Selling fashion on Bol.com

If you want to buy clothes online, you’ll quickly end up at the big fashion retailers. You probably know them - Wehkamp, Zalando and About You. The big clothing brands themselves are also popular for buying fashion. H&M, The Sting and Zara are doing particularly well as digital clothing shops. But did you know that it will soon be normal to buy fashion on Bol.com? 

The largest online shop in the Netherlands announced this through a press release. To make this formula a success, they focus on cooperation with famous brands. Are you also a fashion retailer and are you looking for an accessible sales channel? Then you should definitely bet on Bol.com.

Contents:

• The reason for Bol.com to focus on fashion sales
• How to make fashion sales on Bol.com a success
• How to stand out as a fashion retailer
• What not to do as a fashion retailer on Bol.com 

Do you want to start selling fashion on Bol.com? Then it's a good idea to let a marketplaces specialist assist you. Especially when it comes to Bol.com, Brandsom has the right knowledge. If you want to know more click on the arrow below and get in touch with one of our specialists!

Bol.com focusses its efforts on selling clothing

The rumour has been going around for a while: Bol.com expands its fashion assortment, starting next year. This is not really a surprise. The online marketplace was already selling bags, sportswear, clothes for pregnant women and babies. According to Margaret Versteden, Director of Stores and Chief Commercial Officer, this is the last expansion of Bol.com for the time being. 

The online shop indicates that they want to expand with retailers who are already active with them, but also with new parties. They have the expertise on assortment, trends, brands and returns. The focus will mainly be on colours and sizes that third party retailers do not offer. Bol.com likes to offer its customers the widest and most complete range possible. 

At the moment there are 100,000 clothing articles online at Bol.com. This number will soon grow to 500,00. Of course, this expansion comes from the third parties themselves. The online retailer does expect fashion brands to improve their content in order to stimulate sales. This includes good product descriptions and high-quality photographs.

Why do clothing brands use a third party like Bol.com?

Brands are increasingly aware of the power of large online platforms. The power of for example Bol.com or Amazon is to gain visibility and brand awareness. Last year in December, the website reached 11.2 million shoppers. More than 60% shopped via their tablet or smartphone. This is a reason for clothing brands to use a platform like Bol.com. 

The turnover in the Dutch clothing sector is about 5.5 to 6 billion euros. A part of the transactions goes through the physical clothing shops. Specialist webshops such as Zalando, Wehkamp and About You also pocket some of the revenue. The clothing sector accounts for 15% of turnover through all digital sales channels. The clothing sector is booming and these figures prove that there is still a lot of potential for further growth. Selling fashion on Bol.com will give the turnover of clothing brands an extra boost.

How to make selling fashion on Bol.com a success?

Even if you are a smaller retailer selling fashion, you can make selling via Bol.com a success story. How do you make sure that your customers come to you and not to the competition? Pay attention to the following tips and you will see that your sales will go through the roof!

#1 Provide good product information 

If you want to be found, you need to ensure the best findability. The advice is to spend a lot of time on the titles and product descriptions of the articles in your feed. As a seller on Bol.com, you are responsible for getting this right. The platform has all kinds of tips ready to improve the title structure for the products and which common keywords convert well. 

For entrepreneurs who sell more than 200 articles, Bol.com advises integrating your own webshop with the one from Bol.com via an API link. This way, it is possible to transfer product descriptions, but also to manage stock and sales prices.

Brandsom offers Bol.com services for optimizing and writing your product information. This helps your brand to become even more visible on the platform.

#2 Expand your assortment

Bol.com shares data-driven insights with sales partners. This enables them to constantly improve their shop at Bol.com. This gives them the opportunity to grow via the platform. Every three to four months the online retailer shares what the 'white and black spots' are. These are products that consumers are looking for, but which the platform does not yet offer. Brand owners get insight into which products they can still sell to be lucrative. 

#3 Provide the best service

It is important to provide the right customer service through Bol.com. Make sure you can be reached by phone between 9 am and 5 pm. Answer your customer emails within 24 hours. Ship your packages within the agreed time. Do you know that you cannot deliver within 3 working days? Communicate a term of 5 to 7 working days. 

If you don't stick to this as a retailer, it will cost you points. Literally! If you provide poor service, you even drop down in your feed. This will ultimately lead to fewer customers coming to you and will cost you turnover in the long run. So make sure you have excellent customer service as a fashion retailer, because this will also help you grow.

This is not allowed

As a seller of clothing, you may not offer all products through Bol.com. Please pay attention to the list below. This way, there is no risk of your product assortment being rejected::

• Plant materials: you may not offer products made from plants that are threatened with extinction. Think of red coral and rosewood.
• Animal materials: As Bol.com considers animal welfare important, it is not allowed to offer all animal products. This concerns real fur, angora, mohair or kangaroo. Real fur means animal skin or parts of it. The same applies to ivory, snakeskin or crocodile skin.
• As a fashion retailer, you may not add erotic images.

Do you want to sell fashion on Bol.com? Please contact Brandsom for a consultancy without any obligations.

Get started with selling fashion on Bol.com now. It will help you with the growth of your business. Success starts with a good strategy and the marketplace consultants at Brandsom know all about that. Find more information on our homepage, check out our service page or contact us at contact@brandsom.nl / 030-2270520 and request a no-obligation consultation.