Overview

Depop is a mobile-first social marketplace that transforms secondhand clothing into a dynamic, creative shopping experience. It combines the aesthetic of a social media feed with the functionality of e-commerce, enabling Gen Z users to discover, buy, and sell unique fashion directly from their phones.

Since its launch, Depop has grown into a cultural phenomenon, now with over 35 million users globally, driven by its community-focused design, commitment to sustainability, and seamless mobile experience.

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Our Role

As development partners, we shaped the app’s architecture and experience from the ground up, focusing on:

Social-style feeds that encourage discovery and engagement

Buyer-seller messaging for frictionless interaction

Integrated, secure in-app payments and seller onboarding

Scalable backend systems to manage millions of listings and user-generated content

Personalized recommendation engine powered by AI, optimizing discovery and matching

Core Challenges & Solutions

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Creating a social e-commerce feel

Challenge: Depop needed to feel as immersive and addictive as social media, but still functional for shopping.
Solution: We built a feed-centric interface where listings appear like posts, and social actions, favorites, comments, shares, trigger shopping behavior in a subtle, engaging way.

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Scaling for rapid growth and diverse content

Challenge: From niche to massive, Depop had to support exponential growth without lag or crashes.
Solution: Our architecture relied on modular services optimized for listing ingestion, media delivery, and user activity, scaling seamlessly from thousands to millions of daily interactions.

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Secure, convenient transactions

Challenge: Building trust in a resale environment meant ensuring payments were smooth and safe.
Solution: We integrated escrow-style payment flows with in-app card processing, automated dispute handling, and transparent seller payouts, all designed to protect both buyers and sellers.

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Delivering personalized discovery at scale

Challenge: With millions of items, surfacing what users would love most required intelligent curation.
Solution: We implemented recommendation systems that learn from user behavior, style, size, tags, to tailor each user’s Explore feed, increasing engagement and conversions.

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Outcomes & Value

Depop has become a generation-defining fashion platform, valued at over $1 billion and beloved for its authenticity and style. Key outcomes include:

• A robust, growing user base with deep engagement and retention
• A self-reinforcing ecosystem of creativity, sustainability, and commerce
• A reputation for nurturing micro-entrepreneurs, many users now run thriving businesses through Depop
• Continued innovation, including circular shopping features and AI-driven personalization

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Why This Project Matters

Depop illustrates how a mobile-first marketplace can transcend commerce to become community culture. It shows our capability to integrate advanced tech: AI, payments, scalable infrastructure, with emotionally resonant design.

Whether building for commerce, community, or creativity, the Depop experience demonstrates how to create features that feel alive, not just functional.

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