Ikea eyes furniture rental service
Ikea will soon roll out a subscription service that reuses and prolongs the life of its furniture.
The eco-friendly idea lets people lease items — like the coveted Billy bookcase or Poäng chair — for a limited time. At the end of the lease, they can opt to swap the used pieces out for new ones. Ikea would then refurbish any returned furniture before putting it back into circulation for the next subscriber.
“You could say leasing is another way of financing a kitchen,” Torbjorn Loof, chief executive of Inter Ikea, told Financial Times. “When this circular model is up and running, we have a much bigger interest in not just selling a product but seeing what happens with it and that the consumer takes care of it.”
The cost of this service hasn’t been announced, but the first leasing trial will begin in Switzerland as early as this month.
Loof added that Ikea aimed to reduce its climate footprint by 15 per cent by 2030. To that end, the company is also considering running a spare parts business, which would allow people to buy out-ofstock parts and hardware to repair furniture themselves instead of throwing items away.
He also said Ikea has started recycling wood and products like mattresses in certain countries. The company’s sofas have already been redesigned to make it easier to separate their components into individual materials like wood, metal, foam and textiles — thereby avoiding landfills.