88. Open for Vintage

Founders: Colin Saunders, Sarah Byrne and James Loftus
Founded: July 2015 (launched May 2016)
Website: www.openforvintage.com

Vintage fashion trends have seen a resurgence over recent years, with styles from the 1920’s through to the 1990’s making a big comeback. Despite this fashion revival, vintage enthusiast Sarah Byrne felt there was a sincere lack of options to buy and sell luxury vintage clothing online.

Having teamed up with online retail specialist Colin Saunders and sales expert James Loftus, Byrne created a solution…Open for Vintage: a global e-commerce marketplace which enables boutique retailers to sell luxury vintage clothing, jewellery and watches to customers everywhere.

Solving many of the problems faced by buyers and sellers in the space, Open for Vintage gives customers to hundreds of pieces from numerous boutiques all in one place, while vintage boutiques which have previously struggled to sell online now have an outlet.

Furthermore, Open for Vintage offers a photography service that promises to turn unprofessional, smartphone photographs into commercially-usable product images within 24 hours; saving boutiques the time and expense of taking their pieces to a studio.

It’s hardly a surprise, then, that within six months of launch The Guardian called the platform the “number one vintage website”.

Now listing 60 boutiques across 10 markets, the start-up sells to customers from Australia to Finland, to the USA and UAE – including Kim Kardashian, who famously wore a skirt purchased through the site to dinner with Kanye West.

The next 12 months promises exciting things for Open for Vintage as it will be launching a redesigned website, growing its team and creating partnerships with a number of new boutiques. Byrne, who has travelled through Asia, plans to use the experience she gained there to market to customers in China.

With the start-up’s unique offering and star-studded success so far, we can see it becoming a huge name in the vintage scene.