With more than half of Germany’s online population visiting Kleinanzeigen each month, the online platform plays a central role in the country’s growing re-commerce sector. In this exclusive interview, Iskra Velichkova, Head of Brand at Kleinanzeigen, shares insights into the marketplace’s business model and sustainability initiatives, as well as the impact of regulatory developments in the re-commerce sector and what’s to be expected regarding the evolution of the ecommerce industry in the next couple of years, particularly from a sustainability standpoint.
Kleinanzeigen is Germany’s largest marketplace for re-commerce, meaning it connects people to trade second-hand goods. That is the platform’s core purpose. There is a wide variety of inventory being traded. You could say you can find everything from a needle to an aeroplane – I even checked today, and you can find listings for both!
Beyond second-hand goods, people also use Kleinanzeigen to rent or buy property, trade cars, and more. We are particularly well-known for categories such as fashion, family, children and baby products, home and garden, and electronics. Kleinanzeigen is one of the biggest websites on the German internet, with 36 million monthly users. That’s over half of Germany’s online population. Our users are very active on the platform, generating more than 700 million visits in a month.
Our business model is built around this vibrancy and high level of activity. A large portion of our revenue comes from advertising – brands pay to promote their inventory and offerings on our site. Another revenue stream is paid features for sellers. While listing an item is free, sellers can opt to pay for features that boost visibility in search results. We also provide more elaborate services for commercial traders, such as API access for real estate agents or more elaborate seller statistics unavailable to the general public. These traders can subscribe to various plans tailored to their needs. Additionally, we have checkout models with buyer protection on site, and this is another revenue stream.
The vast majority of sellers, around 99%, are private users. Less than 1% of our sellers are commercial traders. While these businesses contribute some inventory, we remain primarily a C2C platform.
Sustainability is at the core of Kleinanzeigen’s identity. Trading used goods means that you are extending the lifetime of a product and reducing the demand for newly manufactured items – which is where the majority of CO₂ emissions and resource consumption occur.
We have invested significant effort in quantifying this impact. Over the years, we have developed increasingly precise calculations to measure greenhouse gas emission avoidance and resource savings per category. For example, when you buy second-hand jeans, we can estimate the water and CO₂ savings compared to buying new ones.
We also account for consumer behaviour – some people may buy multiple second-hand items because they are cheaper. Taking all these factors into consideration, we estimate that if every item listed on Kleinanzeigen found a new owner, it could prevent 1.5 million tons of CO₂ emissions per year. That is quite massive. To put it into perspective: SCHOTT, a German manufacturer of industrial glassware (one of the most energy-intensive industries), requires a lot of energy, producing around 1 million tons of CO₂ emissions per year. This means that trading second-hand on Kleinanzeigen has the potential to offset even more emissions than this major industrial company produces, which is fantastic.
If we want to encourage sustainable trading, we must lead by example. That’s why, in 2018, we committed to reducing our own carbon footprint. At the time, we were part of eBay, which measured the carbon footprint of the entire eBay Inc. group. However, we wanted to understand our impact in more detail. That is how we started calculating and compensating our footprint while also undertaking every possible effort to reduce it. This includes major initiatives such as running our servers on renewable energy, as well as smaller but meaningful actions like not having bottled water in our offices, not using disposable cutlery and plates, and ensuring waste separation in specific containers.
As a second step, we decided to also reduce our footprint in the marketing space. We were among the first companies in Germany to calculate the carbon footprint of our marketing rollout. So, all our marketing channels go into a separate audit, and we have a very good overview on this ever since 2021.
Initially, we started to make decisions in favour of low-emission channels, reducing CO₂ emissions per thousand contacts by 20% between 2022 and 2023. In 2024, we went further, looking into what else can be done, especially in the digital space – because that's what's becoming more and more important, but also what has a big potential for CO2 reduction. We carried out many tests, and we managed to reduce our CO2 emissions in digital video – our fastest growing channel – by an additional 20%.
We see ourselves as the main driver of fostering the circular economy. Our mission is to inspire more people to make conscious choices – choosing second-hand before buying new.
Our vision is that whenever someone needs something, they first check Kleinanzeigen for a second-hand option. If that’s not possible, they can consider buying from a small or medium-sized business on our platform. And if neither of those options work, they can turn to our advertisers offering new products. Ideally, this sequence of choices becomes the norm.
As the German market leader in re-commerce, we have the highest impact on circular trade.
Some regulations have had unintended consequences. One example is the DAC7 directive, a European law aimed at identifying commercial sellers who might be avoiding taxes. The German interpretation of this directive states that if you are selling more than 30 items per year or generating over EUR 2,000 revenue from these items, you must report these transactions for tax purposes. The intention is to prevent businesses from disguising themselves as private sellers. However, since it is a very complicated regulation, when it was introduced, it caused very high unrest among private traders. Many feared they would have to pay tax on second-hand sales, which is not the case most of the time. In 99.9% of cases, private traders are not taxed because they sell those items for less than what they originally paid for them.
Despite this, the regulation created uncertainty and discouraged some people from selling second-hand goods, which was a setback for the second-hand economy. Both we and our competitors have had to invest considerable effort in educating users that, in most cases, they are unaffected by this directive.
The most sustainable option is to buy nothing at all – but that’s not always realistic. When people do need something, they should first consider second-hand options. The good news is that, in Germany, consumer behaviour in this regard has shifted significantly since 2009, when Kleinanzeigen was founded. Our rapid growth reflects not only our platform’s success but also a certain societal development that has led people to really go for more sustainable options.
That wasn’t always the case. When I started working here almost nine years ago, second-hand had a different image – it was niche, even a bit stigmatised. We have worked quite a lot to change that. We want second-hand to be the smarter, cooler choice. The reality is that many people initially turn to second-hand due to financial constraints, but when we highlight the environmental benefits, it reinforces their decision and makes them feel good about it. Sustainability, in this way, helps elevate second-hand shopping.
I hope the industry moves towards prioritising value and quality over ever-cheaper production. Higher-quality products benefit everyone – they have better margins for sellers, last longer for consumers, and can be resold multiple times. For example, a single pair of jeans could contribute to the economy ten times if resold nine times.
Another critical issue that needs addressing is returns and unsold items. Many items end up in landfill unnecessarily. Some European countries have introduced regulations in certain areas, but we need broader rules across all ecommerce sectors to prevent these large quantities of items from going to landfill.
Ideally, unsold goods should be redirected to second-hand marketplaces rather than discarded. That would be a major step towards a more sustainable ecommerce industry.
Iskra Velichkova is Head of Brand at Kleinanzeigen. She joined the company eight years ago with the aim of building up upper funnel marketing. Since 2017, her team has also been responsible for the company’s sustainability initiatives. In 2023, Iskra co-led the company’s successful rebrand from ‘eBay Kleinanzeigen’ to ‘Kleinanzeigen’ following the separation from eBay Inc. In 2025, she was awarded the title ‘Green CMO of the year’ as recognition for her long-term commitment to more sustainable marketing practice.
* Picture copyright: Patricia Kalisch
Kleinanzeigen is the leading online classifieds marketplace and one of the most widely used websites in Germany. An average of more than 55 million listings are available in numerous categories – ranging from children's items and electronics to real estate. Most of the trading on Kleinanzeigen involves second-hand goods, allowing users to actively contribute to greater sustainability. Kleinanzeigen also offers businesses the opportunity to easily present their services online. The platform was launched in September 2009 as eBay Kleinanzeigen. In May 2023, it was renamed to simply Kleinanzeigen.
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