Last week the largest e-commerce congress in the Benelux, the so called ‘webwinkelvakdagen’, again took place in Utrecht, Holland. Cross-border e-commerce was one of the main topics. Leaders from some of the leading Dutch webshops shared their experiences in international online sales in several interesting speeches. Here are the learnings:
Oscar Diele, managing director at Flinders.nl (a webshop in living and furniture with € 15m in sales, active in Holland, Belgium and Germany) had the following recommendations to webshops that are looking at international e-commerce:
Yuri Solinger, CEO at Athlete Shop, a specialist Dutch webshop in sports supplies (Sales € 30m, active in 14 countries, among which USA, UK and Germany) had the following advice:
From his own experience he furthermore gave the following practical tips
Mirela Belkoski, e-commerce manager at the Dutch omni channel fashion retailer Coolcat (active in Holland, Belgium, France and Germany) has the following 5 cross-border learnings, coming from Coolcat’s own experience:
Huub Vermeulen, CEO at bol.com (Holland’s largest online retailer and market place, with € 1.6bn in sales, active in Holland and Belgium) sees that localization is essential, even where the same language is spoken, like in Holland and Flanders (Belgium). Particularly in areas like:
Altogether, these experiences from Dutch online retailers that went cross-border clearly show, that internationalization is not an easy job. It requires solid preparation, substantial internal resources, perseverance and the use of local experts to be successful. Please contact us, if you want to discuss in more detail.