Online store

Online retailer Yoox posted a 15 percent rise in revenues to 524 million euros last year. The strong performance in its struggling home market has helped the luxury online retailer to meet the analyst's forecast revenues of €525.7 million.

H&M will sell online in Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Switzerland. The Swedish fashion retailer is making a big ecommerce push as it already invested heavily in its online retail site and took several steps to connect its web and mobile assets with its brick-and-mortar stores.

Ikea is a strong household name in the furniture industry. But online it's a different story. It seems the Swedish company has missed the ecommerce boat. For years it ignored online retail, while focusing solely on sales happening in-store. But recently Ikea has been leaning more towards the online channel, as profit is slowing. Can it still succeed online?

For the fourth time ECC Köln has examined what the top online stores in Germany are from a customer perspective. The biggest surprise is the absence of Amazon in the top 10. It's not that Amazon performed badly, it's more like other online retailers have stepped up their game and surpassed the American retailer on the list.

Around 15 million German consumers purchased food or drinks on the Internet last year. That's 28 percent of all German Internet users. Compared to a similar survey back in January 2011, this number has more than tripled. At the time there were 4.5 million people who ordered their groceries online.

In about two months, Fendi will launch an ecommerce website, with initial deliveries to 28 countries in Europe. Fendi, which is a brand of the French multinational luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, will also expand its ecommerce services to Japan and the United States, but this would come later this year, or in early 2016.

Amazon created 6,000 new full-time jobs in Europe last year to respond to booming demand, which was bigger than ever in Europe, says Amazon. Now 32,000 people work for the ecommerce giant in the European Union. These jobs are created in logistics centers, customer service, software development, supply chain management and design.

Whisbi has found a way to bridge the worlds of ecommerce and retail shopping cultures. By using Google Glass the Spanish company is hoping to open a new chapter in the omnichannel retail revolution. By combining phone and online communications with a presence on the retail floor, customers can see products without leaving the house.

Media-Saturn has witdrawn its Redcoon shops in France and Denmark because after five years, these online stores still didn't generate enough money to keep them up and running. Redcoon thinks there's more potential growth in the markets where it already has grown to a mature player.

Today it’s Black Friday, the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season. It's also the day many retailers use to offer special promotions and spectacular discounts to their customers. It started in the United States, as a lot of non-retail employees have both Thanksgiving and the day after off, and went for shopping on this Friday. But as American retailers have expanded their business to Europe, Black Friday is embraced by an increasing number of European retailers.

Gap and Zalando have today announced a pan-European partnership, which means Gap's clothing and accessories will be available within Europe's largest online fashion website beginning next summer. The partnership will be Gap's first foray into multi-brand retailing in Europe.

H&M will launch online stores in eight different countries in Europe during 2015. The new online markets will be Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia. H&M’s online stores are already available in eleven European countries.

Bol.com, the biggest ecommerce site in the Netherlands, has reported revenue of 680 million euros for 2013, which is half of the 1.4 billion euros revenue generated by mother company Ahold as a whole. Bol.com now wants to hit the 1 billion euros mark in 2017.

Swiss Post has launched a new service. Together with Futurecom Interactive, the postal company is supporting small businesses by offering them a complete set of services that cover the entire ecommerce value chain. Customers can open a one-stop shop and get everything they need for their ecommerce business.

Danish jewelry company Pandora is happy with its ecommerce sites, as the expansion online has helped it capitalize on something a lot of men struggle with: buying gifts. Ever since it launched an online store in the United Kingdom two years ago, the company has seen an increase in male customers.