Depop, the genre-defying peer-to-peer, social, vintage shopping app uses its small team to sprint its marketing efforts, reacting to the user-generated content that powers the site.

“It’s just like Instagram and eBay together,” says Yoann Pavy, head of digital marketing at the startup, “and the kids love it and come back every day.” (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: Scrum like the cool kids: Depop’s marketers think like a product team)

Like the content and the commerce that takes place on Depop, Pavy’s marketing department (which consists of four in-house staff members, plus an agency that helps with influencer and CRM work) has always existed in a socially-enabled space.

The small team helps here: its members have an ideas channel on Slack that allows them to post ideas, articles, GIFs, memes, and anything else to each other and create a central, informal repository. Of course, being a super small team or dividing into small units is the only way this can remain viable.

Greater flexibility also means becoming less precious about ideas like branding (not across all advertising, but in a social content situation). “I think we need to not overthink too much,” Pavy said. “That’s what’s going to unlock creativity within your content across all the channels.”

Founded in 2011 by Simon Beckerman, an Italian three-time entrepreneur, Depop arose from the observation that while peer-to-peer marketplaces existed successfully, they were missing two important future ingredients: they weren’t optimised for mobile and they weren’t talking to the cool kids that went to vintage shops and spent their money on fashion, not just clothes.

But Depop’s unique offer has been to create a commercial venue for a community. Having founded a magazine back in 1998, PIG (People in Groove), which spoke to this community, Beckerman created Depop to let its readers buy the items in the title.

Its backers see a bright future for the company. In June 2019, the London-based startup closed a series C round that brought in $62 million of funding (it has not disclosed its valuation). The company has a presence in 147 countries, but aside from its original UK market, its focus is growth in the US, where it has opened up a handful of physical spaces.

Sourced from WARC and The Challenger Project