Is Belgian E-commerce Growing Despite or Thanks to Corona?

In a recent letter, 26 Belgium retailers, like Brantano, Di & Planet Parfum, Fnac/Vanden Borre, FUN, JBC, and Schoenen Torfs call out consumers to buy from local webshops and not from large foreign players such as Amazon, Bol.com or Alibaba to support the local companies and economy in these challenging times. “The behavior of consumers that purchase online is crucial for how eCommerce gets through this big crisis”, according to Geert Schotte, CEO of Standaard Boekhandel.

According to Bol.com, the collaboration with the local Belgium webshops has never been more important than up to this point. There are two to three times more registrations of Belgian webshops to become marketplace partners in Bol than in the past weeks versus the same period last year. Sales of Belgian webshops via Bol.com have grown five times faster in recent weeks than in the same period in 2019 as consumers buy puzzles, patterns, DIY paint, and audio cables.

Filip van Ryn, Country Manager Belgium at Icecat says: “The latest figures show that online sales in Belgium have doubled for 1/3rd of the resellers compared to last year. Thanks to Corona. We see that there is much more demand from resellers to start a webshop or at least optimize it with the right content. In addition to interest in Icecat product content, these resellers are also interested in other services that we can offer through Iceshop. Would there still be a catch up going on in Belgium?”