100,000 online stores in the Netherlands

The Netherlands has more than 100,000 online stores. This figure comes from the latest quarterly report from Statistics Netherlands. At least this number of companies have online sales as their main activity, but the number is increasing. The amount of online stores with a broad product range increased 14 percent last year.

According to the latest quarterly figures from Statistics Netherlands published in October, there are 99,990 companies registered in the category ‘online retail’. The actual number of online stores is higher, but this is the amount of companies that see the online store as their main activity.

Three months earlier, in the quarterly update from July, the statistics agency counted 97,905 companies in the same category. This is a difference of 2,085. That means that since this summer, around 700 new online stores were started every month in the Netherlands.

More than doubled in five years

The amount of companies that have online sales as their main activity has more than doubled compared to five years ago; at the end of 2019, Statistics Netherlands counted 46,430 companies in the category. Since the beginning of last year, the country has more online stores than brick-and-mortar stores.

However, interestingly, total spending in recent years did not grow along with the number of businesses. Online ecommerce sales increased by 1 percent, according to the latest Market Monitor by ecommerce association Thuiswinkel.org. In short, people spent the same amount of money on products while the amount of online stores did increase.

Number of online shops keeps growing

During the corona era, when online spending increased dramatically, the number of online stores grew rapidly, with 2021 being the record year. However, the growth rate slowed down after the pandemic. Still, new ecommerce companies did keep coming in. To be exact, the difference between now and five years ago is 115 percent.

The amount of companies increased 115% in 5 years

In their report, Statistics Netherlands counts companies operating under SBI code 4791, or companies that primarily sell products over distance. This includes mail order companies and teleshopping providers, but their number is so low that Statistics Netherlands simply refers to all companies as ‘online stores’.

Difference with count in Chamber of Commerce

The Dutch Chamber of Commerce has its own count of businesses in the country. Currently, it counts 109,323 companies in the internet retailing category. An important difference is that Statistics Netherlands classifies companies by main activity or industry (the SBI classification), while the Chamber of Commerce includes both main and secondary branches of a company in the Trade Register.

“We bundle Chamber of Commerce registrations, i.e. legal entities, into companies based on control relationships,” a CBS spokesperson clarified when asked. “So a company according to Statistics Netherlands is a tree structure of Chamber of Commerce registrations.” For the record.

Product categories

According to Statistics Netherlands, last month there were 22,985 online stores selling clothing, or 23 percent of the total number of businesses. This makes clothing the most popular category, followed by online shops selling a general assortment (20,325 companies, or 20.3 percent) and online stores selling home and garden items (18,250, or 18.3 percent).

Clothing is the most popular online product category

This year, the number of online shops with a general assortment grew the most in both absolute and relative terms. Indeed, 2,465 entrepreneurs were added since the measurement in the first quarter. This is an increase of 14 percent.