Bol.com sales to reach 4.3 billion euros in 2020

According to foreign media statistics, Bol.com, the largest online store in the Netherlands, generated sales of 4.3 billion euros in 2020, exceeding the expectations of its holding company Ahold Delhaize.

In 2020, Ahold Delhaize generated consumer online sales of €7.6 billion, of which Bol.com accounted for €4.3 billion. This exceeded the company's target of €3.5 billion set a year in advance. "With the increased capacity and continued momentum, we are now on track to achieve our new target of at least €5 billion in online consumer sales at Bol.com," commented Ahold Delhaize.

Thanks to the fact that physical stores in the Netherlands and Belgium could not open due to the epidemic, online shopping has made great progress, and Dutch e-commerce and Belgian e-commerce have enjoyed a golden period of development. According to data released by CBS, online sales in the Netherlands in 2020 increased by 43% compared with 2019, which is the strongest growth in Dutch e-commerce in many years.

Since the outbreak, the Netherlands has seen a sharp increase in Internet sales and online sales. Online sales in the second quarter of 2020 increased by 55% year-on-year compared to 2019, and in the third quarter by 38%. Growth was strongest in the fourth quarter, with online revenue increasing by 55.6% year-on-year. The high penetration rate of the Internet and e-commerce and good infrastructure in the Netherlands have made many developing online retailers jealous. It is expected that by 2025, the proportion of e-commerce in the Netherlands' total retail sales will reach more than 23%.

Bol.com has also achieved its most brilliant "achievement" in the past year , thanks to the rapid development of e-commerce in the Netherlands : the latest data from Ahold Delhaize shows that in the fourth quarter of last year, Bol.com's revenue increased by 69.9%. During the same period, Bol.com's third-party seller sales increased by 110%, with more than 41,000 trading partners on the platform.

According to a report in the Belgian newspaper L'Echo in September 2020, although three months later than the original plan, Bol.com finally completed the French version and successfully launched it. Previously, Bol.com only had a French version on the mobile APP, but now 15 million of the 23 million items on the platform have French versions.

According to the law, products without French instructions cannot be sold on the French website. Amazon's French website has 250 million products. Some media believe that Bol.com launched the French version in order to replace Amazon's position in the Belgian market.

E-commerce platform

Cross-border e-commerce market

Netherlands