When it comes to selling online in Europe, it’s well worth remembering that eBay and Amazon aren’t the only shows in town. In the Netherlands, bol.com is the biggest online retailer. And, whilst Amazon was in the top 6, eBay didn’t rank at all. Zalando does though and yet many of the other names will be unknown to you.
So what do we know about bol.com?
Last year it confronted the fourth quarter with the “Vandaag Bezorgd” campaign: that guaranteed a hundred thousand different products that could be delivered on the same day they were ordered. Bol has also started offering a premium subscription service at 15 euros per year. And they also initiated deliveries in the evenings and on Sundays for free. Bol delivers some products on the same day for free, and customers don’t have to pay delivery costs anymore for orders below 20 euros.
The new CEO of bol.com Huub Vermeulen says of future prospects: “The Belgian and Dutch markets are ripe. There is a wide range of products and often excellent product knowledge from suppliers. In Belgium, more than 1800 entrepreneurs work with us and we have 1.5 million customers. But expansion is of course a matter of trust, and gaining the confidence of a market takes time. We address our customers with total openness.
We achieved a turnover of 1.2 billion euros last year in Belgium and the Netherlands. That gives us a lot of potential for growth, although we are in an increasingly competitive market. Technology is changing and will continue to grow. These changes will result in other changes like the people who will use these technologies of tomorrow. I see many opportunities for the future and I look forward to putting them in place! We live in an exciting time. We have succeeded in making our webshop even more accessible by introducing same-day home delivery, Select subscription, evening and Sunday delivery, and continuous price reduction. We are following this path.”
