Marketplaces 2018: Bol.com

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This post about Bol.com is part of Tamebay’s January and February 2018 Marketplaces series sponsored by Flubit. For the full list of marketplaces we’ve written, visit our Marketplaces 2018 page here.

Web address: Bol.com

Marketplace Overview

Bol.com is the big and famous online retailer for books, toys and electronics and surpasses Amazon in those fields in Holland. It started out as a purely online bookshop, but Bol.com is now the biggest marketplace for a wide range of products in the Netherlands and Belgium. It has a strong brand presence and is very well respected among Dutch and Belgian consumers. It has a very popular mobile app.

They say that they enjoy custom from 7 million customers selling over 15 million products. Most of the products are brand new but secondhand sales are also possible. As a seller you can also enjoy benefits from internal advertising possibilities, get help in content optimisation from the Bol team and use the affiliate marketing programme to drive additional sales and revenues.

Seller registration and requirements

Selling on Bol.com is easy and all you need to provide are your business details and product GTINs and you’re good to go. That said, anecdotal evidence we’ve heard suggests that they are unforgiving when a seller breaks the rules.

Product listings and fulfilment

Listing your items is also easy. All Bol.com needs for all products is a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). So if you have a GTIN, there is no need to manually translate your listing – Bol does that for you. There are also no fixed monthly fees for your Bol.com account and you only pay for each item which is sold.

You can also plug into Bol.com’s distribution network in the Netherlands to help with fulfilment. Bol.com handles all payments and disburses them to sellers. Quite a number of multi-channel marketplace providers already serve Bol.com, so switching on this marketplace via them (and hopefully tapping into their expertise too) is an easy way to start selling.

Tamebay’s take on Bol.com

Trading with Belgium and Holland is an easy proposition for UK sellers. Shipping is straight forward and efficient. But most importantly both the Dutch and Belgians are adept at trading with the UK. Not only is English widely used but they know how long shipping takes. Neither are the biggest countries in the world but they are good shoppers when it comes to UK goods and they like a lot of things our nation has to sell.

What are the downsides? You’re going to need to have a proven track record and a GTIN based listings approach but that is scarcely a problem for any serious and committed ecommerce merchant.

If you have you any experience selling on this marketplace, please do share your insights.

For more information about marketplaces check out the Tamebay Guide.

5 Responses

  1. Why do you not mention that you need to be VAT registered in Holland to use this marketplace. Don’t you do any research?

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