Amazon #1 moneymaker in Dutch e-commerce
This article was originally published on LinkedIn
Recently Twinkle Magazine published the top 100 Dutch e-commerce companies for 2020. Compared to 2019, the top 10 has a few entrants. These entrants are mainly online groceries who benefited from Corona measures. According to Laurens Sloot of University of Groningen, these online food companies do not make profit.
We all know where the money is made however: the platform always wins, so Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). So, like last like last year, I checked for each company in the Top 10 where they run (see table below, revenue is of 2020).
Then I created an overview of how much e-commerce revenue flows via each platform. This resulted in the following chart with revenue (in millions and marketshare in the Top 10):
Key takeaways for 2020
Amazon serves 50% of the Top 10 Dutch e-commerce companies in terms of revenue Amazon’s own online store is 6th with EUR 530 million of revenue, however via AWS they serve over 4.8 billion in revenue: more than #1 bol.com and #2 Coolblue combined The revenue of AWS itself (what they charge the shops) is much lower of course, but with much more margin (see below).
Who make$ the moneyzzz?
Amazon has an estimated gross margin of about 60%. And it has an estimated operating margin (gross minus costs like product development and marketing) of 30%. You do the math who makes most money in the Dutch e-commerce market. Spoiler: the platforms and specifically AWS.
Google not only provides the technical platform for a company like bol.com. It also brings part of their traffic via Search and Shopping: double whammy as (1) search platform and (2) compute platform.
Wrap up
Feedback on this article? Let me know via the contact form or on LinkedIn.
Credits to Michel Dekker for creating the easy to understand graph.
Sources:
- The Twinkle 100 can be found here on Twinkle Magazine
- Dutch news site NOS.nl on profitability of online food businesses
- CNBC on estimated margins of AWS
- The ranking of platform providers I created last year for 2019
- I used the career pages of all companies in the Top 10 and people in my network, to determine the platform where each company runs on