Paris-based refurbished gadget marketplace Back Market raises $120M from investors including Goldman Sachs
Back Market has raised a $120 million round of venture capital as it seeks to dramatically expand the market for refurbished consumer electronics.
Context & Ripple Effects
Back Market has been scaling steadily since its €41M Series B in 2018, when it operated a refurbished-gadget marketplace across six countries including the US. This $120M round lands just weeks after European rival Refurbed raised a $17M Series A to push into additional markets, putting two funded marketplaces head-to-head for the same supply of refurbished devices.
Goldman Sachs' participation is the notable signal: a major bank underwriting a consumer-electronics resale platform points to refurbished hardware being treated as a durable category rather than a niche. The trajectory since — a $335M Series D at a $3.2B valuation, then a $510M round at $5.7B — confirms this round was the midpoint of a steep funding climb.
First-order effects
- Back Market gains $120M to expand its refurbished-electronics marketplace beyond the six countries it covered at its Series B, directly intensifying competition with Refurbed in overlapping European markets like Germany and Austria.
Second-order effects
- Refurbed must match the fundraising pace or cede ground on device supply and seller acquisition, since both marketplaces draw from the same pool of refurbishers and trade-in inventory.
- Goldman Sachs' entry legitimizes refurbished electronics for other institutional investors, lowering the cost of capital for the whole resale segment.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, refurbished consumer electronics consolidates into venture-scale marketplaces rather than fragmented local resellers — a shift visible in Back Market's later path to €320M in 2023 sales, up 45% year over year, with 4.5M new users.
The trend: Consumer electronics is moving toward a circular-economy structure where funded marketplaces, not individual resellers, control the flow of refurbished devices.