Bol.com

The bol market in numbers: where do the growth opportunities lie?

Lars Hurkmans·Co-founder·14 January 2026·Reading time 11 minutes

According to our market data, bol has more than 33 million products, over 70,000 sellers and almost 6 billion euros in revenue in 2024, more than half of which goes to selling partners. The growth opportunities lie in the breadth of the market: cheaper and functional products, evergreen search terms and the peak in the fourth quarter.

This is part 2 of our product research series. In the previous part we showed you the different ways you can sell on bol. Before you determine where the growth opportunities lie, you need a complete picture of the landscape: how big the market is, which categories exist, when things sell, and what consumers search for. In this article we walk through those numbers. All figures come from our own market data and are an order of magnitude, not an exact truth.

How big is the bol market in numbers?

The bol market can be summarised in three numbers: more than 33 million products, more than 70,000 sellers, and in 2024 almost 6 billion euros in revenue, more than half of which went to selling partners. That makes bol the largest online marketplace in the Netherlands, and for a third party, a market in the order of 3 billion euros.

The 33-plus million products are spread across around 30 main categories. So you can buy almost anything there, and therefore also sell almost anything. Those products are offered by more than 70,000 sellers that differ widely from each other. Bol is itself a seller, and beyond that there are wholesalers, vendors selling under large well-known brands, and small sellers who literally offer products from a spare room. It's a broad ecosystem you can certainly enter as a new seller.

External figures confirm the scale. According to ecommercenews, bol recorded a trading volume of 5.9 billion euros in 2024, the same order of magnitude as our estimate of almost 6 billion. There's a nuance to the partner share though: bol grew faster than its partners in recent years, so the share going to partners, according to those figures, dropped from about two-thirds in 2023 to around half by the end of 2024. For a third party, the market therefore stays in the order of 3 billion euros. One caveat on the number of sellers: we count all parties offering products, including bol itself, wholesalers and vendors. Bol reports a lower number of active selling partners, around 47,000 at the end of 2024, because that figure only counts external partners. So both numbers measure something different.

Which categories are biggest by number of products?

Books are by far the biggest category on bol: around 16 million of the products are books. For an own brand, that's rarely the most interesting category, unless you've published your own book. After that, the number of products per category drops off quickly.

The roughly 30 main categories can be sorted by the number of products offered:

• More than 1 million products: besides books, these are home products (over 3 million), women's fashion, DIY, men's fashion, toys, electronics and music.
• More than 100,000 products: health products, movies and series, pet products, camping and outdoor, office and school products, computer products and sports items.
• More than 10,000 products: games, adult products, travel luggage, Christmas items and food and drink.
• A small category: gift cards, mainly bol's own gift cards.

What stands out is the breadth. Almost every category is well represented, so as a seller you can go in nearly any direction. Which categories are actually the most interesting to sell in depends on revenue and competition, which we'll come back to further on.

Why might there actually be 50 million products on bol?

The 33 million products are a lower bound: the real number is probably higher, closer to 50 million. That's because bol only directly shows a maximum of 300,000 products per category. In categories that exceed that limit, we can't count exactly how many products there are.

Those categories aren't random. They're places where sellers use a print-on-demand strategy: within home products that's posters, paintings, wall circles and wall stickers, and within toys, for example, printed shirts and sweaters, all with more than 300,000 products. With print-on-demand, you only print a product once an order comes in. Sellers therefore put an enormous range of variants online that they don't have in stock yet, and still deliver them with a longer delivery time, often three or four days to a week. One such seller is Great Garden Design, with at least 1 million products by our estimate.

There's a warning in here for you as a seller. These products do sell together, but because of the enormous supply, a large share of them don't sell. If you want to try print-on-demand yourself, that's a legitimate strategy, but keep in mind that with so much supply around you, you'll probably get lost in the crowd.

How has the number of sellers on bol grown?

The number of sellers grew from a few hundred in 2007 to more than 70,000 now, with the strongest rise during Covid. Until 2007, bol wasn't a marketplace and sold everything itself. From that year on, partners were allowed to sell alongside bol, but there were few of them in the early years.

According to our market data, the growth happened in stages. Until 2012 the number of new sellers stayed low. In 2012, roughly 500 to 1,000 sellers were added. In 2019 came a sharp rise with more than 6,000 new sellers, a trend that blew over from the United States and Amazon. During Covid, roughly 2020 to 2022, came the peak: in both 2020 and 2021, more than 10,000 sellers were added. Those were partly existing web and physical stores looking for an extra sales channel, and partly small sellers who started as a side income or hobby.

In recent years sellers are still being added, but without the Covid peaks. That could point to a slow saturation, though the Covid period is such an outlier that it clouds the picture. Where a few years ago you could easily start your own brand, that's become harder, which makes it a fair question whether selling on bol is still worth it. In terms of origin, sellers were mostly Dutch until 2014, after which more and more Belgian parties joined, and the latest trend is international sellers entering from countries such as Germany, Sweden and France. So on the seller side, bol is becoming increasingly international.

When during the year do products sell best on bol?

The fourth quarter is by far the strongest, with November as the peak month. We express this as an index: the quarter with the highest value gets 100%, and the other quarters are compared to that. For both revenue and sales volume, the fourth quarter scores 100%.

The third quarter comes below that, with an index of around 70% for sales volume and 64% for revenue. The second quarter is the quietest, with a clear dip in both revenue and sales volume. This is a general pattern: it can differ per category, and summer products peak in summer instead. Many sellers arrange their stock so they can peak well around the fourth quarter, and some sellers get around 40% of their revenue in this quarter, a large share of it in November and December around Black Friday.

