Modacruz

What did it do?

Modacruz, a Turkish start-up founded by Melis Güçtaş in 2014, was a marketplace where women bought and sold second-hand clothing, bags, shoes and accessories. It initially focused on luxury goods, then expanded into baby products with Bebecruz, and into cosmetics. Sellers could upload their items to the app and haggle with buyers.

Why did it shut down?

As Melis Güçtaş told Fast Company, marketplaces were very cash-hungry businesses, and the fall in the value of the Turkish lira made Turkey unattractive to foreign investors; the company could not secure new investment. The acquisition of Dolap by Trendyol gave its rival the ability to reach more than 20 million women overnight. According to Güçtaş, Modacruz was a company that could make a profit, but it was not on the scale venture capital funds expected. The company was sold in October 2022. Güçtaş said the new owners failed to keep the platform going and shut it down, and that she believed the main reason was failures in operations and team management.

The story

While working in the US, Melis Güçtaş saw how popular second-hand fashion marketplaces were, and in 2012 she decided to adapt the model for Turkey. To change perceptions in a market where second-hand culture was weak, she started with luxury goods. In 2014, at the age of 24, she founded Modacruz and raised its first investment that same year.

Growth was fast. According to Webrazzi, the Turkish tech news site, the platform gained 300,000 new female members in 2015 and raised USD 2.5 million in investment; in 2016 it passed 1 million users. In 2017 a USD 2 million round led by MEVP brought total investment to USD 5 million. According to the company's 2017 figures, 1.8 million women sold through Modacruz that year, and two items changed hands every minute. As Güçtaş later recalled, 2016 and 2017 were the golden years: 10 million women visited the site every month.

Then the wind turned. As the Turkish lira lost value, Turkey lost its appeal for foreign investors, and Modacruz could not secure new investment. The acquisition of rival Dolap by Trendyol suddenly gave the competitor the ability to reach millions of women. According to Güçtaş, the company could make a profit, but it was not as big as the funds expected. In October 2022, while things were still going well, the company was sold; Güçtaş believed the new owners would be able to make the necessary investment.

That expectation was not met. From October 2023, users on the Turkish complaints site Şikayetvar began writing that the site had closed and that they could not access the money in their accounts; by December people were reporting that they could not log in to the app and asking what would happen to their personal data. In an interview with Fast Company, Güçtaş said that those who bought the company failed to keep the business going and shut it down, and that she saw failures in operations and team management behind this.

The Modacruz story shows how even a start-up capable of making a profit can be forced to change hands when the financing climate shifts, and how quickly the post-sale period can slip out of the founder's control.

Lessons for founders

• A marketplace that makes a profit but does not grow fast enough can fall between the cracks in the venture capital world; choose your financing strategy to suit your model.
• A rival joining a big player can shift the balance of the market overnight; have your defence plan ready in advance.
• When selling the company, question the new owners' capacity to keep operations going too; users' money and data have been entrusted to you.

Sources

1. Why didn't Modacruz work? (Fast Company Türkiye, 2025-04)
2. ModaCruz closes a new USD 2 million investment round (Webrazzi, 2017-06-13)
3. Modacruz raises USD 2.5 million in investment (Webrazzi, 2015-12-21)
4. ModaCruz, sharing its 2017 figures, enabled 1.8 million women to make sales (Webrazzi, 2018-01-05)
5. Complaints: Modacruz has closed (Şikayetvar, 2023-10)

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