‘I feel so proud to be leading this fashion wave for the future’

Maria Raga, 40, is CEO of Depop, the fashion resale app that is skyrocketing in popularity.

For years, we have been swept along by fast fashion – buying cheap, mass-produced clothes and casting them aside without a thought when our wardrobes get too full. Now, of course, attitudes are changing with consumers and brands all realising it’s not sustainable.

I am delighted we are starting to see a shift, with more people seeking ethical methods for production. In fact, reports show that re-sold items will be as big as fast fashion in five years. That is where Depop comes in. Depop is a fashion marketplace app for buying and selling pre-loved items where users upload photos of clothes they’re selling and communicate with other users directly.

It tends to start off as a sideline to make money from unwanted garments, but people who have a flair for it turn it into their full-time business and source clothes to sell on. I feel so proud to be leading this fashion wave for the future.

I studied for a business degree, going on to do a fellowship in the US working for a couple of university professors before deciding to pursue a career in consulting. I did an MBA and moved to London with my husband, where I took a job with Groupon.

However, after three and a half years, the role changed as the company became much bigger. Keen to go back to a more entrepreneurial position, I went to the Web Summit Conference in Lisbon. One of the contacts I met was an investor in Depop, who got in touch afterwards to tell me they were hiring. I joined the team in 2014 and was promoted to CEO in 2016.

The thing I love most about my role is meeting sellers. Many of them are under 26. Traditionally, the fashion industry has been very hard to break into, meaning it can seem virtually impossible to build a business around it. However, if you have an eye for fashion, it is possible to become successful through Depop without financial backing or having a degree. One of our programmes at Depop is called Level Up, where we choose sellers we think have potential and work with them to ramp up their businesses in a quick and effective way.

Sisters Bo and Eve Brearley started in 2015 when Bo went to university and Eve sold the unwanted clothes she had left behind. The response was huge, and they soon realised they were on to something. Now, the sisters have set up Past Trash, which has 207k followers, and they source and buy clothes to sell. The more money our sellers make, the more the Depop business grows. The app is built like a social-media platform, so increasingly, we are seeing that our community is the one driving trends and being influenced by social circles rather than big fashion brands.

As a leader, I think it’s important to be visible. While a lot of my time is taken up with meetings or forward planning, I am determined to meet everyone on my team at Depop. Every week, I have open time to chat with the team. Becoming CEO is my proudest career achievement. Every day is exciting; I can’t wait to see what the future has in store.