At the month level, November is the peak month. If you want to sell in the fourth quarter, everything needs to be in order by November. If you only start around October, you're on the late side. So make sure you're well prepared well in advance.

Which categories capture the most revenue and sales volume?

In revenue, electronics is the biggest category, with over 17% of the market we measure. In sales volume, meaning number of sales, toys is the biggest. There's a caveat with these market shares: we leave books and Christmas items out of the calculation, so the percentages add up to 100% of the remaining categories, not of the entire bol market. It still gives a good indication of the proportions.

Looking at revenue, there's a leading group of around seven big categories: including electronics, household, toys, personal care products and computers. Below that, a group scores above average, with home products, DIY, baby products and health products. Categories like beauty, office and school, camping and outdoor and men's fashion sit just below the middle. The smallest categories are movies and series, music and children's fashion, with adult products just above that. What stands out is the broad distribution: every category captures market share, so bol isn't a platform for a single product type.

For sales volume, the pattern stays similar, but the order shifts. Toys ranks at the top instead of electronics, since electronic products are more expensive on average. Think of iPhones: they push revenue up, while more toys are sold in terms of units.

The common thread: movies and series and music are, from both perspectives, the least interesting categories to sell a product in. For an own brand, these aren't the places to start anyway.

At which prices do products sell best on bol?

Cheaper products perform relatively well on bol. Products with an average category price under 20 euros capture more market share than their supply would suggest, while more expensive products underperform relative to their supply. In terms of supply, most products sit in the mid-range segment between 21 and 50 euros.

The ratio between supply and market share per price segment, measured on the average price per category:

What you can take from this: consumers on bol are partly looking for cheaper products, and a price under 20 euros can be advantageous in that respect. This alone says nothing about profit, since that depends on your purchasing and costs. And these are general figures that can differ per category. If you offer very expensive products, there's a bigger chance this comes at the cost of your market share.

Break this down per category, and you see clear patterns. In the 1-to-10-euro segment, children's fashion dominates, with about 27% of categories in that price segment, while movies and series and adult products are barely present in it. In the 11-to-20-euro segment, almost every category sells something, and for movies and series, personal care products and cars and motorbikes it's even more than half. In the 20-to-50-euro segment, it stands out that games sit almost entirely in it, since most video games cost that much, and adult products and Christmas items also score high. In the more expensive segments, electronics and travel luggage stand out, and in the most expensive segment of all, computers, electronics and DIY products. In short: if you want to sell very expensive products, you'll probably end up in electronics, and for cheap products, other categories.

Which brands and products are most searched for on bol?

Consumers search on bol in two ways: on functionality, where it's not yet decided which product they'll buy, and on brand, where name recognition drives the search. The most searched-for brand is by far Lego. Other big brands are Samsung, Pampers, Nintendo, Rituals and Harry Potter.

With these brands, the consumer makes the purchase directly based on the brand name. Pampers is a good example: it's a diaper, but the name recognition is so strong that people search for it directly. If you want to sell a product that competes with brands like these, that becomes difficult, since name recognition does the work. The only route then is usually price: only if you're so much cheaper that the consumer considers it, do you get a look-in. This underscores the advice from part 1 to focus on functionality-driven products instead of categories that revolve around brand preference.

Look at the most searched-for products instead of brands, and they're strikingly generic products. Music earbuds top the list, and a generic product like socks is also searched for a lot. These aren't iPhones or specific computers. For an own brand, that means: look for generic, functional products with a lot of demand.

Which search terms are evergreen and which are seasonal?

Some search terms stay stable all year round, others peak in a particular quarter. The most evergreen search terms are, again, fairly generic: an iPad stands out, but so do kettles, vacuum cleaners and a tablet, all staying stable throughout the year. If you want a product that runs steadily, terms like these are a good starting point.

The seasonal search terms differ per quarter:

• First quarter: Easter when that still falls in this quarter, dartboard around the darts World Championship and the start of the Premier League, carnival, Ramadan decorations and the ski season.
• Second quarter: lots of orange items around King's Day, and terms around graduating and the end of the school year.
• Third quarter: the start of the new school year with book covering paper and school bags, summer products, and Belgian terms such as turnzak, the Belgian word for school bag.
• Fourth quarter: the holidays, with a Zwarte Piet costume, an advent calendar and lots of Christmas-related terms.

This distinction helps you choose a product that fits your situation: an evergreen product for steady revenue, or a seasonal product if you're deliberately targeting a peak period.

Summary: where do the growth opportunities lie on bol?

• The market is big and broad. More than 33 million products, probably closer to 50 million, over 70,000 sellers, and almost 6 billion euros in revenue in 2024, more than half of which goes to selling partners.
• Books are biggest by number, electronics by revenue, toys by sales volume. For an own brand, movies and series and music are the least interesting categories.
• The fourth quarter is the peak, with November as the key month. Make sure you're prepared well before Black Friday.
• Cheaper products perform relatively well. An average price under 20 euros captures more market share than the supply would suggest, though that alone says nothing about profit.
• Avoid strong brands, choose functional products. Against Lego, Samsung or Pampers, you mainly compete on price. Generic, functional products and evergreen search terms offer more room.

With this you have a complete picture of how the bol market is put together and where the room for growth lies. The next step is translating that picture into a concrete product choice, and for that you need a structured approach. In the next part we explain the framework for product research. If you want to explore the categories, seasonal patterns and search terms yourself already, you can do that in the niche explorer, and you can read more about the approach in our article on market research on bol.