IKEA Preowned is a new second hand resale marketplace launched initially in Madrid and Oslo with plans to go global. Scheduled to run through to the end of the year, IKEA will assess learnings before expanding.
Sales of second hand IKEA products are immensely popular, both with buyers who are only too aware of the quality and with sellers keen to realise value from their now unneeded former purchases. This also fits with the company’s sustainability aims ensuring product don’t end up in landfill.
Our ambition at IKEA is to be circular and climate positive by 2030. An important part of achieving this goal is to create and offer products that can be remade, repaired, reused, resold or – as a last resort – recycled.
– IKEA
Yes you can sell on sites like eBay and Facebook Marketplace, but selling on IKEA Preowned has one massive advantage over and above the fact that everyone browsing their website definitely wants to buy something from IKEA. The big benefit is that listing couldn’t be easier.
So, you bought something in an IKEA store and no longer use it – every IKEA product has a unique name and that, along with a couple of photos to show the condition of your item, is all you need. IKEA will populate the entire listing based on their original product data with photos, title, measurements, descriptions, the original retail price, safety certificates and even a link to the original assembly instructions. They’ll pair that with your own photos of the product in your home and your done!
This is a remarkable way to run a marketplace and is only possible because IKEA have the product data on everything they’ve ever sold, so all sellers need to do is agree a price. IKEA say that on average secondhand items sell for about half the original price and that while you can set your own price, they will recommend a listing price based on your item’s condition and the original value.
The mechanics of IKEA Preowned is a cross between a marketplace and classified ad – you pay securely online on the IKEA website but then arrange with the seller a time and place to collect your item. For sellers, once you have a sale, you can get paid via bank transfer with no additional fee or choose an IKEA gift card and earn 15% more.
