Amazon surpasses Coolblue in Dutch ecommerce top 100

Amazon surpasses Coolblue in Dutch ecommerce top 100

AliExpress and Shein are among the ten largest online sellers in the Netherlands. And behind market leader bol comes, not Albert Heijn or Coolblue, but Amazon as the number two. That is according to a new ranking by German ECDB, a well-known publisher of ecommerce statistics. What is the ranking based on? And what else stands out?

Online sellers in the Netherlands have been ranked in the Twinkle100 for years. The latest edition appeared last month, with a ranking based on (stated or estimated) online sales in the year 2023. In that edition, the rapid growth of foreign platforms stood out, with the US-based Amazon in fourth place and Chinese players AliExpress, Shein and Temu in places 43, 47 and 55, respectively.

Impact foreign online sellers

In ECDB’s list, also covering 2023, the aforementioned companies are ranked a lot higher: Amazon occupies 2nd place, AliExpress 6th, Shein 8th and Temu 37th. Viewed this way, the impact of international players on ecommerce in the Netherlands is thus even more significant. Only four players in the top 10 are homegrown; in the top 10 of the latest Twinkle100, there are seven:

Position Top 100 ECDB Twinkle100
1 bol bol
2 Amazon Albert Heijn
3 Coolblue Coolblue
4 Albert Heijn Amazon
5 Zalando Zalando
6 AliExpress Picnic
7 Jumbo Jumbo
8 Shein Wehkamp
9 MediaMarkt Belsimpel
10 Apple Apple

Wehkamp, ranking 7th in the Twinkle100, is only 12th on ECDB’s list, behind Vinted in 11th place, which is not included in the Twinkle100. Conversely, Picnic is missing from the ECDB ranking, presumably because the company only sells products through its app. Still, a relevant omission, just like that of Belsimpel.

Methodology of the ranking

ECDB’s rankings (the letters stand for ecommerce database) are based on different data sources. Unlike the Twinkle100, transaction data are most important in the methodology of the commercial statistics firm. Data from credit cards, debit cards and e-wallets, among others, come directly from card issuers or processors; they provide insight into the transactions that flow through their networks.

ECDB’s list is based primarily on transaction data.

ECDB says it bases its publications on more than 1 billion transactions per month. “This represents about 2 to 3 percent of all transactions for the companies or markets analyzed.”

Top 100 online sellers in the Netherlands

Combined with other sources, such as public information, traffic and click data, and data from scraping and crawling, the transaction data provide the following picture of the ecommerce top in the Netherlands:

top100 ecommerce ECDB

Fashion top category Bol

While the normative sales figures are not publicly available, it is clear that the difference between frontrunner bol and Amazon is very large. It is also interesting that bol is presented as a fashion retailer. ECDB reports that for each player, the category in which it achieves the most sales is mentioned. Of the hundred players, 44 are classified as fashion vendors. Measured by sales, however, electronics is bigger, with a 32 percent share.

Potential in beauty and care

Mikael Brakker of L’Oréal, who shared the Dutch ECDB list on LinkedIn with approval from the statistics agency, reveals where there is still a lot of online growth potential in the country, in an international perspective. “Beauty and care is quite small online and has very high growth potential. Right now it holds 7 percent of the online market.”

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Arjan

Arjan

Arjan van Oosterhout has been contributing to Ecommerce News Europe since the spring of 2023. He writes news articles for the website on a freelance basis.

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