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IKEA launches secondhand marketplace to compete with eBay

Furniture retailer challenges digital classified ads ‘oligopoly’ with peer-to-peer sales platform for its products

The new marketplace is part of a transformation at Ikea over the past few years as it moves from being an out-of-town retailer where customers have to pick up and build their own furniture to a business offering online sales, city-centre stores and services such as assembly. Customers enter their product, their own pictures and a selling price while Ikea’s own artificial intelligence-enabled database brings in its own promotional images and measurements. “Very often there is a monopoly or oligopoly on platforms that operate,” said Brodin, talking about eBay or digital classified ad services such as Gumtree in the UK and Finn in Norway.

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