Ikea’s New Secondhand Shop Looks a Lot Like Facebook Marketplace

I recently got rid of an Ikea cube storage unit I’d had for nearly a decade by participating in a time-honored New York tradition: I left it in my building lobby. By that evening, someone had taken it. Who among us hasn’t rescued a stray LACK end table or an Ikea stacking stool from a street corner at some point in our lives? For the slightly more enterprising, there’s always Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, where an Ikea item with a little more life in it might actually be worth it to someone to hop on the subway and lug it home. And so the cycle continues (at least until the piece falls apart).

In the secondhand-furniture ecosystem of New York, there’s the rarefied tier of antiques and vintage furniture, with designer pedigrees and period markings, and then there’s the one where most of us operate, looking for something workable, decent, and free of bedbugs. This is where used Ikea shows up, even if a lot of the stuff doesn’t seem built to last. But in terms of sheer volume, there’s probably a lot of it out there — after all, if Ikea sells a BILLY bookcase every five seconds, how many used ones are going to the curb? Now it looks like rather than letting this informal market churn along on other platforms, Ikea itself wants to be part of the mix, launching a new program called Ikea Preowned.

How it works, according to the website: “Just like shopping on Ikea.com, browse items, add them to your bag, and check out with no additional fee.” So far, so normal. Then comes the twist: “Agree on a place and time to pick up your preowned item and welcome it home.”

Huh? Seems like the customer is still doing most of the work.

Currently, Ikea Preowned is a pilot program that’s only live in Oslo and Madrid, but there are plans to roll it out globally by the end of the year. It’s almost certainly an improvement over the company’s Buy Back and Resell option, which the chain has offered since 2021. It requires customers to get a quote and bring their items into the store to be resold “as is.” (Right now, the Red Hook location has an as-is TUSSÖY king-size mattress topper listed for $169, down from $269, if you’re willing to take a gamble.)

As someone who has bought and given away multiple Ikea pieces, I’m not fundamentally opposed to the Preowned concept. Sustainability! Cheap furniture! But I have questions. Such as why? And why now?

Is this just Facebook Marketplace by another name? The only notable difference is that the platform makes it easier to fill in detailed product descriptions and add assembly guides (the annoying part about listing all the items yourself), and, for now, Ikea Preowned offers sellers the option of a gift card equal to the value of the item sold plus a 15 percent bonus (think of the free meatballs!), though they can also choose cash.

But why would someone switch, especially when Facebook Marketplace does the job and does it rather well? In a cursory search on the platform, I found dozens of Ikea bookcases, tables, and cabinets — most of them priced under $50, and many of them free so long as you’re willing to handle pickup from a fourth-floor walk-up (always from a fourth-floor walk-up). You also get the benefit of messaging sellers, asking for specific details about the condition of the piece, and assessing any damage before you hand over your money. It works, especially if you want to furnish your apartment for peanuts.

There are a couple of benefits I can think of for Ikea offhand: First, it can make some profit if people go shopping to cash in on their gift cards and add more items to their carts (you know you’ll never emerge from Ikea with a single item). According to Fast Company, the company may also introduce a “humble fee” for listings in the future.

According to Nellie Cohen, founder of circularity consulting firm Baleen, the fee is actually a good thing; Ikea should think about how its sustainability efforts can help its bottom line. “The real marker of circularity success,” she says, is that it adds a revenue stream that isn’t just dependent on making and selling new items, and it makes reuse a meaningful part of the business model. “Ideally, that slice of the pie gets bigger so they can start to bring down production.”

What I really think is that Ikea wants a sustainability gold star. The company has publicly shared plans to become a fully circular business by 2030. “We aim to use only renewable or recycled materials and to provide new solutions for our customers to prolong the life of products and materials,” its 2023 sustainability report states.

It’s definitely part of a broader trend, and one that Ikea would benefit from by joining early. Cohen, who built the popular Patagonia Worn Wear initiative for that brand’s secondhand items and has worked on similar programs for Doen and Levi’s, thinks mass brands like Ikea should get in on the secondhand market sooner rather than later. “We have to make sure that resale is not just for luxury or aspirational brands where there’s a big margin to play with,” she says.

Keeping more existing products in circulation is an admirable goal for Ikea. But to shift that responsibility back onto your consumers (by enticing them with a gift card) feels like a cop-out. And for this goal to hold water, Ikea needs to follow through in making its products last longer; as anyone who’s bought a BILLY bookcase knows, it will last through approximately zero to one apartment moves. Still, for Alisa Bovino, a New Jersey–based interior designer and Facebook Marketplace enthusiast, quality isn’t the primary concern. Instead, she wants to make sure the prices are competitive.

“The thing about Ikea is if I am looking for it secondhand, I am looking for it at a major discount,” Bovina tells me. “Otherwise, I will just go to the store and buy it because it’s already so cheap.”

She also doesn’t foresee die-hard Facebook Marketplace users abandoning their go-to platform for one tailored to a specific brand — especially once their algorithm has them figured out. “The thing about Marketplace is people are already on Facebook. It’s convenient,” Bovina says. “People just want to stick to one or two platforms.”

Cohen, on the other hand, sees potential in a company-owned and -operated platform. Not only is the brand standing by its products’ longevity, she says, but “usually, if you have a problem, they still have a process for handling a customer complaint,” she notes.

Aurora Stromberg, a marketing manager based in Portland, Maine, shares Cohen’s opinion that this is a good thing. “The resale market for Ikea furniture here is wild because the closest one is two hours away,” she says. “There’s actually a local couple whose business is taking Ikea orders, driving down, and purchasing for people for a fee.”

Although Stromberg is not on the hunt for anything Ikea at the moment (“My style has changed to a more old-fashioned, classic look”), she frequently uses Facebook Marketplace for these purchases and likes that the company wants to cut down on waste, and she sees the Preowned platform as a potential treasure trove for college students.

Ikea did not ask me, but one area I can potentially see Ikea Preowned having a lot of success is with its vintage items. There’s a real, unironic demand for vintage Ikea — from its Ettore Sottsass–inspired Memphis era to its vivid Scandi items. I’ve succumbed myself: During peak pandemic times, I bought two circa-1999 squiggle mirrors off of a now-defunct vintage dealer on Instagram.

The company is of course aware of the interest surrounding older pieces, reissuing several collections inspired by decades past. In 2023, it came out with the Nytillverkad line of products, inspired by items from the 1950s to the 1980s. But the name itself — Swedish for “newly manufactured” — chips away at the appeal. Plus, producing them again defeats the idea of recirculating what already exists.

Hear me out, Ikea: What about a dedicated pre-owned release (think J.Crew’s curated vintage collections)? Leave the endless stream of wobbly BILLY bookshelves to the street trade.