The marketplace for refurbished consumer electronics reached $3.5 billion in global GMV last year. Its message to consumers is to downgrade.

With retailers, influencers and culture encouraging shoppers to “treat themselves” and upgrade, Back Market wants consumers to do the opposite — buy used.

With the tagline “Downgrade Now” Back Market may have an uphill battle in breaking through in the U.S. The marketplace of refurbished tech products is encouraging consumers to downgrade their personal electronic products, including smartphones and laptops, to reduce electronic waste.

“At the heart of this is shifting people’s mindset towards tech,” said Amanda Michel, U.S. Director of Marketing, about Back Market’s sustainability mission. “Part of this is about actually impacting culture and really being able to speak to people about how they use tech, what their tech needs are.”

And in addition to this counter-cultural message, Back Market’s ads require a few seconds to process. The ads are often text-heavy, with a pointed phrase or joke, with the product as a secondary focus.

But that’s what Back Market wants — for consumers to reflect on their technology consumption choices and not upgrade their phone just because they can, Michel said.

“It’s not about showing the product, it’s sparking that conversation about what the tech can do for you,” Michel said. “A lot of this plays off of the normal and daily uses of tech, really thinking about let’s set or reset our expectations for what the device needs to do.”

For example, one ad features a person lying in bed watching a video from a sideways laptop with the tagline, “For everything you actually do, you don’t need new.” The overall message at the top is “Downgrade now. Back Market.”

Another ad features side-by-side photos of the same location, Lone Rock Beach in Utah, both “Shot on an iPhone,” riffing off Apple’s own marketing ads promoting its camera. But in Back Market’s ad, the image on the left shows the beach with water surrounding a rock proclaiming “Shot on iPhone SE” and the image on the right shot five years later, on an iPhone 13, with no water present at all. The text is “How many upgrades do we have left? Let’s end fast tech.”

Back Market Places Text-Heavy Ads Where Consumers Have Time

It’s not that Back Market doesn’t want shoppers to buy an iPhone — it does — but just a refurbished one from its marketplace and not the most recent one.

“The taglines really speak right to the questions that we’re asking ourselves culturally,” Michel said. “Also, what we’re doing is we’re pointing out the utility of devices that are in our catalog that people love.”

Because the out-of-home ads are thought provoking, Back Market makes a point to place them in locations where consumers have a moment to read them, such as on the New York City subway, or a billboard at a busy intersection, Michel said.

“They are ads to read; They’re ads that people laugh about,” she said. “So we need to find people in places and spaces where they have a moment, because it’s not just a flash. It’s not about the recognition. It’s about conveying that larger value process.”

To ensure consumers are not distracted, sometimes the brand will buy out all the ad space on one side of the subway car and then place three or four of its own ads.

Back Market GMV Reaches $3.5 Billion in 2025

The ads are resonating, as the U.S. “is emerging as one of Back Market’s largest markets by gross merchandise value,” the company said. Back Market declined to share its U.S. gross merchandise value, but said, in 2025 a few U.S. test markets grew more than 40 percentage points faster than the company’s average. Globally in 2025, Black Market sold more than $3.5 billion in gross merchandise value, a 32% year-over-year growth rate.

Plus, with costs of goods continually increasing, U.S. consumers may consider buying a refurbished device because it is cheaper.

Still, the refurbished category has low adoption in the U.S. compared with internationally, Michel said. Many U.S. consumers purchase their cellphone in conjunction with their phone plan, and often upgrade their device every two years on their plan cycle. Or generally, shoppers gravitate toward the newest product with enhanced features. But do they need all those features? Back Market argues no.

Back Market’s Backstory

The brand launched in 2014 in France and in the U.S. in 2018. The marketplace allows third-party refurbishers to apply to sell their products on BackMarket.com. Once the brand vets and approves the sellers, they can list, price and “grade” the refurbished products. The grades — from premium down to fair — all have definitions about the condition of each products.

Sellers ship products directly to buyers, but Back Market provides a 30-day free return policy and a one-year warranty policy. Back Market manages the marketplace, conducting mystery orders to ensure the quality is on par with customer expectations.

Back Market takes a commission on each sale, which is less than 15%, Michel said without providing the specific figure. This commission is how the marketplace generates the majority of its revenue, and it also sells insurance as another revenue stream.

The marketplace has received large investments, and in January 2022, it secured more funding that pushed the company’s valuation to more than $5.7 billion.

Sustainability Mission

The marketplace has a strong foothold in France and throughout Europe, where buying refurbished products is more common and the product category is widely understood. The origin of the company is founded on creating a sustainable technology cycle, as electronic waste continues to grow. Back Market’s mission is to ensure devices get their full use before they go to a landfill.

While a sustainability angle might land in marketing to Europeans, U.S. consumers are more apt to gravitate to refurbished products for the lower cost for a quality product. And so, the brand aims to highlight affordability and that the products are professionally vetted with a quality grading system, Michel said.

“It’s about getting the most use of them personally and making it more affordable,” Michel said. “So our ads really speak to this.”

A large target market for the brand is parents, who buy devices for their children, who are prone to lose or break them. A refurbished option makes sense, and one that may not be top-of-mind, she said.

New York City is Back Market’s largest stateside market, and where the brand has focused its marketing for the past few years.

Back Market Focus on Chicago

The next market Back Market is targeting is Chicago. It launched its first-out-of-home campaign in Chicago in fall 2025 and growth has taken off, Michel said. In the first four months of 2026, the Chicago market grew 36%, up from 18% growth for the market in 2025, outpacing the national average, she said.

“Forty percent of the buyers in Chicago are new, so we’re seeing that number tick up, showing that people are more open to trying the technology,” she said.

Michel and a few more team members were in Chicago in March to host an influencer event with celebrity chef Joe Flamm at his restaurant Rose Mary. Back Market invited local influencers who have a sustainability focus, such as thrift shopping or sustainable foodies. The goal for the event was to increase brand awareness, Michel said.

“We know refurbished is still very much a new category and most people just need to be introduced to it,” she said. “We’re looking for two things. We’re looking for heightened brand awareness, but it’s also about people who’ve had a positive experience vouching for it. Because for a lot of people, they look for extra assurance. They need to know that they can, just like if they buy a new device, they can return it if there’s something wrong with it. They’re also looking for that kind of social proof.”

Retail Pop-Up

In-person events like that one and popups are a key marketing strategy. To see how consumers react to refurbished technology in person, the brand hosted a retail pop-up for three months in New York City in the SoHo neighborhood.

The store had a few products for sale but it was mostly an experiential space. The brand showcased how devices are professionally refurbished, it had a section showcasing the different grades of its product, it had free device cleaning and a section where consumers had to guess which devices were new and which were refurbished. It also showcased the different types of electronics it has in its catalog, like vacuum cleaners, kitchen gadgets and haircare tools.

The pop-up was a success, as it reached its brand awareness and consideration goals, Michel said, without providing specifics. The pop-up also helped the marketing team understand how consumers think about refurbished products and the questions they ask. The team had on-site questionaries to find out once a consumer had been to the store, whether they were open to buying refurbished.

“That was a key component for us,” Michel said. “What we know is that when people actually see it, when they understand what it is, that the consideration shifts significantly.”