Since 2003 I was involved in several open source projects, doing mainly consultancy and some project management besides my Psychology studies. I started the online Dutch Joomla! community in 2004 and also organized national events for that community. In 2008 I came into contact with Magento and was really enthusiastic about it right from the start. Since people with webshops on Magento purposefully earn money with it (which is not always the case with a regular Joomla! website), budgets for developing Magento webshops are much higher, and thus, it is more interesting market.

I copied the Joomla! model to Magento and started a local online community, organizing national events and doing consultancy work.

Magento position in the Netherlands

Despite the economy being at a low point, eCommerce is still growing in the Netherlands. There’s a great interest in the Netherlands for Magento and related services. For instance, if you use Google Insights to track interest for “Magento” in the last 12 months, you’ll see the Netherlands on top.

The difficulty in our region is to sell outside the boarders of the Netherlands. International legislation, logistics and customers are often focused on buying from within their own country, and that can be a challenge for foreign eCommerce companies.

The great thing about the Netherlands is that the average wages are high and many people have access to 3 or more internet-enabled devices. Shopping online is a regular thing to do for a large percentage of the population. 

If you want to open eCommerce business here, you’ll need to get into some local laws (for instance, currently our cookie law is much more strict than anywhere else in Europe) and offer the predominant local iDeal payment solution.

You also need to keep in mind that we only have around 16.7M residents, so if your business model requires scaling beyond that, you should be active in other countries.

Dutchento basis: people like to do business with people they’ve met in real life

Dutchento is Magento fraternity in the Netherlands. It feels like a natural extension of the online community we have. Once a year we bring together the brightest minds on eCommerce and Magento and show the greatest showcases. But more importantly people like to do business with people they’ve met in a real life. Dutchento is a catalyst of Magento business in our country.

We have been organizing events like Meet Magento NL for a couple of years and the organizational part is worked out well. The most difficult thing here is to battle rising costs on the one side and getting sponsors on the other. Despite eCommerce being on the rise, we do notice that sponsors are on a tighter budget than before.

Dutchento helps us connecting people. The most important part is to link the people who want to build a new webshop (or build upon their current shop) with the right Magento partners and third party service providers like e-mail marketing, payment providers, logistics, etc. The sessions we have during the day (around 25) and business marketplace are also meant to show visitors which party has the right credentials for their needs, and what are the best showcases in their branch.

From May 29-30, the Magento team will travel to the Netherlands to celebrate the fifth-annual Meet Magento event with the Dutch community and kick-off a small European tour of industry events! After visiting Netherlands, the Magento team will travel to Meet Magento Germany and Bargento in Paris before coming back to the U.S. for IRCE in Chicago.

This Meet Magento event brings together a variety of online retailers, Magento Solution and Industry partners, eCommerce executives, agencies and Magento developers. It has become the most important yearly event for all companies involved with Magento solutions in the Netherlands to share their eCommerce experiences and expertise.

After the opening keynote by Magento Co-founder and COO Roy Rubin, the event will have over twenty-five highly-qualified speakers that will offer topics ranging from marketing and business to development and optimization, and there will be an introductory workshop for Magento solution beginners. The event also features a complete English track and several breakout sessions for International visitors.

A limited number of last-minute tickets are still available for €140. For more information on the event and ticket sales in English, visit meet-magento.nl/en. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to Meet Magento in the Netherlands at the end of May!

Meet Magento Netherlands is brought to you by Dutchento.

We are delighted to announce that Delicious Karma is the winner of Magento’s Most Innovative Enterprise Site of 2012 Award. As a new daily-deals startup, Delicious Karma wanted a fully scalable eCommerce site that could support the company’s rapid growth and cutting-edge business model. To make this happen, Silver Solution Partner Rocket Web leveraged the Private Sales, Rewards and Social Media features built into Magento Enterprise Edition, and launched a public beta that engaged over 5,000 active users, and generated an average order size of $70 within the first six months. Since then, Delicious Karma has acquired thousands of new users, and they have a 40% repeat-purchase rate.

Michelle Ritchie, chief marketing officer and founder of Delicious Karma, couldn’t be happier. “Magento Enterprise has enabled us to build something not previously possible: a network of deeply engaged food lovers that want to discover, learn and share their passions for delicious, real food.”

“We continue to be impressed by the innovation from our solution partners as they push the boundaries of the Magento platform,” noted Roy Rubin, co-founder and chief operating officer at Magento. “The advances that Rocket Web brought to life for Delicious Karma capture the essence of the art and technical expertise of successful commerce. We look forward to seeing our merchants and partners continue to push the bleeding edge of commerce innovation in 2013.”

Congratulations to Delicious Karma and Rocket Web, and thank you again to all of the partners and merchants who submitted entries for the 2012 award!

---

]]>

Kate Starmer-Smith created Atterley Road to get all of her favorite brands and high-street boutiques into one place: the home of beautiful clothes. It would be a place that would remind you of your most stylish friend, someone in-the-know, but approachable. To be the first to make this happen, Starmer-Smith turned to Magento Solutions Partner Screen Pages for a site that could combine compelling photography and lifestyle content with her unique shopping experience.

Screen Pages tapped Magento’s flexible, customizable eCommerce platform, Magento Enterprise Edition, for an elegant online store with a clean design, attractive navigation, sophisticated merchandizing tools, strong social marketing features, and the ability to integrate with JDA’s Red Prairie ERP system for fulfillment.

Atterley Road launched in mere months—on time and on budget. Immediate results included over ten-thousand daily visitors, a 400% projected increase in yearly sales, and the number five spot on Vogue’s list of Top 100 Online Stores.

View Full Customer Success Story

Thousands of companies – including many of the world’s biggest brands – are using Magento Enterprise to grow their online businesses. Wondering how Magento Enterprise can help your business?

Have a Magento success story you’d like to share? Contact success@magento.com.

---