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PALO ALTO, Calif. — Spurred by tightening budgets and a desire to reduce waste, consumers are increasingly turning to the secondhand marketplace for items for their families, including infant and children’s furniture.
In its Reuse Report: Family Edition, online marketplace operator Mercari pointed out that furniture was the fourth most-popular children’s resale category in 2021, with a value of $564 million. This places furniture at about 8% of the total $7 billion market for kids’ and infants’ used products. Putting that in context, children’s clothing represented about 24% of the market, followed by toys at around 19%.
The idea of buying pre-owned items is becoming more common, the report found. More than 100 million Americans, or 62% of parents, bought a secondhand item for a child in the past 12 months, and that number was even higher (more than 80%) among couples starting a family.
More than half of the items are being sold online, with luxury pieces in high demand and projected to grow by 53% through 2030. And by that year, the total market for resold children’s products is expected to reach $12.8 billion.
Items no longer of use to families were expected to grow the fastest in secondhand sales between 2021 and 2030. About 5% of survey respondents said they had unused cribs in their homes; another 4.4% had décor and bedding.
Among the growing furniture-related resale categories were baby furniture up 9% year-over-year and cribs at 8.5%. Within the baby furniture segment, nursery furniture orders grew by 45% on Mercari’s resale platform over two five-month periods tracked in 2020 and 2021.
Consumer statistics were based on a March 2022 survey of more than 2,200 U.S. respondents by GlobalData. Other calculations involved data from GlobalData’s consumer panel and other sources.
