The Pandemic has helped European E-commerce Businesses - Germany is a clear leader

The Covid-19 pandemic, which spread in Europe in the first quarter of 2020 and persists in larger or smaller waves in European countries, has mainly been favorable and beneficial to Internet sales, i.e., e-commerce. The reasons for this include the epidemiological measures and related closings of brick-and-mortar shops and the reduced mobility of the population. According to Eurostat, e-commerce sales in the European Union increased by 25% in 2020, while before the pandemic, e-commerce sales grew by an average of 7-10% per year.

In this industry analysis, we will take a closer look at e-commerce in Germany and its neighbouring countries (England, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Denmark).

Disclaimer: Our analysis accounts for companies that do not report sales. Aggregate figures do not include branches of foreign entities.

GERMAN E-COMMERCE MARKET

Germany has 24,772 companies operating in e-commerce, of which 63.7% (16,245) are self-employed (i.e., sole traders). Although compared to its neighbors, it does not have the most companies operating in e-commerce. On other side this industry achieves the highest median sales in Germany (half of the companies have higher and the other half lower sales than the median), more specifically 217,513 euros (excluding the self-employed and branches).

As many as 635 of these companies have annual sales of over one million euros. Of this number, 99 companies are self-employed in terms of their legal form.

Germany has the most companies with sales of more than 1 billion euros per year – six in total; the largest is Otto (GmbH & Co KG) with sales of 14.2 billion euros. Number two is Zalando SE with sales of 6.4 billion euros, followed by bonprix Handelsges. mbH with sales of 1.5 billion euros.

ENGLAND HAS THE MOST E-COMMERCE BUSINESS

England has the highest number of e-commerce businesses (total of 82,993), followed by the Netherlands (78,454), France (72,594), and Poland (51,369). Germany is fifth, with 24,772 entities operating in e-commerce.

The low number of proprietorships in England (1,755) is caused by the lack of proprietorship data in our database, due to unavailability of data. On the other hand, trades are primarily used in the Netherlands (58,972) France (54,855), Poland (34,233), or Germany (16,217).

As previously mentioned, German e-commerce companies have the highest median sales. It is followed by Switzerland (202,256 EUR), France (180,108 EUR), Poland (127,703 EUR), and Belgium (120,055 EUR).

England has the highest number of companies with sales of over 1M EUR (1,684 businesses total), followed by France (795), Germany (635), Poland (455), and Czechia (369).

Only 5 European countries have e-commerce businesses with sales of over 1B EUR - Germany (6), England (4), France (2), Luxembourg (1), and the Czech Republic (1).

CONCLUSION

In terms of median sales, Germany is the strongest country in e-commerce compared to its neighbors. At the same time, Germany is fifth when it comes to the total number of e-commerce businesses. That means that e-commerce companies in Germany are, on average, more prominent than those operating in, for example, England, the Netherlands, or Poland. At the same time, Germany has the most companies with sales of over 1B EUR (total of 6). However, compared to its neighbors, Germany does not have the highest number of companies with more than one million euros in sales. Interestingly enough, Czech Republic has the fourth-lowest number of companies (4,144) yet has 369 e-commerce companies with more than one million euros in sales.