ALBAWABA - Swedish furniture maker Ikea announced on Monday that it has opened an online marketplace for its second-hand furniture, allowing users to interact with one another in order to purchase and sell secondhand items that were manufactured by Ikea.
The listings on Ikea Preowned are quite similar to what you could find on the main website of Ikea. Users are able to offer their furniture on the platform, along with images and a price. It helps the buyers and sellers to reach a consensus on a location and time for the meeting in order to hand over the furnishings.
Tolga Oncu, the head of retail at Ingka Group, the group's biggest franchisee, said in an email to Bloomberg that the marketplace, known as Ikea Preowned, would operate only until December and be exclusively limited to the cities of Oslo, Norway, and Madrid, Spain.
According to the Ikea Preowned website, sellers at the moment have two choices for payment: an Ikea gift card with a 15% surcharge added to the asking price of the furniture, or a bank transfer with no additional costs. Products that are damaged or not in the anticipated condition cannot be returned, however a reimbursement may be sought.
“We are testing a digital second-hand marketplace in Oslo and Madrid to help customers connect, buy, and sell preowned Ikea items between each other,” Oncu stated to AFP, adding that “After December we will evaluate and decide on the next steps.”
Ikea's most recent attempt to address worries about waste and overconsumption stemming from its cost-effective flat-pack model expands on earlier programs like furniture recycling, repair, and rental in the direction of a 2030 circular business goal. However, rather than purchasing used furniture to refinish and resell, Ikea now permits users to sell directly to one another on the platform.
