The firm behind an industry-first guarantee designed to remove the stigma of adopting second-user devices has revealed plans to quadruple its capacity.
Ikonic in August unveiled its ‘Assurance Guarantee’.
It will see the Greater Manchester-based outfit repair and refund any of its BSI-Certified Refurbished devices that develop a genuine fault within the first 12 months.
The launch of the guarantee comes as Ikonic gears up to quadruple its UK-based refurbished device capacity.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Simon Thomas, Channel Partner Manager and Group ESG Lead at Ikonic, claimed the guarantee would provide “additional assurance” to those that have previously been “burnt or sceptical” on second-user IT.
“We have one of the lowest returns rates in the industry for second-user devices, certainly BSI-certified devices. But how do we quantify that?,” he said.
“Our solution is that good, that if something goes wrong, we will give you your money back and repair and replace the device for you free of charge.”
“He kicked me under the table”
Ikonic’s logic was vindicated at Lenovo’s recent 360 Circle summit in Geneva, which hosted a number of Ikonic’s peers and channel partners, Thomas said.
“One of the questions from Lenovo was, ‘how can we give our customers more confidence around our Lenovo-certified devices?’,” he recalled.
“The conversation piece was, ‘wouldn’t it be good to offer an assurance guarantee’? At this point, we hadn’t launched anything.
“The resounding noise from that table was ‘no, because it would break us; we couldn’t afford to give that’.
“At that point, one of our partners was kicking me under the table because he was part of our assurance pilot scheme. We walked out, and he was literally grabbing me saying, ‘this is going to absolutely change the marketplace’.
“We are the only company, certainly within the UK, possibly Europe, that can offer this type of assurance. It’s groundbreaking.”
“Absolutely immaculate”
Ikonic currently holds the BSI Kitemark for Refurbishment of Computing Hardware and is aiming to increase its accreditations and industry standing to complement the quality reflected by the assurance guarantee.
“We produce a product that in compute terms is as close to new as possible, technically and aesthetically, without being new, at a fraction of the cost, whilst offering third-party verified ESG value,” Thomas said.
RAMageddon has “supercharged” adoption of refurbished hardware, with 83% of customers altering their hardware refresh plans in direct response to ongoing supply and pricing disruptions, according to analyst Omdia.
At the same time, customers are piling pressure on channel partners when it comes to their sustainability credentials. Some 41% of partners Omdia questioned in July said more than 30% of RfPs they receive now include environmental sustainability criteria, up from 31% in 2023.
“The customer range is vast because we’re channel agnostic,” Thomas said.
“The strongest growth we’ve seen is certainly within local government, central government, and education, mainly because of the Government Buying Standards initiative that’s come in.
“That’s followed very closely by enterprises or corporates who are looking to reduce budgets but also attain their sustainability or CSR reporting for board-level processes.”
“We’re expanding quite aggressively”
Hardware distributor Ikonic’s refurbished arm is outgrowing the wider business, which turned over £126m in 2025, Thomas said.
“We’re growing at around 18-20% year on year and are expanding quite aggressively,” he said.
“Our current production facilities are capable of producing around 1,200 different HP, Dell and Lenovo SKUs, and we’re looking to quadruple capacity within the next six months.”
Ikonic sources its refurbished kit from HP, Dell and Lenovo, as well as banks, local authorities, hospitals and ITADs, with around 60-70% of the product being ex-lease, Thomas said.
Ikonic’s new repair and repay scheme will provide a “safety net” for customers caught in two minds over the reliability of second-user kit, Thomas said.
“We are offering a solution that gives support to a growing market, by eliminating uncertainty around the perception of second-user devices being lesser quality,” he said.
“The technological advancements, and industry body standards are at a pinnacle that has never been seen before. And Ikonic are at the forefront.
“By removing the fear, uncertainty and doubt, we are enabling the user to commit to a sustainable IT journey.”
This article was produced in association with Ikonic is classified as partner content. What is partner content? See more here.
