Expanding to new marketplaces: ANWB, MediaMarkt, Kaufland and Decathlon

Beyond bol.com and Amazon, the number of relevant marketplaces in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe keeps growing steadily: ANWB, MediaMarkt, Kaufland, and Decathlon are examples of platforms that can be interesting for specific categories and audiences. But not every marketplace is worth it for every brand — expanding costs time, attention, and often money, while returns vary sharply per platform.

What to check before you start

• Category and audience fit. ANWB, for instance, speaks to a different audience than Decathlon or MediaMarkt. Adding a marketplace because you can is different from adding one because your audience and assortment actually fit.
• Operational impact. Every new marketplace means extra stock synchronization, price management, and sometimes different logistics requirements. Without the right tooling (such as Channable, ChannelEngine, or Mirakl), this quickly turns into manual work.
• Competitive density. Some marketplaces still have relatively few sellers per category, offering visibility opportunities. Others are already saturated. This varies significantly by platform and category, and keeps changing.
• Commercial terms. Commission structures, payment terms, and requirements around delivery promise or returns policy differ per marketplace. What produces a healthy margin on bol.com can play out differently elsewhere.

Sequencing an expansion

A common approach isn’t “launch everywhere at once,” but a staged rollout: test a limited part of the assortment on a new marketplace first, closely monitor the first weeks/months (revenue, margin, operational load), and only then scale up — or scale back down.

The role of software in expanding

Feed tools like Channable and ChannelEngine make it technically possible to serve multiple marketplaces from a single central feed. Separately, some marketplaces themselves run on Mirakl, a platform retailers use to build and operate their own marketplace — not an integration tool for sellers, but the underlying technology behind some of the marketplaces you sell on. Both types of software make expanding technically easier, but neither replaces the strategic question of which marketplaces actually add value. That choice remains a separate question per brand and category.