Page 54 - HW October 2020 NEW

global eyes
IKEA tests pre-owned market on home turf
THE WORLD’S FIRST official second-hand IKEA store will see the light of day on the build-up to Christmas 2020.
The store will be sited in ReTuna, a local- scale shopping centre roughly an hour’s drive from Sweden’s capital, Stockholm, which claims to be a world-first, being solely dedicated to retailers selling reused, organic or sustainably produced products.
Not a seconds store or a factory outlet, instead visitors to the new IKEA store at ReTuna will be able to buy IKEA products that have been repaired and “restored to their former glory”, and “at a fraction of the original price”.
Jonas Carlehed, Sustainability Manager of IKEA Retail Sweden says: “At IKEA we don’t want to merely be a part of the sustainability movement – we want to lead it.
“If we want to reach our sustainability goals, we have to challenge ourselves and test our ideas.
“The climate crisis cannot be solved in theory, it has to be solved in practice.”
Reflecting Sweden’s reputation for being amongst the most recycling orientated countries in Europe, IKEA’s lofty sustainability goals are legend in retailing.
For example, in the next 10 years IKEA states that all of its products will be “produced using only renewable or recycled material, designed to be reused, resold or recycled.”
Its latest initiative is a little more homely in scale.
ReTuna opened in 2015, right next door to the local recycling centre, and calls itself “the world’s first recycling mall”.
Images of the unexpectedly posh looking ReTuna Mall pre-owned retail centre and back of house, with Manager Sofia Bystedt and IKEA’s Jonas Carlehed (photo top left).
According to Sofia Bystedt, the shopping centre’s Manager, the customer experience at ReTuna is more than about shopping with an ecological conscience.
The idea is that visitors bring unwanted domestic items to a drive-in recycling depot run by a local social enterprise whose workers then sort through the items and decide what can be distributed to stores within the mall.
Those same shoppers can then browse through the stores,
It’s about “shopping in a climate- smart way. Old items are given new life through repair and upcycling. Everything sold is recycled or reused or has been organically or sustainably produced.”
A partnership between the municipal government, non-profits and local businesses, ReTuna melds recycling depot, shopping experience and education, with events and workshops where customers can learn how to repair household items, theme days, and more, all with a focus on sustainability.
ReTuna currently comprises a
restaurant and conference facilities, on top of 15 stores that cover categories from sustainable and/or renewed and refurbished home decor and furniture, to computers and electronics, housewares, sporting goods and green goods.
IKEA’s partnering with ReTuna isn’t just about recycling products, says the iconic Swedish company.
“Working with ReTuna gives us
the possibility to better understand why certain IKEA products turn into waste, what condition they are in when discarded, how people reason when deciding to throw away our products, and if there’s an interest in buying the products if we manage to save them.”
Whilst all this might be seen as a bit of a fringe exercise – in 2018, ReTuna Återbruksgalleria raked in just SEK 11.7 million or roughly NZ$2 million in sales of recycled products – the interest of a major like IKEA does indicate that this sort of practical circular approach may just be the start of something bigger.
www.retuna.se/english/
52 NZHJ | OCTOBER 2020
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