AliExpress and Shein are among the ten largest online sellers in the Netherlands. And behind market leader bol comes, not Albert Heijn or Coolblue, but Amazon as the number two. That is according to a new ranking by German ECDB, a well-known publisher of ecommerce statistics. What is the ranking based on? And what else stands out?
Online sellers in the Netherlands have been ranked in the Twinkle100 for years. The latest edition appeared last month, with a ranking based on (stated or estimated) online sales in the year 2023. In that edition, the rapid growth of foreign platforms stood out, with the US-based Amazon in fourth place and Chinese players AliExpress, Shein and Temu in places 43, 47 and 55, respectively.
Impact foreign online sellers
In ECDB’s list, also covering 2023, the aforementioned companies are ranked a lot higher: Amazon occupies 2nd place, AliExpress 6th, Shein 8th and Temu 37th. Viewed this way, the impact of international players on ecommerce in the Netherlands is thus even more significant. Only four players in the top 10 are homegrown; in the top 10 of the latest Twinkle100, there are seven:
| Position | Top 100 ECDB | Twinkle100 |
| 1 | bol | bol |
| 2 | Amazon | Albert Heijn |
| 3 | Coolblue | Coolblue |
| 4 | Albert Heijn | Amazon |
| 5 | Zalando | Zalando |
| 6 | AliExpress | Picnic |
| 7 | Jumbo | Jumbo |
| 8 | Shein | Wehkamp |
| 9 | MediaMarkt | Belsimpel |
| 10 | Apple | Apple |
Wehkamp, ranking 7th in the Twinkle100, is only 12th on ECDB’s list, behind Vinted in 11th place, which is not included in the Twinkle100. Conversely, Picnic is missing from the ECDB ranking, presumably because the company only sells products through its app. Still, a relevant omission, just like that of Belsimpel.
Methodology of the ranking
ECDB’s rankings (the letters stand for ecommerce database) are based on different data sources. Unlike the Twinkle100, transaction data are most important in the methodology of the commercial statistics firm. Data from credit cards, debit cards and e-wallets, among others, come directly from card issuers or processors; they provide insight into the transactions that flow through their networks.
ECDB’s list is based primarily on transaction data.
ECDB says it bases its publications on more than 1 billion transactions per month. “This represents about 2 to 3 percent of all transactions for the companies or markets analyzed.”
Top 100 online sellers in the Netherlands
Combined with other sources, such as public information, traffic and click data, and data from scraping and crawling, the transaction data provide the following picture of the ecommerce top in the Netherlands:
Fashion top category Bol
While the normative sales figures are not publicly available, it is clear that the difference between frontrunner bol and Amazon is very large. It is also interesting that bol is presented as a fashion retailer. ECDB reports that for each player, the category in which it achieves the most sales is mentioned. Of the hundred players, 44 are classified as fashion vendors. Measured by sales, however, electronics is bigger, with a 32 percent share.
Potential in beauty and care
Mikael Brakker of L’Oréal, who shared the Dutch ECDB list on LinkedIn with approval from the statistics agency, reveals where there is still a lot of online growth potential in the country, in an international perspective. “Beauty and care is quite small online and has very high growth potential. Right now it holds 7 percent of the online market.”
