Record breaking Black Friday for Dutch online stores; PostNL warns of possible package delays

Black Friday and Cyber Monday turned out to be very busy days for Dutch online stores, with Bol.com, Coolblue and Mediamarkt all reporting record breaking numbers in visitors and sales. PostNL warns that there may be some delay in delivering packages.

"Over the past days there were many extra online orders. We are delivering most packages today. For a small part of the packages, we expect a delay. We will deliver those packages tomorrow", the Dutch postal service wrote on its site on Tuesday.

Bol.com saw orders coming in immediately after midnight on Black Friday, a spokesperson said to RTL Nieuws. "We've never had so many orders at night", the spokesperson said. He would not comment on their turnover figures, as the company is part of the listed Ahold Delhaize. "We grow an average of 30 to 35 percent per year. The turnover is even higher around the holidays and on Friday we achieved our highest turnover ever", the spokesperson said.

In 2016 Bol.com posted a turnover of 1.2 billion euros, according to the broadcaster. Before Friday, the online store's busiest day ever was the day before Christmas last year, with about half a million items sold. Over the entire Friday, Bol.com saw three times more visitors than last year's Black Friday. 

Mediamarkt also saw a record number of visitors. "The number of visitors online increased fivefold compared to last year", a spokesperson said to RTL. The company refused to comment on what this yielded in terms of turnover.

Coolblue spread its Black Friday specials out over the entire week leading up to the actual day. A spokesperson told RTL that the company is slightly disappointed with the results, despite seeing record numbers of orders.