Published 2014-03-25

The Norwegian second-hand market has never been bigger

A new report from FINN shows that items totaling NOK 4.8 billion were sold via FINN torget last year. Two million private ads were posted, representing a 3 percent growth on 2012 and a doubling of the number of ads published five years ago.

“The steady growth in the volume of items bought and sold indicates that more and more people are realizing that recycling is both environmentally friendly and economically viable. It’s fun to see that used items can have a new life with new owners,” says Kaija Ommundsen, Product Director in FINN torget.

1.7 million for-sale ads and 277,000 giveaway ads were posted in 2013. The volume of for-sale ads grew by 1 percent while giveaway ads grew by 17 percent. If the quoted prices for all the private ads posted on FINN torget in 2013 are added together, the total value of items registered is NOK 4.8 billion.

10 searches per second for second-hand items

FINN torget has an average of of 1.4 million users weekly, and the number of free-text searches on FINN in 2013 totaled 315 million, which is equivalent to 10 free-text searches per second for the whole of last year.

The four most popular search words last year were: ‘sofa’, ‘bicycle’, ‘iPhone’, and ‘kitchen’. ‘Sofa’ was entered in the free-text search box as many as 2,566,201 times, followed by ‘bicycle’ (2,120,359 times), ‘iPhone’ (1,573,306 times), and ‘kitchen’ (1,497,502 times).

Overwhelming generosity

Items worth vast amounts of money are given away every year in Norway. FINN’s analyses show that if all the items posted as giveaways had been sold instead, they would have been worth a total of NOK 80 million.

“Norwegians demonstrate overwhelming generosity via FINN’s giveaway section. Last year, 277,000 items were given away, which is three times as many as in 2010. It’s interesting that we’ve now managed to put a figure on how much all the items that were given away last year were worth and that the value is as high as NOK 80 million,” says Ommundsen.

Most-sold items

The furniture and interior category is where most items are posted. Last year, almost 500,000 items were posted in this category alone, which represents 25 percent of all the items posted last year. ‘Electronic and electrical appliances’ followed with 14 percent, while 11 percent of items were posted in the ‘Recreation, hobby and entertainment’ category.

The for-sale ads posted in FINN’s Buy and Sell category had an average of 142 page views. Interest in the giveaway section is even greater, however; the ads posted there achieved average page views of 162.

Auto parts (average page views 335), bridal gowns (334) and canoes (267) were the most popular categories in the for-sale section, while corner sofas (273), mobile computers (246) and lawn mowers (236) attracted the most views in the giveaway section.

See the report entitled “Det norske bruktmarkedet” (The Norwegian second-hand market) for more details. (Norwegian)