Back Market wants to stir up used IT market

Global expansion

Back Market currently has around 300 partners worldwide and more are added weekly. There are many applicants, but not all are suitable, the CEO explains. Back Market must also reject some. More than 500,000 customers use the platform and prefer to buy smartphones and tablets.

Back Market has long outgrown its home country France and is also active in Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium, and since this year also in the USA. The core market is France, but Germany is very important, de Larauze emphasises. German customers attached particular importance to sustainability and guarantees.

But Back Market also has several customers in the USA. The market is large, there is potential, even if US buyers are not necessarily considered to be ecologically oriented. But Americans would be pragmatic, Larauze said, and would appreciate the lower prices.

The refurbished products are between 30 and 70 percent cheaper than new equipment and are therefore a real alternative. In addition, they would encourage reflection on current patterns of consumption. And that is also the goal of back-market founders Thibaud Hug de Larauze, Quentin Le Brouster and Vianney Vaute: to convince customers to buy an equivalent, reconditioned appliance instead of a new one, thereby reducing both CO2 emissions and the volume of electrical waste.

But Larauze also wants to achieve tangible economic goals hand in hand with the ecological goals: Back Market is to expand worldwide, build a global brand and become the global market leader for used electrical goods.

A second round of financing worth 41 million euros has just been concluded. The capital comes from the Holding Groupe Arnault, the investment company Eurazeo, the innovation capital company Daphni and the investment programme Aglaé Ventures and will help to achieve the ambitious goals.

1. Back Market wants to stir up used IT market
2. Marketplace for remanufactured electronic appliances
3. Global expansion