Tingit is building an effortless repair market, starting with fashion

Got a beloved jacket with a torn sleeve or a pair of dirty shoes collecting dust at the bottom of your closet? Tingit, a startup from Lithuania, wants to help people restore their used clothes to their former glory with its newly launched repair marketplace.

The platform lets you use your phone to take a photo and upload a short video of your damaged items to get a quote for repair or restoration. Once you’re happy with the quote, you can pay through the Tingit app and then send your items to your chosen repair shop. Then it’s just a matter of waiting a few days or weeks. No more searching the back streets for specialist restorers and battling unfriendly repair shop schedules. The platform takes all the responsibility.

There’s just one catch for now: Tingit is only available in Lithuania, where the Vilnius startup debuted the service in February. However, the startup recently raised €500,000 in a pre-seed round to continue scaling the business, and CEO and co-founder Indrė Viltrakytė says she has her eye on expanding to other markets in Europe, likely toward the end of next year, when the company will look to raise a seed round.

Lithuania is home to reuse giant Vinted, so Lithuanian entrepreneurs have a pedigree in the space. Tingit is another pure play, but its goal is to connect people who own damaged/damaged fashion items with companies that can repair them.

“I grew up with the people who started Vinted. So watching the company go from a small, local store to this global, huge marketplace was really, really inspiring,” Viltrakytė told TechCrunch. “I hope we can achieve something similar in repair and find synergies with companies that are already working on sustainability.”

Viltrakytė came up with the idea for Tingit after years of working in the fashion industry and becoming frustrated with the industry’s issues with sustainability and overconsumption. This isn’t her first experience as a tech entrepreneur: she worked with Vinted co-founder Justas Janauskas for three years on a social media startup for teens that gained local popularity before being shut down. She has also dabbled in digital fashion and crypto/web3.

However, a platform that deals with physical repairs presents a different kind of challenge.

“I’m a problem solver. So when I think of something broken, I feel the need to fix it,” she said. “I’ve personally tried to fix a lot of things … and it’s always a huge headache, a hassle. I had a Dyson hair dryer and it took me six weeks to get it fixed for a variety of reasons. So I thought, you know, it’s 2023, there’s got to be a better way. And I looked around and there was no better way. So I just decided to play around with it and see what it could look like.”

Tingit currently connects users with repair and restoration services for clothing, shoes, and accessories. This includes specialist restoration work, such as refreshing sneakers and handbags, as well as more established services such as dry cleaning.

The decision to focus on fashion was largely due to the fact that the four co-founders already had industry experience to draw from, according to Viltrakytė. But if they can scale, she says there’s no reason to stop there. Repairing sports goods, toys and consumer electronics could be potential future paths, but anything seems possible, provided there’s demand and companies to provide the services.

European Union regulations are a driving force here, with right-to-repair requirements coming alongside expanded ecodesign rules that include plans for digital product passports. All of this is aimed at driving the transition to a circular economy so the bloc can meet its climate target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

To date, the Tingit marketplace has facilitated over 650 repairs and received over 2,500 repair requests from users. It partners with three local companies to provide services, according to Viltrakytė — one repairs clothes, another repairs shoes and handbags, and one provides dry cleaning services.

Upcycling and modding are also part of Tingit’s plan, as is offering recycling. However, Viltrakytė says that specific customizations (i.e. customization) don’t fit the platform’s hands-free approach, as measurements are more accurate when done in person.

Shoe repair accounts for 70% of orders on the platform, and its typical customer is the “busy mom” looking for more efficient ways to get her work done.

Viltrakytė admits she’s a bit surprised there aren’t more men using the platform, considering how many sneakerheads are male. But she suggests it could be partly due to a lack of awareness of the type of restaurant services that are available.

“I really want to introduce this concept of seasonal maintenance,” she said, pointing out that a new pair of shoes can last much longer if they’re taken care of properly. A twice-yearly repair service could be presented as a “new habit” worth investing in to make things last longer.

“My personal goal is to make repairs more of a habit for me—I always say it’s like brushing my teeth,” she added.

Prices for repair and renovation services depend on the complexity of the order – they start from 9 euros for securing shoes, through 25 euros or more for replacing a zipper in clothing, up to 139 euros or more for the renovation of a luxury handbag.

Viltrakytė noted that the startup has received some very expensive items to repair/refurbish, such as a €10,000 Hermes bag. And given the growing popularity of vintage clothing, fashion resale platforms, and second-hand markets, there are some interesting ways the repair market could intersect with this broader trend.

She added that the company already receives a lot of inquiries from people sending screenshots of items they have seen on second-hand marketplaces like Vinted, asking how much it would cost to repair.

“I think we can increase the value of used items because people have no idea what you can do with, specifically, fashion items,” she said. “If you take a really beat-up bag, if it’s a luxury bag, a well-made item, you can (restore) it not to like-new, but to like-new 85 percent.”

Tingit is starting out as a business-to-consumer (B2C) platform, but Viltrakytė believes there are opportunities to expand it to the B2B2C market.

“We can be official representatives of brands—that’s a proven business model,” she said. “We also plan API integrations for retailers or other marketplaces like Vinted or Vestiaire Collective.”

The startup is looking at how it can further leverage technology to make it even easier for people to repair their belongings. Viltrakytė said the company wants to work on using AI to automate damage analysis and quote generation, which are currently manual processes. This would mean that users wouldn’t even have to record and upload a video of their item, they could just show it to the camera.

AI can also be used to automate the pricing of clothing for resale and generate data on what circulates in a circular economy, which could be of interest to a variety of companies. Fashion authentication and product lifecycle tracking are other areas Tingit is interested in.

Tingit’s pre-seed funding round was led by Firstpick, a Lithuanian VC fund and accelerator for tech startups in the Baltics. It also included BADideas.fund (Latvia), PurposeTech (Czech Republic) and Heartfelt Capital (Germany).

Commenting in a statement, Jonė Vaitulevičiūtė, Managing Partner at Firstpick, said: “There is still a lack of knowledge when it comes to using technology to increase sustainability. That is why we are very excited to see how Tingit will educate consumers and help them create sustainable habits.”