The Netherlands

Picnic, the Dutch grocery delivery service which caused quite a stir when it launched this summer, is slowly expanding its service. It started in Amersfoort, the second largest city of the province of Utrecht, but now it also delivers in the neighboring municipality of Leusden. For next year, further expansion is planned.

Dutch lingerie brand Hunkemöller is the winner of the Webshop Award Europe as well as of the Cross Channel Award Europe. It won these two awards during the election of the retailer of the year in Europe. The Retailer of the Year Awards were handed out in nine European countries and of all the winners a European winner was announced in three different categories.

Marktplaats, the popular online classifieds site from the Netherlands, passed the 1 billion mark in number of ads placed. Last Friday it was a man from Rotterdam who placed the billionth advertisement on the eBay-owned website, by offering his drum set for sale.

Fonq.nl, a popular online department store from the Netherlands, is now accepting bitcoins as a payment method. Aside from iDeal, credit card, pay after delivery, PayPal and bank transfer, the online retailer's consumers can now also pay with the digital currency.

AO.com, the largest online kitchen appliance specialist in the United Kingdom, has announced it has plans to launch a dedicated ecommerce website in the Netherlands. The online retailer expects to commence trading in the Netherlands in the spring of next year.

Lightspeed POS, a point-of-sale platform for retailers and restaurants, today announced the acquisition of Dutch ecommerce software company SEOshop. As part of this acquisition, Lightspeed launches its new ecommerce platform, called Lightspeed eCom.

Prestashop, an open-source ecommerce solution from France, has announced it agreed to a partnership with Alipay, Alibaba's leading online payment solution from China. The partnership applies to PrestaShop's customers in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands and enables retailers to sell their products more easily in China.

Alibaba Group has announced a partnership with several top brands in the Netherlands. As a result, Philips, Nutrilon and Albert Heijn among others, will be introduced to the ecommerce player's huge Chinese customer base. Tmall Global is expected to open new flagship outlets for some major Dutch supermarket brands.

Docdata, a Dutch company that’s specialized in e-fulfilment, return logistics and online payment services, has sold its ecommerce arm to the American company Ingram Micro for 175 million dollars (€153.4 million). Docdata claims becoming part of Ingram will give the company the necessary scale to compete with other ecommerce service providers.

The Dutch telecom retail chains Dixons, MyCom and iCentre are saved. Their previous owner BAS Group was declared bankrupt, but the retail chains will continue to operate under new owner Relevant Holdings. Now 30 Dixons stores, 22 MyCom stores and 24 iCentre stores as well as their online stores will continue selling items such as white goods, telecom products and IT devices.

Dutch pick up service De Buren will work together with bookstore chain Bruna. As a result, consumers will be able to pick up, deliver and return parcels at the branches of Bruna 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Dutch payment company Adyen closes another round of funding and is now valuated to be worth 2 billion euros. The latest funding comes from Iconiq Capital, which has invested in several tech companies on behalf of clients such as Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and Jack Dorsey.

Consumers from the United Kingdom and France are most familiar with purchasing flowers online. In the UK, 37 percent of consumers said they had bought a bouquet online at least once in the past year. In France, this share is 32 percent. In these two countries, as well as Germany and the Netherlands, Fleurop/Interflora is the absolute market leader. The question is for how long, as new initiatives arise.

Yippie, a browser plugin that aggregates products prices and notifies consumers if they can order something cheaper somewhere else, has raised 600.000 euros in a new investing round. With the money, Yippie wants to build a mobile app that is said to be released this autumn.

Dutch fashion brand Turnover has found its way back into the ecommerce. After the online store closed its doors in 2011, the brand was only present offline in stores from partners. But now Turnover will open a pop-up web store that’s available for customers from September until December.