Almost half of Dutch online stores quits after two years

Of all online stores in the Netherlands that started in 2012, almost half of them doesn’t exist anymore. There were 7591 online stores founded two years ago, but today only 56 percent of them is still active. It also seems that one in four ecommerce sites that started last year won’t be there anymore if the last quarter of 2014 is reached.

This stems from a study done by Creditsafe, a Dutch company that sells company and credit reports. It also revealed that off all 10,088 online stores that were founded last year only 7410 will still be active at the end of this year. According to Creditsafe such shops will go bankrupt or will just quit because they can’t make a success of their company.

This year (until September) there were 7669 online stores founded and of those 93 percent is still up and running. The number of new online stores during the first nine months of this year is about the same as the number of new online stores during the same period a year ago. There is however a significant change in the amount of new online stores between 2012 and 2013, in one year the number rose with more than 26 percent.

Growth of new ecommerce stores stabilised
But for now there’s no such growth noticeable. Creditsafe thinks this is because entrepreneurs now know that running an online store takes very much of their time and effort. “And the competition is huge and in order to be successful it’s necessary to invest in both marketing and logistics.”

Dutch entrepreneurs who want to start an online store, think they have the best opportunity if they start an online fashion store or an online store that sells home and garden products. But these are also the segments where most online stores fail to be successful! “For most online store owners it’s their own decision to quit, probably because they’ve noticed the online store hasn’t been a success. But there are few bankruptcies. This means many entrepreneurs lose the competition battle from major ecommerce players who have a wider product range, who are able to deliver quicker and who have fantastic return policies”, says Andrew Harris, managing director at Creditsafe Netherlands.