhand demand is exploding, active selling is still done by a relatively small user base. The platform that figures out how to get everyday people selling will solve the $2 trillion industry challenge,” Kymäläinen predicted.
AI converts emails into ready-to-sell listings
Bought’s solution to resale challenges is email. The app’s AI-driven innovation automatically creates sales listings from users’ online shopping history. All the user needs to do is enter their email address into the app.
“Bought evolved from the realization that everything we buy online leaves a digital trace in our emails — containing all the necessary details for creating a sales listing,” Kymäläinen explained.
This marks a shift from the current norm. “Traditionally, creating a sales listing is a hassle. You have to dig out the item from your closet, arrange it neatly, photograph it, write a description, check the labels, recall its age, and set a price. Bought’s technology does all of this for you. You can list your entire purchase history without getting off your couch,” Kymäläinen elaborated.
Beyond email automation, Bought also offers AI-assisted manual listing, where simply taking a photo of the item is enough. “Our slogan is ‘Secondhand Automated,’ meaning even manual listing is automated with Bought,” Kymäläinen added.
In terms of environmental impact, each garment brought back into circulation through recommerce saves an average of 5.7 kg of CO2 emissions compared to buying new. If Bought can help unlock even 10% of that $2 trillion in unused clothing, it could potentially prevent millions of tons of CO2 emissions.
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