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IKEA is trialling its own second-hand online marketplace so that customers can sell to each other, rather than relying on buy-and-sell websites like eBay or Gumtree
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- Title
- Ikea Preowned: Furniture giant to pilot second-hand online market
- Word count
- 406 words
I have plenty of Ikea furniture and it's lasted years, some of the pieces could possibly outlast me...
But I've never once thought of buying a used piece of it. Trust that someone else put it together right? And that it won't get broken in shipping? That'd have to be a hell of a discount.
The in-store option? Okay, at least someone put hands on it before I took it in but I just don't get warm and fuzzies.
All told, I'd love to be proven wrong and it be a relatively risk free way of getting cheaper goods with less impact.
I'm mostly excited about the opportunity to get rid of the ikea furniture I already own in an easier way -- in the past I've just listed old furniture for free on ebay kleinanzeigen (basically German craigslist) to get someone to pick them up quickly, so this has the potential to replace that and speed the process along. How effective it is at that is another question.
In my younger years I bought/sold/obtained free/gave away free a lot of second hand items. I've never once been duped about the state or condition of these items: people are generally very good people. I would imagine that dishonest people just toss away things or returned them to the store or stole money in other ways maybe? Also pick ups are from their own homes mostly, so I imagine most folks don't want to show someone into their homes, have them point out "hey this is broken you're a dishonest liar" to their faces?
I also never understood how IKEA furniture could be put together wrong. The holes are all measured and pre drilled and every piece has diagrams? How badly could someone muck it up? Pieces are also far straighter than buying raw 2x4s at Home Depot, for example.
I suppose for the really egregiously poor builds where folks saw'd, drilled, duct taped their own "fixes", they already wouldn't put them up for sale out of shame.
Anyway, a lot of IKEA things don't need assembly, such as the IKEA lamp (video ad) that got its very own cozy ending. Stuffies, organizational racks, unused tea lights, kitchen stuff galore, step stools, bathroom scale... everything.
Aside from the mad savings, I also really liked not having these things go to the landfill. (I drew my line at soft items though.)
I used to think the same, but then I discovered through the horrors of the internet that there are apparently a whole lot of people that have no skill/talent in regards to practical things like assembling anything more complex than a 4 piece puzzle.
I've purchased knock off brand "GunPla" for example where the things just don't fit, 3D puzzles copied off a copied off copy that have cuts in wrong places, and dollar store grade Wayfarer things that were manufactured terrible. But IKEA is none of those things. A quick search revealed drawer knobs on the wrong side, chair legs flipped, using a short piece instead of long. But none of these are failures, just not yet finished middle states with easy ctrl-z. The Allen keys are so amazing for this reason: no need to wait for glue to dry to see results, and immediate redo are easy. Some of these internet pictures are obviously jokes, some didn't measure their mattress dimensions, some cheaped out on box springs, some pieces just plain broke with (ab)use. At a quick search I'm not seeing genuine bafflement or inability to follow basic instructions.
But maybe that's where my basic assumption fell through: some people are incapable of following instruction diagrams and just "go" at a set of pieces before giving up in exasperation ??? But how can reading instructions be more exasperating than doing without?
I'm afraid everyone working in either tech-support or the trades (think mechanics, electricians, plumbers, etc.) will gladly tell you lots of hilarious and/or infuriating stories about people being entirely incapable of following even the most basic instructions imaginable. (I'm both an electrician and an IT-guy, so I have stories for both sets of incompetence)
I’ve lost count how many pieces of furniture that I’ve assembled, as well as disassembled and cleanly reassembled for a move, both IKEA and others. I DIY most home things from routine repairs to laying a new laminate flooring with a lot of weird cutouts. IKEA stuff is generally well made for the price and simple to assemble, definitely not deserving of its obtuse and janky reputation. The most common issues are people over/under/unevenly tightening fasteners which can lead to unnecessary wear and early failure in ways not always obvious from a brief inspection you’d expect as a buyer.
That said, fuck the JOSTEIN shelving unit. Misalignments galore, poor metal threading, many awkward to reach screws once the panels on, and more. I eventually got it together, but it was a real fight, and it’s definitely not going to cleanly disassemble/reassemble in the future.
I didn't appreciate how well-made ikea furniture and its instructions were until I bought something flatpacked on amazon. The difference in quality of materials and construction was night and day.
Yeah, in general their quality is good, but I bought a bottom of the line IKEA couch some years ago that had badly misaligned holes for the fasteners. I had to use my own brackets to attach a couple of panels.
OTOH, it was dirt cheap and has lasted almost 25 years now with little sign of wear, and I have had guests tell me unprompted how nice it looks.
I grab furniture off the side of the road quite frequently. The latest score was a beautiful IKEA shoe organizer thing. It appeared to be falling apart, and it wasn't because of abuse or craftsmanship, it was because they never bothered to tighten half the connections, they didn't line up the back of the unit or bottom of drawers with the grooves so they were misshapen because they brute forced it instead.
A quick disassemble/reassemble and we had an essentially-new shoe organizer, without even the instructions at that point, just having a good familiarity with IKEA building patterns.
Oh no they threw it away out of shame! Well score for you hurray!
How does one teach or self learn that kind of basic mechanical competency? Because I'm sure I'm missing a LOT of those kinds of skills and I don't know how to learn them as an adult without another adult to learn off of.
