Ikea has said it will expand its online second-hand marketplace across Europe after trialling the platform in Oslo and Madrid.

In an interview with the Financial Times (FT), Ingka chief executive Jesper Brodin revealed that the DIY furniture retailer had already extended the test to Spain and Norway, with the trial running until August.

He added that in a couple of years Ikea wants to “scale it up to all markets in Europe."

The move comes after Brodin announced last August that the company would be launching Ikea Preowned as a trial, enabling people to purchase its products at an "even lower price" and contributing to the retailer's sustainability efforts.

To use the peer-to-peer platform, customers upload pictures of the item they are selling and a price at which they would like to sell their product. Ikea’s database then uses AI to add promotional images and measurements.

Ikea is not involved in the shipping of products or transactions.

The company has previously experimented with buying used furniture and reselling it in its stores but the new platform is more ambitious, with Bodin telling the FT last year that Ikea has a higher market share in the second-hand market than in new products.

The chief executive told the FT on Tuesday that the initial pilot saw around 200,000 customers visit the marketplace, with a “couple of thousand engaging”.

He said that while “he couldn’t say” how much the platform had made financially, the customer engagement has been “strong enough”.

“Sometimes you have to go with the gut,” he continued. “This is a market and a movement in society, and if we would stay outside we couldn’t take part in it”.

Bodin explained that Ikea is still identifying “what good looks like” regarding the climate and business impact.

“We started working with this quite many years ago,” he said. “But it’s only with Preowned that we found the value to compete with eBay or Depop.”

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