Asendia, a joint venture of La Poste and Swiss Post, and Irish postal operator An Post have formed a partnership to help cross-border retailers exploit ecommerce in Ireland. The partnership lets Asendia offer retailers access to the last mile delivery of An Post, from the 15 countries where Asendia operates.

PostNord and Zalando have signed a three year logistics contract, thereby extending the partnership that started when Zalando entered the Nordic market eight years ago. Until mid-2021, PostNord will be the sole supplier of logistics solutions to Zalando in all of PostNord's four markets in the Nordic region.

The Otto Group is looking for a strategic partner for essential parts of its parcel delivery service Hermes. The German retail group is even ready to sell a majority stake in Hermes. And that might be interesting for major ecommerce companies such as Amazon and Alibaba, looking to gain a foothold in the European ecommerce market.

Ecommerce accounted for a third of the total value of technical consumer goods sold globally to consumers, but in Europe the online share is much lower. In 18 countries across Europe, the average online share is currently at 25 percent.

Swiss Post will get some serious competition in the booming parcel delivery market in Switzerland. DHL, the subsidiary of Deutsch Post, will build a network of 1,000 pick-up points in the Central-European country. The goal is to become the number two in Switzerland, just after Swiss Post.

German fashion retailer Edited keeps on expanding. The retail company has opened its latest online store in Belgium. The launch follows just one month after the German company opened its digital doors in the Netherlands.

The European Retail Alliance has officially launched, three months after it was announced that European ecommerce companies MediaMarktSaturn and Fnac Darty wanted to form an alliance. European Retail Alliance is said to be Europe's answer to ecommerce giants such as Amazon and Alibaba.

The Netherlands has the most online stores per capita. In this country, there are about 80,000 online stores with a population of 17 million. That means there are 214 people per online store, a density that's nowhere to be found anywhere else in the world. In the Netherlands, online shops have to fight hard for every visitor.

There are easily over one million fraudulent online stores in Germany. And more than 4.4 German consumers have become victims of this online fraud. Criminals manage to steal consumers' money mostly by setting up online popup stores.

Cross-Border Commerce Europe is a new initiative from Carine Moitier, who co-founded Belgian ecommerce association BeCommerce in 2005. With this online platform, she wants to help international retailers to perform better on the European ecommerce market.

Consumers in Germany are increasingly buying furniture online. The share of online shopping has now reached around 14 percent. And it's mostly single households and consumers under the age of 30 that tend to buy their furniture online instead of in physical stores.

Ecommerce in Sweden has increased just slightly during last year and was worth 14.5 billion euros at the end of 2017. After an increase of 4.1 percent, the B2C ecommerce turnover of Sweden grew only 400,000 euros compared to the situation in 2016.

Bol.com, the popular Dutch online department store, made some changes to its paid Select model. Subscribers will now get free delivery on all products, regardless of the order value. Previously, Bol.com Select offered free delivery only on 300.000 selected products.

Customers of Marks & Spencer can now return their online orders at one of many Simply Food stores across the United Kingdom. Previously, consumers already had the possibility to collect their online orders at these stores, but now returning them can happen at the same location.

Retailers in the German city of Bonn want to continue with the online platform AllyouneedCity, which started last year but is set to quit. The local subsidiary of Deutsche Post DHL's online marketplace Allyouneed was a success among Bonn retailers and they are now looking for a partner that wants to continue with the online platform.