Tradono

Tradono was a Danish mobile-first marketplace focused on the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) secondhand market. The company was established in 2014 by a team of four co-founders: Mads Aaroe Mathiesen, Martin George Suhr Madsen, Nicklas Skov Pape, and Rasmus Hovore Andersen. The founders' collective experience spanned previous entrepreneurial ventures; Mathiesen was involved with the startup incubator Rainmaking, while Madsen and Pape had worked together on an activity tracker project.

The business operated through a mobile application designed to simplify the process of buying and selling pre-owned items, with a particular emphasis on fashion and lifestyle goods. The platform's core feature was its location-based, Instagram-style feed that showed users items for sale in their vicinity, aiming to reduce friction between buyers and sellers. Users could easily create listings for their used goods, contributing to a vision of promoting sustainable consumption by making reuse more convenient than buying new products.

Tradono's business model was centered on facilitating transactions between private users. While basic listings were free, revenue streams typical for such platforms include transaction fees, secure payment services, and integrated shipping options. The company experienced significant user growth after its launch and attracted investments from notable figures including Hummel-owner Christian Stadil and Tommy Ahlers.

In November 2017, Tradono merged with its larger domestic competitor, Trendsales. The merger was orchestrated by the Swiss media company Tamedia, which was the majority shareholder in Trendsales and had also been a minority investor in Tradono. Following the merger, Tradono's CEO, Mads Mathiesen, took the helm of the combined entity. For a period, both brands continued to operate independently. However, in May 2019, the two platforms were fully integrated under the Trendsales brand, leveraging Tradono's more modern technology with Trendsales' established brand recognition. This marked the end of Tradono as a standalone brand. The consolidated company was later acquired by the Lithuanian secondhand marketplace Vinted in March 2024.

Keywords: secondhand marketplace, mobile commerce, C2C platform, pre-loved fashion, circular economy, online flea market, Tradono, Trendsales, Mads Aaroe Mathiesen, peer-to-peer marketplace, sustainable consumption, app-based marketplace, used goods, Denmark, fashion resale, lifestyle products, classifieds app, startup merger, location-based shopping, social commerce