Fashionphile, the California-based resale platform that specialises in luxury handbags and jewellery, has launched in the UK via the acquisition of Luxe Collective, it announced Monday.
Luxe Collective, founded in 2018 by brothers Ben and Joe Gallagher, operated a similar business model to Fashionphile, buying pre-owned handbags from customers and reselling them on its website. While smaller compared to its competitors in the UK resale market such as Vinted, Depop and Vestiaire Collective, Luxe Collective amassed an outsized social media following before shuttering last year as the result of a high-value theft, in which £500,000 worth of its inventory was stolen. Before closing, the platform generated about $10 million in annual sales, according to Ben Gallagher.
In September, Fashionphile purchased Luxe Collective’s intellectual property, including its customer database and social media accounts, the latter being a particularly valuable asset. On TikTok, Luxe Collective has over 1.6 million followers compared to Vestiaire Collective’s 133,000. The Gallaghers will join the company. Luxe Collective will now be rebranded as Fashionphile and as Fashionphile Collective on its social media channels.
As part of its UK launch, Fashionphile will also open a London flagship location, most likely in 2026, according to co-founder and chief executive Ben Hemminger. This space will serve as an office, warehouse, authentication space, showroom to customers and event space and photo studio.
Fashionphile’s UK debut is not its first entry into Europe. It counts German department store Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, cruise ships and others among its various wholesale partners. But the launch of a Fashionphile UK website and storefront will mark its first customer-facing presence in the region, putting it more directly in competition with the likes of Vinted, Depop and Vestiaire Collective.
Despite the saturation of resellers in the European market, Fashionphile will have the advantage of being one of the only buy-out services, where customers can get cash immediately for selling their products, according to Fashionphile CEO Ben Hemminger.
“The way we do it is not what anyone else is doing, with the buyout model, our physical locations, and specialty focus on luxury accessories,” said Hemminger.
Founded in 1999 by Sarah Davis first as an eBay account, Fashionphile has taken a slower approach to growth compared to its competitors in the space, with a focus on profitability. Its first outside investor, Neiman Marcus, came in 2019, 20 years into business. The following year, private equity firm NewSpring Growth led a $38.5 million Series B funding round, but Davis and Hemminger remain majority owners.
“It was only a few years ago when we saw the maturity of the market where we realised that having only one channel of e-commerce wasn’t enough to keep growing where we wanted to grow, so that’s where retail and wholesale came into play,” said Hemminger.
Fashionphile announced earlier this year that it plans to have a footprint of 14 physical locations across the US by the end of 2025. It has also started selling wholesale to other retailers including Saks Off Fifth and duty-free shops.
In 2023, Fashionphile acquired Canadian B2B resale company LXRandCo, Inc., which sold secondhand merchandise to department stores such as Lord & Taylor and Century21.
Other US-based resellers, such as The RealReal and Poshmark, have yet to make a push overseas, though eBay has a significant presence in Europe.
“We’ve set out to be a global brand for ultra-luxury re-commerce,” said Hemminger. “And we need to start putting a foothold in order to accomplish that. This is our first step.”
