On January 1^st of this year, there were just over 101 thousand active online stores in the Netherlands. This means that the amount of online stores has more than tripled there in the last decade. Additionally, the amount of SMEs in this sector grew 252 percent during that period.

This is according to data on the amount of SMEs in the Netherlands, from Statistics Netherlands. In 2023, their data already showed that there were 84.1 thousand online stores at the beginning of that year. For the first time, that number was higher than the amount of brick-and-mortar stores in the country (82.1 thousand).

Increase of 252 percent in 10 years

Compared to 2014, the amount of SMEs in the ecommerce industry has increased by 252 percent. This puts the industry in the Dutch top 10 industries where the amount of SMEs grew the strongest in the past decade.

Ecommerce is in the top 10 of industries where the amount of SMEs increased the most in 10 years.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the amount of online stores increased the strongest. Many Dutch businesses that did not already do so, started selling online. Since then, growth has slowed down reasonably.

Number of SMEs increased almost 69%

The number of SMEs also increased in other industries. Since 2014, the amount of Dutch software publishers grew the most. On January 1^st, there were 305 SMEs in that industry. This was more than six times as many as a decade ago. SMEs in private security services, call centers, pipe and cable laying and the beverage industry increased fivefold in that time.

On 1 January this year, the Netherlands had over 1.56 million SMEs.

According to the data, the Netherlands counted over 1.56 million SMEs at the beginning of this year. Ten years ago, there were 927 thousand. This is an increase of almost 69 percent.