This Senegalese startup is giving old wardrobes a second life

Maket, a secondhand fashion platform based in Dakar, Senegal, has sold more than 700 items across 600 orders since its January 2025 launch, with 42% of buyers returning for a second purchase, according to TechCabal. The company was founded by Fatou Dieng, who left a 13-year banking career to run it full-time in 2024.

Maket takes a 25% commission on each sale; sellers keep 75% and hand off the rest of the process entirely. The company handles pickup, professional cleaning, disinfection, photography, listing, payment processing, and last-mile delivery. For logistics, Maket works with partners Logidoo and Afrety rather than building its own fleet, and uses DEM for Dakar deliveries — a deliberate choice, per TechCabal, made by Dieng after managing international shipments herself at her prior business. A physical showroom supplements the digital platform, which Dieng says she underestimated as a trust-building tool.

Before Maket, Dieng ran Your Personal Shopper (YPS), a personal-shopping service she launched in October 2017 while still employed full-time at a bank, helping clients source items in Paris that were hard to find in Senegal. Some YPS clients spent more than 1,000 euros per order. The business grew by word of mouth but hit a structural ceiling: it depended entirely on Dieng personally, and once a shopper and client built a relationship, they could bypass YPS altogether. The pivot toward Maket crystallized during HEC Challenge+, an entrepreneurship program in Dakar, where program director Étienne Krieger pushed Dieng to ask what her business would look like without her in the room — and pointed out that some YPS clients were already informally asking her to help resell clothes they no longer wore.

One design decision set Maket apart from a direct adaptation of European models like Vinted: seller anonymity. When Maket surveyed more than 200 people, over 80% cited privacy or anonymity as a concern, per TechCabal. Two concerns came up repeatedly — social stigma around being seen selling clothes, and the fear of maraboutage, a spiritual harm some believe can be directed at a person through their belongings. Public figures, who tend to own the most sought-after wardrobes, expressed the concern most strongly. Maket responded by keeping buyers and sellers entirely separate: neither party ever interacts with the other.

Maket is operating in a market shaped by large-scale secondhand clothing imports from the Global North. A 2024 Greenpeace Africa report cited by TechCabal found that Accra's Kantamanto market receives roughly 1,500 tonnes of secondhand clothes per week, with nearly half ending up as waste within days. Maket positions itself against that flow — treating the existing Senegalese wardrobe as an asset rather than a source of discards.

Dieng's next targets are Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, and Benin, markets she says Maket already has some familiarity with through her YPS-era client base. Before expanding, she told TechCabal she wants to standardize seller onboarding, make payment reconciliation reliable, and reduce operational dependence on her own involvement in individual exceptions. She was also recently named an eTrade for Women Advocate under a joint UN and World Trade Organization program.