The Netherlands

Global fulfillment platform ShipBob is expanding to the Netherlands with the launch of a fulfillment center. The new fulfillment center is the company’s fifth European location. The company expects to start shipping parcels from the new location in July.

The Lithuania-based online supplier of prefabricated wooden buildings, Pineca, is launching an online store in the Netherlands. This is the company’s second expansion within Europe in this year. The company is already active in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal as well.

Action, the discount retailer from the Netherlands, is launching its online store in Belgium. The online shop is available in Dutch and French. Action will offer around 150 products. The product range mostly consists of large items such as garden furniture.

Bol.com, the leading marketplace in the Netherlands and Belgium, had a gross merchandise volume of 1.3 billion euros in Q1. As much as 65 percent comes from third party merchants on the platform. Bol.com currently has 52,000 partners.

On January 1^st, the Netherlands had more online stores than brick-and-mortar stores. The number of online stores was 84.1 thousand, while the number of physical stores was 82.1 thousand. In a year, the number of online stores rose 4.1 percent.

Dutch payment service iDeal has been acquired by the European Payments Initiative (EPI), a collaboration of European banks. Payconiq, technology provider of iDeal and Belgian payment platform Bancontact, has also been taken over. iDeal is to form the basis of a Europe-wide payment system, according to EPI.

B2B shipping software provider LetMeShip, owned by the ITA Consulting Group, is acquiring Dutch shipping platform ParcelParcel. LetMeShip can accelerate its expansion across Europe thanks to the acquisition. The software provider will now also offer more flexible business-to-consumer shipping solutions.

French ecommerce platform La Redoute has launched a dedicated and independent Dutch website and app. It is the first international site opened by the company in ten years. The company wants to reach a target of 26 million euros in sales by 2026 in the Netherlands.

Welkoop was named ‘DHL Best Online Store of the Year 2023’ at the annual Dutch Shopping Awards. The shop, which sells garden and pet products, also took first place in the ‘Pet’ category. Online seller of sleeping products, Cloudpillo, was the winner of the PayPal Best Starting Shop Award.

Last year, Dutch consumers spent 33.3 billion euros online. This is a 9 percent growth compared to 2021. The number of purchases actually decreased by 5 percent, but the average amount per purchase increased by 15 percent.

German bicycle e-tailer Bike24 is launching in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The company already had localized online shops for Germany, Austria, France, Italy and Spain. Bike24 says the company now reaches 70 percent of the European market.

Dutch electronics store Coolblue made a profit loss of 6,2 million euros in 2022. This is a stark contrast with profits of over 39 million euros the year before. The company generated 2,35 billion euros of revenue. a small year-on-year growth of 0,6 percent.

Online fashion marketplace Secret Sales has reached a 70 percent year-on-year growth in sales in 2022. This was largely driven by the company’s international expansion last year. It expects to maintain a growth of 85 percent this year.

Dutch marketplace Bol.com’s sales have slightly lowered in 2022. In the last quarter, online sales decreased nearly 3 percent compared to an 7,8 percent increase the year before. In all of 2022, gross trading volume lowered nearly 2 percent.

Online revenue in the Netherlands has decreased 7.6 percent in 2022 when compared to a year earlier. Pure online stores generated revenues of 5.8 percent lower. Multichannel sellers saw their turnover decrease by 9.6 percent.