Ikea has launched a peer-to-peer marketplace for customers to sell their unwanted furniture to each other amid the rise in demand for secondhand goods.
The platform, Ikea Preowned, will first be tested in Madrid and Oslo until the end of the year with the aim of rolling it out globally, The Financial Times reported.
Jesper Brodin, chief executive of Ingka, the main operator of Ikea stores, told the publication: “We are in a place in Ikea where we can do more advanced and cool stuff. There is an incredible confidence in the company evolving on digital.”
It forms part of Ikea’s recent transformation away from being an out-of-town retailer to offering online, city centre stores, more collection points and services such as assembly.
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Ikea currently has a small offering in stores where it buys used furniture from customers and resells it. However, the new platform will allow customers to sell directly to each other.
Customers will enter their product and their own pictures with a selling price while Ikea’s own artificial intelligence-enabled database brings in its own promotional images and measurements.
The buyer collects the furniture directly from the seller, who has the option of receiving money or a voucher from Ikea with a 15% bonus.
Listings are free but Brodin said Ikea could eventually charge “a humble fee”.
He added: “We’re going to verify the full scope including the economics. If a lot of people use the offer to get a discount with Ikea — it’s a good way to reconnect with customers. I am very curious. I think it makes business sense.”
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