Youtube and practice. Finding a course in basic electrical work is probably prudent if you want to be able to DIY switches and lights. Take random things apart then put them back together (take pictures).
Honestly the most amazing thing about Ikea is the engineering. There's just a lot of very subtle things they do like the placement and types of fasteners they use that make them very difficult to mess up.
That being said, when it comes to complex or unusual things, their zero-language instruction sheets can be incredibly obtuse. They have gotten better in recent years, but that might be bias from the types of things I buy and the fact that I'm not going to buy a ton of furniture in general.
I’m reminded of the time I put in a screw for a table while forgetting a washer or something that stops the screw from digging into the table… yeah.
Granted I have no idea what kind of mistakes these people do.
Simply forgetting to put a washer on a screw or bolt is an honest mistake that can happen to anyone at any point.
I'm talking about things like putting the board with only four holes in the place where the board with six holes is supposed to go, and then being surprised when things won't fit. Granted, I grew up building countless of Lego models as a child, both with and without instructions, so being able to read construction manuals correctly was a skill a acquired very early.
But they can just return them to Ikea, not sell for less than they paid for it?
The issue with that course of action is that it would require a level of practical wherewithal that would have either prevented the issue entirely or would have at least enabled them to solve it once it occurred.
But certain people have such a massive amount of learned helplessness that they simply can't conceive of these options.
I've bought and sold a few Ikea pieces locally (US based). I sold a wardrobe which was already wrapped in moving plastic from a move so it was ridged and easy to move to a new home. I sold a desk, I think to probably a college student, so it was presumably an affordable buy for a college dorm/apartment. I bought an IKEA desk mostly for the low cost and I knew what to expect. I sold stuff for about half of what I bought it for even though it was in good shape because I wanted to get it moved AND it's not like it cost me too much to begin with. I think the desk I bought was about half to three quarter priced which felt fair.
Unless it's an obviously damaged piece of furniture, I think buying and selling used is great. As long as I can inspect the furniture in person it's usually a good deal. I feel like a lot of the furniture is designed to be assembled, but not disassembled (unless it's just screws holding the legs together), so that's a point I can potentially see being an issue if someone has tried to take it apart and broke it. Which honestly that would be a big plus in my mind if Ikea began designing more of the furniture to be easily disassembled/assembled without needing the instructions on hand. Not likely to happen, but one can dream.
Their solid wood collection survive being disassembled and reassembled quite well, actually. Metal + glass pieces like display cases too
Yeah, with the whole assembling yourself, I dont know about trying to set up a whole business of buying second hand. Once or twice at a big markdown- that makes sense. I just don't see this as a sustainable business option. But maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm wondering how much of it is things people bought that were left unassembled. But if it is a large enough second hand market on other sites maybe it makes sense
Edit because autocorrect hates me more every day, or my ADHD does, or both.
The main thing I was trying to figure out is, what are they bringing to the table that others aren't? Why use Ikea's site instead of other second hand marketplaces?
It seems to me that they're only doing used ikea furniture and they're going to partially populate the listing with details of the item for the seller, and presumably they're going to offer these options either alongside their new options as a cheaper option for people who want that or just maintain it as a sepate shop.
I suppose I can see some value in that, people going to the IKEA site to look for furniture could be enticed to buy second hand items if the price is right and if the item doesn't look too worn or damaged. It could be more convenient than other second hand marketplaces where the sellers don't bother to list dimensions etc. and gives an anchor price of sorts for what the item sells for new.
It's still used furniture so it's probably a crapshoot in that regard, especially shipping it as we know shippers don't have a real careful approach to handling items.
Main advantages that I can think of:
Searchability: say I have a Billy book case and I want another one. I can search specifically for IKEA names pieces and wouldn't have to slog through mountains of SEO garbage that uses IKEA keywords only to show me YXUXYYTZ brand knock offs. This might be especially important if I wanted a specific unified look to a room to compliment existing IKEA pieces.
If the site also offers links to their old catalog with dimensions and instruction diagrams, as well as recently sold prices are reference
Alerts. If nobody has that exact piece right now hopefully it'll ping me when someone does.
Missing/damaged pieces. I would love to be able to get a new drawer instead of having to replace a whole wardrobe for example. Being able to find more of the same cutlery pieces is also amazing. These odds and ends don't seem worthwhile to put up in regular sites
Quality assurance. There's some known quality that you have felt up at the store, rather than random dropship garbage. The IKEA branded site has some quality implied as well
In addition to this, it also acts as marketing for their sustainability practices, since reuse is a big part of reducing consumption. That's actually one of the things that I like most about Ikea; when they talk about sustainability, you can see for yourself that they really mean what they say. They are big on making their products repairable, offering replacement parts for them, and they even offer plant-based options in their food options.
My understanding is that all the sales are local. Buyers will be collecting the furniture from sellers.
Source: Dezeen
That makes more sense, the BBC article wasn't very clear about it, especially when it compared it to Ebay which I associate Ebay more strongly with online sales rather than local sales. I don't know if Ebay does local sales or not.
It does limit the possibility of selling an item more with geographical restrictions, which might make it less useful since Ikea may not be as popular in some areas as others.
I've not bought any Ikea furniture myself, but I was assuming possibly people might disassemble the furniture and then ship it, and the buyer would then reassemble it (which from my understanding is something associated with the Ikea brand, assembling the furniture), and that might make it more feasible to ship.
A surprising amount can't be disassembled after building it.