Your resale program does not belong on the sustainability page. It belongs in the acquisition budget.
IKEA rolled out IKEA Preowned nationwide in Norway and Spain in January 2025, with stated ambitions across Europe. It is a peer to peer marketplace for its own used furniture. Read the intent plainly. That resale volume was already happening on eBay and local listings, and IKEA decided to own the transaction rather than watch it.
The play is a certified pre-owned storefront under your own brand. You grade it, photograph it, and warranty it. Then price it for the customer who cannot afford you yet: cheaper than the grey market, and cheaper than a competitor's new product. That first purchase is an introduction, not a discount.
The second move is graduation. Let them trade the entry piece back for credit against something at full price. The trade in is what converts a bargain hunter into a customer with an account, a size, and a purchase history you can market to.
Measure it like a channel, because that is what it is. Cost per acquired customer through resale against paid social. Rate of second purchase at full price. Trade in participation. If resale buyers never graduate, you built a discount channel and labeled it circularity.
The honest catch: cannibalization is real and genuinely hard to attribute. Some of those buyers would have paid full price. Operations are also harder than the deck suggests, because grading, cleaning, photography, storage, and returns all have to work on unique units with no restock behind them. The unit economics only close when intake is cheap, which is why the programs that survive are funded with trade in credit rather than cash.
Any brand with a waiting list already has a secondhand market. The only open question is whether you are in the room when it trades.
