The Swedish company opened several stores selling preloved Ikea furniture and is now branching out into online secondhand marketplaces. Photograph: ReutersThe Swedish company opened several stores selling preloved Ikea furniture and is now branching out into online secondhand marketplaces. Photograph: ReutersIkea to take on eBay and Vinted with UK online secondhand site Platform set to launch later this year will enable loyalty card members to sell preloved Billy bookcases and Poäng chairs
Ikea is taking on eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Vinted with its own secondhand selling site in the UK.
The new platform, which will enable shoppers signed up to the Swedish company’s membership scheme to connect directly to one another to buy and sell pre-owned Ikea items locally, is due to launch in the next few months.
The move by the world’s biggest furniture retailer follows its trials of online secondhand marketplaces in Spain and Norway, and comes five years after it began buying and selling used Ikea items in some of its UK stores.
A spokesperson said: “Our goal is to make passing on beloved Ikea pieces as seamless as possible. We’re creating a trusted and vibrant space to make it quick and easy for our Ikea Family [loyalty scheme] members to trade directly with one another.”
Further details of the UK online site will be announced in the coming months, the company said. On the Spanish version selling is made easier with pre-filled product descriptions and price suggestions provided by Ikea. The retailer also offers sellers 15% extra on the price of the item sold if they agree to be paid in the form of an Ikea gift card.
Buyers in Spain – where a Poäng armchair is being sold for €56, about half the price of a new version – will have to pay a 5% “protection fee” from January next year to fund various costs related to the sale, in a similar system to that operated by Vinted.
Britons are increasingly embracing secondhand buying, pushing up sales at Vinted, which began as a clothes resale site but is now expanding into homewares and electronics, as well as at Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree and smaller, more upmarket sites such as Vinterior.
The US secondhand site eBay was recently bought by UK fashion seller Depop for $1.2bn. Preloved items now make up about a 10th of global fashion sales.
There is heavy competition for the preloved market as the trend moves into the mainstream, with the electrical goods retailers Currys and AO, for example, both selling preloved items. The latter further boosted its position after acquiring MusicMagpie, which sells refurbished electronics and secondhand video games, in 2024.
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That has added to pressure on charity retailers, such as British Heart Foundation, which has closed stores amid rising costs.
Ikea’s move into secondhand items is partly motivated by its pledge to become “climate positive” by 2030, including an aim to make all products from renewable, recyclable and recycled materials.
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