The Flea Market App

Shintaro Yamada sold his previous company, travelled the world, and on returning in 2013 built Mercari — the wave of smartphones he had seen in emerging countries was, he says, the motive. If Yahoo Auctions (1999) was «auctions on a PC», Mercari was «a fixed-price listing on your phone, right now»: from photo to price in under a minute, and from 2015 an anonymous delivery service that removed «strangers are frightening» from person-to-person trade. Over twenty-two million people use it monthly. The interesting part is the backwash into first-hand retail: one survey found 65 per cent of people buying new clothes choose them with future resale in mind. Behind the price tag, the resale price has become visible. The US expansion has struggled, and the founder has stepped in himself — too early for a success story, we write honestly. Worldwide, Alibaba's Xianyu counts over half a billion users and Lithuania's Vinted over a hundred million. The sleeping stock of what people already own is becoming the biggest shelf in the shop.